This charming Brickell restaurant closed after 22 years. It’s reopening in a new spot.
People came for the pasta. But they also came for the trees, the banyans that stretched over and into the original Perricone’s Marketplace & Café in Brickell.
The question Steven Perricone is posing is whether the same fans of his original restaurant — a wooded oasis he finally sold amid encroaching urban construction — will come to its new location.
The new Perricone’s (pronounced with a long E on the last syllable) reopens June 25 at a spot less than a mile away, at the edge of the Roads neighborhood, on a tree-lined street that reminded Perricone of the original café he built in a sleepy Brickell in 1996.
“I was looking for something where I could recreate the spirit of the original Perricone’s,” he said.
Perricone, 65, bought this new location after selling his original building and land, which he purchased in 1997 for $775,000, for more than $16 million to a hotel developer. A bar and restaurant owner since age 22, he said he still wasn’t ready to retire.
The new Perricone’s has familiar banyans, framed by the expansive dining room windows, on a street that merges into Coral Way to the south. Its location puts it in direct competition with the long-standing Tutto Pasta across the street.
Inside Perricone’s are many of the familiar features from the original spot. It includes a market of fresh-baked pastries, breads, Italian staples and wine, a sleek bar different from the rustic outdoor one at the original spot, which closed after 22 years in February of 2019.
With new COVID-19 guidelines, the restaurant seats about 45, and a new patio area with umbrellas and fans will be ready in about a month, Perricone said.
Perricone even salvaged the original restaurant’s rustic wood beams and floors, which he had reclaimed from a Vermont barn built in the 1700s to give his spot its warm, inviting feel.
The new space has a definite new-building feel, he concedes, but “I hope people come back to Perricone’s because of all the other things,” he said.
The menu, which he continued to offer by catering to surrounding businesses, remains mostly unchanged.
Appetizers range from $16-$20. Sandwiches, served on Sullivan Street Bakery bread, a company which Perricone co-owns, range from $12-$16. Pastas are all around $17. And mains go for $20-$28.
Parking, which the original spot lacked, is plentiful at a lot across the street.
Perricone’s Marketplace and Café
1700 SW 3rd Ave., the Roads. Perricones.com. 305-374-9449
This story was originally published June 24, 2020 at 2:03 PM.
