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.
Miami loves a mash-up, and the latest one wears a tux. SILK, a Japanese-Italian steakhouse on Lenox Avenue, arrives with 6,000 square feet of dining-room theater, a black-and-white palette edged in greenery, and a nightly soundtrack that treats dinner like a show.
Owner Pietro Polini is betting on Itameshi—the cross-current of Japanese technique and Italian soul—delivered with the kind of pageantry Miami understands.
In the kitchen, executive chef Alessandro Baldu teams with sushi chef Cristian Bustos and robata chef Claudio Rosina. The attention-grabber is the Pietro Roll: two whole lobsters with avocado and asparagus, capped by seared A5 Kobe beef, black truffle, 24K gold, and caviar—more runway look than maki, and that’s the point.
Small plates set the tone (tableside burrata; Wagyu-Kurobuta gyoza), while the robata and steak program swings from charcoal-kissed branzino to a bone-in veal chop to Japanese-certified A5 Wagyu filet. Italy still gets a proper say: house-made pastas, including a bucatini in champagne-lemon sauce crowned with Ossetra caviar.
The room seats 142 plus a 40-seat bar, lined with oversized portraits and just enough mood lighting to make the martinis glow. The entertainment rotates—jazz trios, piano, vocalists during the week; DJs on the weekend when the volume nudges up and the dining room tilts toward lounge. Regulars will spot resident DJ PataFunk in the booth and a lineup of guest headliners sliding through Saturday nights. Industry folk get their own night with open sessions for DJs and musicians.
Drinks follow the concept’s split-personality brief. Former Zuma sommelier Ricardo Aquino guides pairings that bounce between sashimi and steak. At the bar, Eddy Dominguez and Alexandros Mavropoulos are working a vibe that’s high-gloss aperitivo meets Tokyo cocktail bar. There’s a herbaceous Negroni Verde and the Silk Martini, finished with caviar and a rosemary olive, both engineered to pair with the salty-fatty dishes coming from the kitchen.
SILK slots neatly into Miami Beach’s after-dark ecosystem: part steakhouse, part sushi counter, part club—a place where the lights dim, the bass line hums, and the pasta shows up wearing pearls.
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