AUTHOR BIO: Eric Barton is editor of The Adventurist and a freelance journalist who has reviewed restaurants for more than two decades. Email him here.
When Elisabetta Tundo was a girl, cooking with her grandmother, as she did often, her nonna would finish a dish the same way every time. They’d add a little amore. Salt or a dot of oil, or perhaps it was perfect already, so nothing more.
“Sometimes less is more,” Elisabetta says, remembering the lesson her nonna taught her in those moments. Now as a chef, it’s the same way she ends each dish that leaves her pass. “Finish with some love. Give a little love to this little plate.”
That’s the thesis for Altamura Trattoria in Doral, the new love letter to Italy from Elisabetta and her husband Massimo. It’s a pivot from Dal Plin, the food hall spot they once operated at MIA Market, to full-scale house: 200 seats, an Italian stone-dome oven, and a menu that reads like a train ticket from the Alps to the boot.
The point of Altamura isn’t to chase trends. It’s to slow Miami down long enough to taste recipes that families carried and nearly forgot. The welcome bite says as much: a sailor’s recipe for a farinata—water, chickpea flour, oil, salt—lifted with ricotta, artichoke, and honey. In other words, they’re moving back to their Italian roots to move forward.
Elisabetta and Massimo Tundo
Both chefs trace the road back to their grandmothers. The pair trained classically in Italy—originally from Milan—but they learned economy and nerve at home. Elisabetta’s plates start with a few essential ingredients and a refusal to gild them. Massimo’s heart stayed with a dish from his mother, now on the menu without disguise. “Of course, it is the bracioline from my mom,” he says. “That is what started my love for cooking and it’s featured on the menu now— the Bracioline Della Nella.”
I first met them back when they first opened Dal Plin, after years of supplying homemade pasta to some of Miami’s favorite Italian restaurants. At the MIA Market stall, the small footprint forced them shoulder-to-shoulder and taught them what local diners wanted from Italy. “I believe Miami guests are looking for fresh, quality ingredients… and above all made in house pasta, bread, pizza,” Massimo says. “Many of our customers travel to Italy on vacation, and when they come back, they try to find that same level of homemade crafted dishes.”
Altamura Trattoria
The lesson becomes doctrine at Altamura: pastas rolled in house, breads proofed daily, pizzas under that stone dome, and a wine list that moves through indigenous grapes—Arneis to Taurasi—without apology.
Family portraits in the dining room
Slow-simmered Pomodoro
With a bigger room comes a clearer division. “We do the major things together,” Elisabetta says, “but we leave enough space to one another to run each of the departments.” She runs the back; he runs the front. The conversation ping-pongs between them: she nudges a sauce more modern, he calibrates service to feel like a Sunday table. The idea of home is not theme but muscle memory. “So, in Italy, our house is a big country house,” Massimo says. “That’s the atmosphere we wanted to recreate. That’s why there are personal touches like pictures of our family members, classic furniture, an outdoor garden.”
The menu is their map. There’s a Piedmontese warm garlic tide in the Bagna Cauda di Mare with Nonna Carmelina’s polenta; ricotta gnocchi from the Veneto caramelized with butter, brown sugar, cinnamon, gorgonzola, parmigiano, shaved pears—“inspired by Grandma Ivana.” Tortellini “Emiliani” arrive with prosciutto di Parma and a fig glaze; spaghetti chitarra wears candied San Marzano tomato and stracciatella.
Massimo pulls a seldom-seen cut from the north: La Valdostana, “a chopped veal, with fontina and porchetta,” a dish he’s proud to revive in Miami. The pizza list—Zza’ Zza’—runs rossa and bianca, from Parm-Giana heavy with fried eggplant and Prosciutto di Parma to a Montanara with porcini, sausage, fontina, spinach.
They hope little rituals will slow the room. Aperitivo Gran Milan from 5 to 7 brings a first drink and a single, pointed bite: panuozzino with stracciatella and fried zucchini topped with bottarga; or Bella Venezia, polenta crowned with cod mantecato and agrodolce onions. The wines lean native; the bubbles and bitters nod to Italian afternoons. Dessert pours—Picolit, Brachetto, Mirto, even a Marsala Vergine—invite staying for a while.
What they’re really hoping to create is a way to gather. “Looking back for us is not only looking at the recipe, but also to our roots,” Elisabetta says. Memory is the secret ingredient, like her nonna’s pinch of nothing.
Massimo hears his mother calling the table to order in a phrase he repeats now to a whole dining room. “The idea came from my childhood, because my mother always said ‘pronto, tutti al tavola,’” or ready, everyone, to the table. Can’t you just see it? The lights drop, a server delivers farinata, a table clinks glasses. Everyone at the table. And if they’ve gotten it right once again, the spell works.
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