Why Otto & Pepe Hits Different: Chef Nancy Dominguez Marries Swiss Precision with Guatemalan Soul

By Eric Barton | Oct. 29, 2025

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.

Nancy Dominguez remembers clearly the smells and sounds of the kitchen of her childhood. Garlic in a hot pan. A bubbling pot of pepián, that Guatemalan meat stew thickened with gourd seeds, filling the whole house with a promise of what’s for dinner. Dominguez, she’d be over by the TV, writing down recipes from cooking shows.

“There was always something simmering,” she says. “Those smells and sounds… just stuck with me.” She learned early that food could speak long before anybody at the table did.

She carried these lessons with her when she left Los Angeles to become a chef, heading to Switzerland to learn how cooking can be about exacting precision. And now she’s head chef of Otto & Peppe in Miami, where those lessons have earned her cooking the kind of accolades that make her one of the city’s rising star chefs.

I wasn’t alone in giving Otto & Pepe a five-star review after my first visit, and since then her restaurant has become one of the hottest in town, and the 28-seat bar is one of the more entertaining spots for a meal, watching the chefs cook the dishes that marry Italian tradition with Miami ingredients and the background of a chef who learned early on about the importance of good cooking.

Chef Nancy Dominguez

Dominguez grew up in Los Angeles, where family cooking was a daily ritual and her Guatemalan heritage flavored everything. Her mother’s stews, her aunt baking pan dulce in a restaurant kitchen that doubled as a classroom. From her aunt she learned that work ethic and hospitality are two sides of the same apron. “Everyone worked hard, but there was always warmth and joy behind it.” She chased that feeling into her own experiments, recreating dishes from TV just to “see if I could capture those same feelings on a plate.”

Nancy Dominguez Otto & Pepe Restaurant Miami Wynwood

Curiosity pushed her from home. In Switzerland, she traded familiar kitchens for European ones where the metronome is set by the second hand. “Switzerland exposed me to European kitchens where every detail mattered,” she says. Fine dining, to her, isn’t theater. “It’s a way to honor food through craft.” She absorbed the choreography—movement, timing, respect for ingredients—until it lived in her hands.

Chef Nancy Dominguez Otto and Pepe Wynwood

Then came the rooms that test a cook’s mettle. At Joël Robuchon’s restaurant, she learned that precision is expected. “Every cut, every plate, had a reason.” Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s kitchen sharpened her sense of balance—bold flavors that still land clean. Laurent Quenioux handed her a different gift: courage. “He taught me to trust my instincts,” she says, marrying discipline to creativity until neither worked without the other.

Chef Nancy Dominguez Otto and Pepe Restaurant Miami Wynwood pasta

That pairing shows up now in Miami. Otto & Pepe’s food is Italian-inspired but rooted in the cook behind it—bright, measured, and unafraid to twist something familiar until it feels newly comforting. “I love taking something familiar and giving it a twist—something that surprises you but still feels comforting,” she says. The technique is precise enough to disappear behind the flavor; the flavor is generous enough to invite you back.

After working in all those Michelin-starred kitchens, the culture of hers is something she thinks about always. “You can have the most talented cooks in the world, but if there’s no respect or communication, it falls apart.” Her kitchen is serious about the food and light in spirit—clear standards, exacting mise en place, and the small celebrations that make a team want to repeat a good night. “Food tastes better when the people making it care and feel cared for.” In Miami, that means mentorship, especially for women, who are still inexplicably a rarity in the head chef positions in the city. “Representation matters,” she says.

Chef Nancy Dominguez Otto & Pepe Restaurant Miami Wynwood

Off-duty, she resets by cycling, traveling, walking her dog, Riesling, and exploring wine—curiosity turning into notes, notes into dishes. Ask what she wants guests to feel and the answer is the same one that pulled her into those childhood kitchens: humanity on a plate. “I want guests to taste the person behind the plate,” she says.

Chef Nancy Dominguez Otto and Pepe Restaurant Miami Wynwood Ice cream sandwiches

The arc of her story is clear: a child listening for garlic sizzling, a young cook learning to count seconds in Swiss kitchens, a professional shaped by masters, and now a chef in Miami building a room where discipline and respect share the line.