Chef Adrianne opened two new Coral Gables restaurants. Now she’s leaving both
Chef Adrianne Calvo flexed her Kendall following to open two new Coral Gables restaurants during the pandemic, but now she’s taking her name off those buildings.
Calvo is splitting from Redfish, the recently renovated waterfront restaurant in Matheson Hammock Park, and the Italian restaurant Forte on Coral Gables’ Miracle Mile, according to a spokesperson. Both were partnerships with Rodney Barreto, the Coral Gables real estate developer and businessman who is also the chairman of the Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission.
Neither returned requests for phone interviews, but Calvo implied through her public relations team it was a two-year deal that has come to an end. The split will be official on July 2.
“Two years is indeed a short time. We accomplished amazing things in two years, and the two ventures were very successful,” Calvo wrote through her public relations team. “Both parties embarked on this relationship knowing that it had an expiration date. It was just time.”
Barreto’s development team took over the lease for Red Fish, which was ordered shut after it was damaged extensively in the 2017 Hurricane Irma. Miami-Dade County committed $19 million over five years to renovate the coral rock building as part of sea-rise mitigation plans at the park and the unique atoll. Barreto’s group added another $1 million to restore the restaurant and it reopened in late 2020 as Redfish, with Calvo’s name attached to help draw back crowds. Originally, Calvo said she had signed a nine-year lease with an 11-year optional extension.
In June 2021, she opened Forte with Barreto as part owner and created the menu and cocktails at both spots, complete with Italian family recipes she said went back 150 years.
Meanwhile, she moved her eponymous tiny Kendall restaurant and wine bar, Chef Adrianne’s, to a massive space in Kendall’s Town & Country Mall. It was separate from Barreto Hospitality and will remain hers, she wrote.
“All partnerships have their challenges,” Calvo wrote in an email through her representatives, “but the separation was mutual.”
This story was originally published June 22, 2022 at 12:00 PM.
