A Pasta Bar Puts Chefs in the Middle of Things

The SoHo restaurant arrives in Miami Beach with a kitchen surrounded by diners.

By Eric Barton
7:06 a.m. ET, Oct. 8, 2026

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.

The cooks get an island of their own at Miami Beach’s newest pasta restaurant. Diners sit around it, close enough to watch noodles finished in woks and plates fussed over with tweezers. Beyond the counter are green stone, antique brass, and Italian furniture from the 1960s. But the kitchen occupies the center, with all the work that usually happens behind swinging doors out in view of.

This is the arrangement behind A Pasta Bar, which began in New York City’s SoHo neighborhood in 2017 and has opened a second location in Sunset Harbour. Co-owners Nicola Pedrazzoli, Simone Tiligna, and Andrea Pedrazzoli brought along the New York restaurant’s pasta favorites, then gave the Miami menu some room to wander.

A Pasta Bar restaurant Miami Beach Nicola Pedrazzoli, Simone Tiligna and Andrea Pedrazzoli

There’s black truffle tagliatelle, tonnarelli cacio e pepe, and handmade agnolotti filled with meat. Fresh pasta is made daily, and a pasta lab turns out limited-run shapes and fillings, including pink salmon culurgiones, red-striped fagottini, and green casoncelli. A five-course pasta tasting menu, designed for two, offers a way to work through several without negotiating who gets the last bite of the one dish you both wanted.

The woks are part of the method. Set over induction heat, they’re used to finish pasta with its sauce in a technique called risottatura, bringing the two together into a silky coating. Then come the tweezers, putting the final details in place before the plate makes its short trip to the counter.

Anyone whose appetite extends beyond pasta can turn to crudo or the wood-smoked grill program. A boneless prime ribeye comes with café de Paris butter; filetto al pepe gets pepper sauce and crispy fries. Cotoletta alla Valdostana layers a breaded cutlet with prosciutto cotto and melted Fontina, which seems a reasonable argument for returning another night.

Dinner can begin with a Milanese-style aperitivo, spritzes alongside tramezzini and crocchette. The cocktails take some liberties: fig in the Negroni variation called Il Conte, roasted apple and pecorino foam in La Grande Mela. The wines stay entirely Italian.

Alessandro Pasquale, who designed the original restaurant, also conceived this 4,700-square-foot space, with outdoor seating and a private dining area beyond the central kitchen. There are quieter ways to have dinner here. But a seat at the counter comes with the prospect of spotting something in a cook’s wok and deciding, perhaps halfway through your own pasta, that you ordered too soon.