About Carbone
Founded by Mario Carbone, Rich Torrisi, and Jeff Zalaznick, Carbone is Miami’s newest Italian eatery to join the restaurant scene. Though the doors to its Miami Beach location opened in 2021, Carbone has quickly become one of the most coveted reservations to secure in the Magic City. The restaurant first stepped onto the food scene in 2012, opening its doors with a flagship location in New York City’s Greenwich Village. Now a Michelin-starred restaurant frequented by the likes of Drake, Rihanna, and the Biebers, Carbone has risen to popularty with its refined take on classic Italian-American dishes like its famous Spicy Rigatoni.
What To Get
Upon seating, each table is welcomed with a complimentary bread basket, featuring an assortment of breads (plain, garlic, and tomato), Parmesan cheese, salami, and pickled cauliflower on the side. We ordered the Caesar alla ZZ salad (not pictured), which came highly recommended by numerous food bloggers. For our pasta selections, we opted for the Fettuccine con Funghi, and of course the most anticipated dish of the night, the Spicy Rigatoni Vodka. For dessert, we selected the Hazelnut Chocolate Cake and the Carrot Cake.
Prepared table side, the Caesar alla ZZ was a unique take on the traditional salad with the enlarged croutons proving to be the star of the dish. The Spicy Rigatoni Vodka was everything I dreamt it would be and maintained a perfect balance of spice and cream in the sauce, allowing the pasta itself to remain light as air. While this entree definitely lived up to the hype, I found the Fettuccine con Funghi to be less dazzling. I was dissapointed by the texture of the macaroni and the excessive salt which made this pasta dish harder to enjoy.
For dessert, the chocolate hazelnut cake was a moist and decadent cake adorned with pieces of gold. Thankfully, the presentation did not outshine the flavor and I found the cake to taste as rich as it looked. The carrot cake, however, resembled a bread rather than a cake in its consistency. The ice cream had a strong ginger flavor; each spoonful mirrored the effects you feel from a gulp of a ginger shot (if you know, you know). While at times it supplemented the bread-like consistency of the cake fairly well, the ginger flavor simply overpowered the entire dessert. I did appreciate that this second option wasn’t too sweet, though it tasted a bit too healthy to be considered a dessert.
Reason to Go
Carbone is probably the greatest thing to come from the pandemic’s New York to Miami exodus and I am grateful for the experience given how difficcult it is to secure a reservation. The rigatoni was delicious and the hazelnut chocolate cake was most likely the richest chocolate cake I’ve had, and that’s not just because it was adorned with gold.
If lucky enough to secure a reservation, dinner at Carbone is definitely an unforgettable dining experience that is well worth the price tag. For more information and to see the menu, visit their website here.
Carbone is located at:
49 Collins Ave
Miami Beach, FL 33139
Hours
Sunday-Saturday: 5:30pm-11pm
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Shana-Kay 