This Italian food hall is a hit in Brickell City Centre. Another is coming to Wynwood
Casa Tua Cucina won the Italian food hall war inside Brickell City Centre, where it outlasted a competing concept.
Now it wants to take on Wynwood.
The successful wide-open dining room, which combines nine stations ranging from pizzas and pastas to a bar and market, will open a second location inside an upcoming NoMad Residences, an apartment and condo complex in the heart of Wynwood, Casa Tua founder Miky Grendene said. The project is located a block from Wynwood Walls and is expected to break ground next year.
Casa Tua Cucina proved its concept — high quality food inspired by the high-end Casa Tua in Miami Beach, at affordable prices, served in a warm, kitchen-like setting — in Brickell’s luxurious mall. It ran the competing Italian food hall strangely leased in the same mall, La Centrale (later Luna Park), out of business. Locals come to Casa Tua Cucina for lunch and dinner several times a week, Grendene said.
“And when that happens it means people love it,” he said.
Wynwood seemed the next logical location for such a gathering place, Grendene said, with concepts like the next-door Smorgasburg gathering many food vendors in one place (albeit outdoors).
Grendene, who made his money in real estate, starting with South Beach in the early 1990s, partnered with friend and fellow developer Jorge Perez’s Related Group. Casa Tua’s real estate arm, Casa Tua Lifestyle, has purchased other property in the area.
Grendene built a high-end cloistered restaurant and boutique hotel for the wealthy in Miami Beach at Casa Tua, which also features a private dining club. Casa Tua Cucina was an attempt to bring a similar flair to the masses, while evoking his parent’s country home in Italy, where friends and family gathered around the kitchen.
“I felt always the kitchen is the heart of the house,” he said. “So I said, why don’t I do something bigger that more people can enjoy?”
Casa Tua Cucina won’t be the only food highlight at the upcoming NoMad Residences at 2700 NW 2nd Avenue. A rooftop bar will be headed by a former bar director for New York City’s Michelin three-star Eleven Madison Park.
Casa Tua Cucina Wynwood
Address: 2700 NW 2nd Ave., Wynwood
Coming: Early 2024
This story was originally published April 14, 2022 at 11:56 AM.
