Inside Cotoa
Stop What You’re Doing and Grab a Table at the New Ecuadorian Spot From Chef Alejandra Espinoza
Written by Eric Barton | May 13, 2025
$$$$ | ★★★★★
Eric Barton is editor of The Adventurist and lives above a brunch spot in Midtown. He has reviewed restaurants for more than two decades. Email him here.
AUTHOR BIO
Cotoa used to operate out of an oddly named food hall in a downtown building that you’ve probably passed and never noticed, a thousand times over. Even despite that, Cotoa was good then—Ecuadorian food that didn’t try to dress itself up as anything else.
Now it’s even better, because chef Alejandra Espinoza finally has her own space, a 24-seat sliver of a restaurant in North Miami where you can eat chilled tomato bisque with crab and plantains while staring directly at the woman who made it.
Mahi ceviche
If you’ve never had Ecuadorian food, or just assumed it was like Peruvian but with more shrimp, Cotoa politely disagrees. Espinoza’s menu isn’t long, but it’s tight and deeply personal. There’s a mahi ceviche that skips the lime overload in favor of a coconut milk broth laced with toasted peanut and achiote powder. Langostinos arrive swimming in a creamy peanut-coconut sauce, backed by coconut rice and fried plantains that make you forget you ever liked fries. And for dessert: a grilled pineapple compote with toasted coconut and Amazonian vanilla ice cream, finished with a dollop of ishpingo cream, which tastes like cinnamon if cinnamon had a PhD.
Langostino Salsero
Espinoza was born in Ecuador, trained in the Basque Country, and cooked in Miami kitchens before making Cotoa her full-time project. There’s a calm precision to what she does—nothing overbuilt, nothing included just for show. Even the wine list is thoughtful, with small-production bottles and a couple Miami craft beers that don’t feel like afterthoughts.
Chef Alejandra Espinoza
Cotoa in North Miami
The space smells faintly of palo santo and looks like the inside of a terracotta bowl—warm, narrow, popping with color, and barely big enough to contain the attention it’s getting. You’ll need a reservation, and yes, they’re on Resy.
Pineapple, coconut, and Amazonian vanilla ice cream
Cotoa is open Thursday through Sunday for lunch and dinner. It’s one of the most honest restaurants in the city right now, the kind of place where you don’t have to dress up but maybe should. Not because they care, but because you’ll want to look good for the kind of dinner you’ll be telling people about later.
