RESTAURANT NEWS | MIAMI
Alejandra Espinoza Needs a Bigger Table
After moving Cotoa into a larger Miami space, chef Alejandra Espinoza finally has more space to show off Ecuadorian cooking.
COTOA | MAP | INSTAGRAM
By Eric Barton
7:30 a.m. ET, Oct. 1, 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.
There are dishes chef Alejandra Espinoza has wanted to serve for a long time. Whole fish, for one. Yuca flatbreads, for another. But first she needed somewhere to put them. Her North Miami restaurant, Cotoa, had just 26 seats and a kitchen short on equipment, storage, and prep space. In that small of a space, even a good idea can have trouble finding a place to land.
“We were consistently seeing more demand than we could accommodate, and eventually the space started holding us back,” Espinoza told me. “It became clear that it was time for Cotoa to grow.”
On October 22, her Ecuadorian restaurant will move into a larger North Miami home. The expansion will give Cotoa roughly three times the seating, a bar, a private dining space, and, crucially, a kitchen capable of keeping up with its chef. It’s no exaggeration to say Cotoa is one of America’s highest-profile Ecuadorian restaurants, and so the move comes with some serious attention. After all, Espinoza’s restaurant became this country’s first Ecuadorian restaurant to land in the Michelin Guide.
Espinoza
Long before she was trying to fit Ecuador into a small North Miami kitchen, Espinoza was eating her way through it. Born and raised there, she grew up with food from the coast, the highlands, and the Amazon. At 16, she moved to France with her family, beginning a decade of studying, working, and traveling around food. The techniques she learned gave her more ways to cook the dishes she had grown up with.
In 2019, she opened Somos in Quito, applying that training to Ecuadorian ingredients and traditions. Cotoa would take the idea to Miami, where Espinoza found a different climate, different ingredients, and a different appetite. She had little interest in treating the city as a place to duplicate dinner in the Andes.
“At Somos, the altitude and cooler weather allow for dishes that can be warmer and more comforting,” she says. “In Miami, I naturally look for freshness, acidity, and brightness.”
That means a dish may arrive with its history intact and its recipe reconsidered. An ingredient, a memory, or the story behind a preparation can survive the trip even when the finished plate changes. “The roots remain Ecuadorian, but the expression evolves.”
Cotoa started in a downtown Miami food hall before opening its first standalone restaurant in North Miami in April 2025. Recognition followed: It quickly landed on lists of the city’s best restaurants, including The Adventurist’s guide to the best Miami restaurants. A 2026 Michelin Bib Gourmand followed. The small restaurant was attracting plenty of attention; accommodating everyone was another matter.
Empanada with goat and queso
The appeal is there in dishes like mahi mahi with coconut, ginger, and peanut, cassava muchines, and tortellini con seco de pollo. Pasta becomes a vehicle for Ecuadorian chicken stew; a familiar shape carries a different set of memories. But Espinoza had more she wanted to cook, and the kitchen was already at its limits.
Cevichocho
Tonga de langostinos
The larger kitchen will give her more freedom to make those decisions. Whole fish and yuca flatbreads are among the dishes she wants to introduce, with additions planned across the menu alongside Cotoa’s signatures. Ingredients sourced from Ecuador will continue to share space with products grown closer to the restaurant, including produce from South Florida’s Swank Specialty Produce.
The expansion also changes what can happen around it. Plans call for a 60-seat main dining room, a 10-seat bar, and an eight-seat private dining space named Toa. Larger parties will have somewhere to gather, and the private space will accommodate celebrations and special dining experiences. Miami bartender James MacInnes is developing a cocktail menu to join the restaurant’s existing wine program.
Ecuadorian artwork will help carry the story beyond the kitchen. For Espinoza, the design, music, service, and food all belong to the same conversation. “For me, Cotoa has never been just a restaurant. It is a cultural expression of Ecuador,” she says.
That work extends beyond Cotoa. Espinoza is preparing a cookbook about Ecuador’s ingredients, recipes, people, and culinary traditions, along with a podcast project documenting the stories behind its food. This fall, she is also featured in the second season of Apple TV’s Knife Edge: Chasing Michelin Stars.
Tortellini con seco de pollo
The attention is welcome. Having trained in Michelin kitchens, she found the Bib Gourmand meaningful, and it introduced new guests to Cotoa. But the award hasn’t replaced her original measure of success: whether people want to come back.
Chocopop
“For me, Cotoa has never been just a restaurant. It is a cultural expression of Ecuador.”
“The bigger goal is to build a sustainable restaurant that lasts and can eventually run without me, with a team that carries the vision forward,” she says.
She thinks of Cotoa as a piece of art that should continue evolving without losing its identity. For now, that evolution requires some decidedly practical things: more storage, more prep space, and somewhere to cook a whole fish. Soon, the dishes she has been waiting to serve will finally have their place on the menu.
