The restaurant that replaced Soyka is opening. There will be a ‘churro tower’
Miami just traded Soyka for a Chica.
Chef, cookbook author and television personality Lorena García officially will open her new restaurant, Chica, on Nov. 19 at the former Soyka, a landmark restaurant wedged between Little Haiti and Morningside.
García, who partnered with the 50 Eggs restaurant group to open the first Chica in Las Vegas, has spent the last two years honing the formula at her pan Latin American restaurant before opening in Miami, where she lives. While she has restaurants in the Miami, Dallas and Atlanta airports, this will be her first brick-and-mortar restaurant in Miami in more than a decade.
“This is a celebration of the food you find in Miami,” García said during a telephone interview. “This is who I am.”
García, a one-time law student from Venezuela, studied at North Miami’s Johnson & Wales before opening a pair of well-received Miami restaurants, Food Café and Elements Tierra in the Design District. She launched a successful cookbook writing and television career. She’s best known from Bravo’s “Top Chef Masters” and Univision’s “Despierta America.”
García said Chica is a distillation of her food memories: her Venezuelan upbringing (her mother was married to the late president Jaime Lusinchi after his term), a long-running Argentine television cooking show, her spouse’s Peruvian family, and her own travels through Mexico and Latin America.
“It’s a celebration of all those cultures under one roof,” she said.
One section of the menu is devoted to the “raw,” ceviches, Mexican aquachiles (similar ceviche) and a raw bar. The “hot” section includes arepas, chicharrones, Peruvian grilled octopus, tamales and tacos (to which she dedicated her entire last cookbook, “New Taco Classics”).
Larger menu items include pepita-crusted lamb, slow-roasted Porchetta, filet minon with mole negro. An Argentine parrillada, cooked over wood fire, ranges from whole snapper to lamb barbacoa. Desserts include an actual Churro Tower.
The restaurant itself has been refreshed, although the original Soyka was as much a draw for its design as for its menu (perhaps more so). The 50 Eggs group closed the restaurant in May and handed the reins the last six months to New York’s Rockwell Group, which has designed restaurants for José Andrés’ Think Food Group and Nobu.
Prices range from $16 for ceviches, $12-$22 for hot starters, $29-$62 for larger mains.
Chica
Address: 5556 NE 4th Ct., Miami
Hours: Lunch — Tuesday through Friday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Dinner — Tuesday through Thursday, 5 p.m. to midnight, until 1 a.m. Friday and Saturday, until 11 p.m. Sunday.
