Saturation or competition? Can this many Italian restaurants survive in Wynwood?

As luxury residences rise and Miami tourist season trickles to its inevitable and tragic end, an Italian Restaurant Renaissance is happening in Wynwood.

The neighborhood is rapidly giving way to gentrification, taking a path far from its original roots as the home of warehouses, factories and a thriving garment district. Traces of its later incarnation as an art haven remain in murals and galleries, but it’s swiftly morphing into a beacon for development and entertainment.

And by entertainment, we mean restaurants, a surprising number of them Italian, all located within a block or two of each other.

Food trends come and go in Wynwood — a few years back, we had the onslaught of the taco shops, swiftly followed by the invasion of the pizzerias, at a time when cheap places to grab a bite were the norm.

Now, upscale Italian has arrived. At the end of last summer, Otto & Pepe opened, from the pioneering Wynwood team behind the Asian food hall 1-800-Lucky. In October, Pasta from Lima, Peru, showed up just around the corner, while the luxurious London import Sparrow Italia opened just down the street. In November, the Argentine rooftop restaurant La Ferneteria opened, while Rosemary’s from New York arrived early in 2025 across the street and just a block west of Sparrow Italia. The most recent addition is Novatore Cucina & Bar, from chefs who run a Michelin-starred restaurant in the Canary Islands and plan to split their time between Miami and Spain.

Add these spots to the Argentine Italian restaurant Piegari, which opened in 2024, and Doma, which at six years old is practically an institution by comparison. And next year, Casa Tua is scheduled to open at the Nomad Wynwood development.

That’s a lot of pasta in just a few blocks.

Why Italian?

How do so many similar restaurants end up in the same small area? There are myriad reasons, some of them painfully simple.

Italian food is popular and in many ways a safe bet, comfort food that’s non-challenging for most American palates. It pairs well with wine, which restaurants can sell at a considerable markup.

There’s also the fact that the cost of making pasta can be low in comparison to making and storing other ingredients, which makes it an alluring option for a restaurateur.

Thea Goldman, who opened the Italian gem Joey’s on Northwest Second Avenue in 2008 long before Wynwood became a destination for anyone besides the people working there, calls Italian food “the great unifier.” But when she decided to open one of the neighborhood’s first restaurants, she considered her costs and how much working people would want to pay for a meal.

“I took into account the economics of making pasta,” she said. “I knew I could make pasta pomodoro economically. I could feed a lot of people. People could feel like kings eating spaghetti, but my cost was low, and so their cost was low.”

Painting a rosy picture

Sometimes, businesses don’t know what other restaurants are coming. Landlords could be less than forthcoming about plans for nearby spaces, and even if they aren’t, leases are negotiated so far in advance and build-outs and permitting take so long that just about anything can happen before the doors open.

Delayed by building and permit issues, Carlos Suarez, owner of Rosemary’s, didn’t know Sparrow Italia would open before his restaurant. South Florida hospitality veteran Gabriela Chiriboga, who opened Otto & Pepe with her partner Samuel Ghouzi, didn’t know Pasta was planning to open nearby, just as Juan Manuel Umbert and Janice Buraschi of Pasta didn’t know about Otto & Pepe.

“We want more concepts to open,” Chiriboga said. “Not necessarily on the same street! But a better quality of restaurants in the neighborhood is better for everyone. You don’t have to see it as a competition. We’ve been here 11 years, and we know the better the neighborhood does, the better we do.”

Felix Bendersky, founder of F&B Hospitality Leasing, said that Miami glamour also plays a role in luring concepts that may or may not have done their due diligence in studying the neighborhood.

“Miami is very good at painting a beautiful picture,” he said. “Like everybody is making money. . . . During COVID, people from New York and Italy and all over the world would come here and think, ‘But they’ve never tried my pasta.’ The huge numbers we had in 2020 for the Super Bowl had people thinking ‘If we open here, we could kill it.’ There were so many operators signing leases, and not all knew how many other operators doing the same cuisine were going to open.”

A ‘great thing for Wynwood’

Florentino Diaz, interim executive director for the Wynwood Business Improvement District, says the Italian boom is “a great thing for Wynwood.”

“They’re all different,” he said of the restaurants. “They each have their own niche. We see it as a benefit attracting more of the locals, which is something we’ve been working on.”

Pasta, for example, serves only pasta and a handful of appetizers. The larger Otto & Pepe features a covered outdoor area and a retail wine shop curated by Miami wine veteran Karina Iglesias. Sparrow Italia offers live music every night and a sophisticated nightlife vibe, while La Ferneteria offers rooftop views and Rosemary’s features an outdoor garden.

Pasta owners Umbert and Buraschi don’t even consider Pasta an Italian restaurant.

“It’s important for us to clarify that we are not an Italian restaurant,” Umbert said. “We are a pasta restaurant. We specialize in fresh, hand-rolled pasta and homemade ingredients like our stracciatella, sourdough bread, ‘nduja and mascarpone. We also celebrate our Peruvian heritage by incorporating select flavors into appetizers and desserts; however, at our core, we are, and remain, a pasta restaurant.”

Mikey Tanha, who with Tosh Berman created the hospitality group Noble 33, which owns Sparrow Italia, said that the competition is part of why Noble 33 wanted to be here.

“We saw it becoming a cultural and culinary hub, and we wanted to be part of that growth,” he said. “We see competition as a good thing by keeping everyone sharp and elevating the neighborhood overall as a culinary destination. Over time, the increase in Wynwood co-tenancy will bring more and more people to Wynwood, which will further benefit Sparrow.”

Economic worries

As Miami approaches its hot-and-not-in-the-good-way off season, drawing locals is a concern for every restaurant. But with the roiling changes in global markets and words like “recession” being throw around and the cost of everything from food to labor to insurance rising, some wonder how the Italian spots will fare over the next several months.

The Italian-born Luca Lomonaco, owner of Doma, calls the Wynwood market “oversaturated” with Italian options and wonders if economic worries will induce customers to cut back what they spend on dining out.

“Someone who goes out once or twice a week, maybe they go out every two weeks,” he said. “In the summer, there are fewer people. There’s less disposable income for restaurants. And now there are more restaurants.”

Bendersky is more pessimistic.

“I think what’s going to happen is what happened to the taco restaurants,” he said. “You’ll have a couple that will make it, and the rest will fail. When you’re paying Wynwood rent, and you have nine competitors within a few blocks trying to sell the same thing, with not great parking options, it’s just not going to be good.”

This story was originally published April 10, 2025 at 4:30 AM.