Rosemary’s Wynwood: a garden-to-table Italian oasis in Miami’s arts district

Wynwood built its reputation on walls. Murals, warehouses, galleries, the loud painted geometry of a neighbourhood that turned industrial concrete into the most photographed art district in America. What Wynwood never had, until now, was a garden. Rosemary’s Wynwood opened its doors on February 7, 2025 at 322 NW 25th Street, and its first act was to plant one: rows of herbs, citrus and vegetables growing where a single-storey shoe warehouse once stood, feeding a kitchen that sits a few steps away.

The restaurant is the fourth chapter of a story that began in 2012 in Manhattan’s West Village, where Carlos Suarez, founder of the Casa Nela hospitality group, opened the original Rosemary’s and named it after his mother, whose home and vegetable garden in Lucca taught him what an Italian table is for. Locations in Midtown, on the East Side and in Tokyo followed. Miami, where the Suarez family lived for close to twenty years, was always going to be the homecoming.

The Miami premise stays true to the West Village original: a neighbourhood restaurant first, a destination second. Suarez has said he thinks of Rosemary’s as an amenity for its neighbours rather than a bucket-list reservation, and the 7,000 square foot indoor and outdoor space, designed by Dekar Design, the New York firm behind every Casa Nela restaurant, holds that promise the way a courtyard holds the afternoon. It does not perform for the street. It invites you off it.

A Tuscan courtyard behind a warehouse wall

The design language announces itself at the gate. A green and white striped awning stretches over marble bistro tables, each set with a terracotta pot of live herbs. Sage green benches and lattice walls frame herringbone brick underfoot, woven wicker chandeliers hang in tiers above a long communal table beneath the pergola, and bougainvillea burns orange against the timber. Candle sconces and arched mirrors do the quiet work of an old farmhouse wall while Wynwood’s murals peer over the fence like curious neighbours.

The garden is not decoration. Planted in collaboration with Little River Cooperative, the on-site urban farm grows rosemary, fennel, kumquats, key limes and rows of seasonal vegetables that travel from the beds to the pass in minutes, and diners may well eat an ingredient grown beside the very bench they are sitting on. It is the West Village formula translated into Miami’s climate, where the growing season never really ends: part dining room, part dinner in the garden, entirely the point.

Eat what the garden grows

Dinner opens the way every Rosemary’s dinner has opened since 2012: with focaccia. Executive chef Craig Giunta, who came to Rosemary’s from Mother Wolf and Macchialina, sends out Rosemary’s Focaccia cut into squares, glossed with olive oil, strewn with rosemary from the beds outside and finished with sea salt, and it sets the tone for a menu that folds the garden into nearly every plate. Olives marinated with fennel and orange, suppli of carnaroli rice and tomato hiding molten mozzarella, roasted beets with goat cheese and spiced pistachio, a chopped salad Siciliana of escarole, artichokes and crispy chickpeas: the opening movement reads like the farm taking a bow.

Then comes the pasta, all of it made in house, and this is where the room falls quiet. The rigatoni arrives in arrabbiata crowned with a whole burrata and basil, the sauce carrying just enough heat to make the cream feel earned. Mezze maniche comes dressed as a proper carbonara with guanciale and a raw egg yolk waiting to be folded through, cavatelli gathers mixed mushrooms and porcini under a snow of Parmigiano Reggiano, pappardelle verde carries Artusi’s veal bolognese, and linguini takes on Florida rock shrimp with lemon and bomba chilis, the menu’s clearest nod to its new home waters.

The larger plates keep the same discipline. Branzino comes off the grill over kale and borlotti beans with a bright salsa verde, steak tagliata arrives sliced beside charred green onion, and chicken Milanese lands crisp and pale gold under a fennel salad that does quiet work of its own. The meatballs, a blend of beef, pork and prosciutto in pomodoro with fresh ricotta, come by threes or fives and make a persuasive case for the latter. Rosemary’s Potatoes, tossed with caper salt and the house herb, close the argument.

Lighter appetites are handled with equal care. Baby gem salad comes tossed in a caper caesar dressing under a fall of pangrattato, calamari fritti from Point Judith arrives crisp with garlic aioli, and grilled octopus rests on a chickpea pananzella with garden herbs and charred scallion vinaigrette. Burrata over marinated peppers, served with grilled Sullivan Street filone, splits the difference between restraint and indulgence, which is roughly where this kitchen lives.

Save room for the finish. The olive oil cake has followed the restaurant down from New York with its reputation intact, and the bomboloni arrive warm, rolled in sugar and filled with Nutella, the kind of dessert that gets ordered for the table and finished by one person. A negroni poured over a slow-melting cube stamped with the house R makes an equally valid closing statement in the garden.

The 567 hour

Then there is the hour the neighbourhood has already claimed as its own. The 567 Happy Hour runs Wednesday through Sunday from 5pm to 7pm at the indoor and outdoor spritz bars, an aperitivo window built for the moment Wynwood’s galleries close and the light turns gold over the lattice. A salumi board arrives dressed with prosciutto, mortadella, salami, aged cheese and grissini, spritzes pass between hands beneath the striped awning, and the garden does what gardens have always done for Italian evenings: it slows them down, pleasantly, and for as long as anyone can manage.

Wynwood’s dining scene has matured alongside its murals, and the rooms that have lasted are the ones that take both seriously. Rosemary’s Wynwood arrives with the quiet confidence of a group that has opened a hundred places, and the good sense to make this one feel like a homecoming.

Visiting now

Rosemary’s Wynwood, 322 NW 25th Street

Rosemary’s Wynwood has been open since February 7, 2025 at 322 NW 25th Street in the Wynwood Arts District, serving dinner Wednesday through Sunday from 5pm to 10pm, with the 567 Happy Hour from 5pm to 7pm on the same days. Reservations are available through the restaurant’s website, street parking is workable, and the Wynwood Garage sits around the corner at 321 NW 26th Street for those who prefer certainty.

Arrive before sunset if you can. The garden does its best work in the hour when the awning’s stripes go soft and the first spritzes reach the tables. Come for the pasta. Stay for the light.

Dinner Wednesday to Sunday, 5pm to 10pm. 567 Happy Hour, Wednesday to Sunday, 5pm to 7pm.

Why it matters

Wynwood’s dining scene has grown up fast, and much of it has grown up loud. Rosemary’s Wynwood brings something the murals cannot: a living thing at the centre of the arts district, a working garden feeding a serious Italian kitchen, run by a group that measures success in regulars rather than reservations. The walls made Wynwood famous. A garden like this is what makes it a neighbourhood. The table is set among the herbs.