RESTAURANT NEWS | MIAMI
They Traveled Italy. Then They Opened a Restaurant.
The team behind Daniel’s drew on meals from Verona to Puglia to build La Sponda, an Italian restaurant on Miami’s Grove Isle.
LA SPONDA | MAP | INSTAGRAM
By Eric Barton
6:26 a.m. ET, Sept. 28, 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.
Before La Sponda had a waterfront address, a baby grand piano, or a 42-ounce Wagyu porterhouse, there was a lunch in Verona. Thomas and Kassidy Angelo were traveling through Italy with chef Danny Ganem and wine and beverage director Daniel Bishop, collecting ideas for a restaurant they would eventually build back home in Miami. At Casa Perbellini, Ganem found himself paying as much attention to the welcome as to the cooking. “The ingredients were exceptional, the dishes were beautifully prepared and presented, and the hospitality was incredible,” he said. “It was an exquisite experience.”
That lunch was one stop on a trip that ran from northern Italy to the Angelo family’s ancestral south. The result is La Sponda, Gioia Hospitality Group’s first fully Italian restaurant, which opened this month at Vita at Grove Isle. The father-and-daughter team already operates Daniel’s, A Florida Steakhouse in Fort Lauderdale, and Daniel’s Miami. Now they and Ganem have taken what they admired on their travels and set it beside Biscayne Bay, where a menu of crudo, pasta, fish, and formidable beef has to find its own place in Miami.
Wagyu bistecca Fiorentina
There is an obvious hazard in building a restaurant from a trip through Italy: every region offers something you want to bring home, and eventually the menu can look like a suitcase that won’t quite close. The Angelos’ family roots are in Puglia, but Thomas didn’t want La Sponda confined to one part of the country. Ganem, meanwhile, kept returning to the way cooks handled their ingredients. “When you have a great tomato, fresh fish, good olive oil, or pasta, you don’t need to overwork it,” he said. “You need to know how to treat it and when to stop.”
That philosophy sounds straightforward until you read the menu. There is ricotta cavatelli with datterini tomatoes, basil, olive oil, and ricotta salata, the kind of dish built on the best tomatoes Ganem can find. There is also caviar carbonara, Wagyu cannelloni with Burgundy truffles and unagi, and a tartare that puts bluefin tuna, scampi, and caviar on the same plate. Apparently, knowing when to stop is a judgment call.
The range is part of what makes La Sponda interesting. Orecchiette with fennel sausage, broccoli rabe, and Calabrian chile acknowledges the family’s southern Italian connections. Trofie with pesto Genovese points north. Paccheri arrive with branzino, datterini tomatoes, capers, and olives; another branzino preparation comes with potatoes, tomatoes, basil, and Taggiasca olives. The dishes move around Italy, though Ganem says they were chosen for more than their place on a map.
“Each dish should have a reason for being there and give guests a sense of those places without feeling forced,” he said. That may be the hardest part of the undertaking. Miami has plenty of restaurants willing to sell the idea of Italy. The food has to give diners a reason to care which version they’re eating.
Thomas Angelo said the group kept dishes they loved and believed they could make consistently. “They also had to make sense in Miami and feel true to La Sponda,” he said. That second test explains some of the menu’s swagger. The restaurant may be the group’s move into Italian cooking, but it has not abandoned the steakhouse: an Australian Wagyu bistecca Fiorentina weighs 42 ounces and comes with rosemary, balsamic vinegar from Modena, and the group’s olive oil. There are Australian Wagyu rib-eye and filet options too. A couple can split pasta and whole fish, while the next table orders caviar and enough beef to require a plan.
Tartare
Bishop took his own route through the country for the wine list. Puglia appears alongside Piemonte, Tuscany, and Sicily, with France, Spain, and California also represented. The cocktails are a little freer with their passports. The Zio Tony gives a Paper Plane variation a hit of passion fruit. The Garibaldi Fresca mixes Campari with fluffy pineapple and orange juices. And Summer in Amalfi combines prosecco, elderflower liqueur, gin, and cucumber, should the waterfront view require further encouragement.
Wagyu carpaccio
Tiramisu
The setting doesn’t leave much to chance, either. Martin Brudnizki Design Studio designed the approximately 120-seat restaurant with Italian furnishings and stone, white tablecloths, hand-painted details, and that piano. Lamps painted with Coconut Grove peacocks offer a reminder that the place is in Miami, even when the menu is contemplating Verona. Beyond the windows is Biscayne Bay. Grove Isle’s bridge provides a tidy sense of arrival, although a pretty approach can only do so much work once dinner starts.
Kassidy Angelo is already thinking beyond the first round of reservations. “As a locally owned restaurant, it is especially important to us to continue building the relationship we have with the Miami community, which began with Daniel’s,” she said. She wants people to return for years, a more demanding ambition than drawing them over for one dinner by the water.
The team went to Italy looking for the meals they would remember. At La Sponda, they want to give Miami a few of its own.
