RESTAURANT NEWS | MIAMI
The New Coconut Grove Restaurant Manoli Comes With a Baklava Trolley
MANOLI | MAP | INSTAGRAM
By Eric Barton
6:12 a.m. ET, July 16, 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.
At Manoli, dessert will arrive on wheels.
The Coconut Grove restaurant plans to finish meals with a trolley carrying baklava, profiteroles, chocolate cake, crispy cream custard, and yogurt with preserves. Greek donuts will come hot from the kitchen, because there are apparently limits to what one cart can accomplish.
That bit of theater is attached to a serious résumé. Chef Emmanouil “Manoli” Aslanoglou, who trained in Greece and cooked at Arzak and Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons, is opening the 140-seat restaurant with a menu of whole branzino, lamb chops, housemade pasta, crispy feta with thyme honey, and cocktails inspired by the Greek tragedians. Coconut Grove is getting saganaki, Sophocles, and a mobile supply of baklava.
Aslanoglou later led Vassilenas in Athens and appeared on MasterChef Greece. At Manoli, all that experience is being directed toward the kind of food that keeps a table busy. The opening stretch includes dolmades, saganaki, keftedes, Mediterranean mussels, and crispy feta wrapped in phyllo with thyme honey. There’s avgolemono soup made with roasted chicken, egg, and lemon, plus gyro tacos filled with Black Angus ribeye.
Housemade pastas include pastitsio, makarounes, and Athenian lobster. The grill will turn out Greek-style lamb chops, prime beef, whole branzino, and a changing selection of fresh fish, with lemon potatoes, horta chicory, and hand-cut fries on the side.
Beverage manager Fotis Mexi titled the cocktail menu “Sober Souls Diaries” and built it around the Greek tragedians. Hybris combines vodka, citrus, cardamom, nutmeg, kumquat, and saffron-lavender foam. Mira brings together mastiha, St-Germain, peach, basil, and sparkling wine. The Greek wine list should require less knowledge of Sophocles.
The dining room follows the Greek-island palette of white walls, pale woods, and soft blues. The trolley is harder to forget.
Ming and Courtney Pu open TANA, a Taiwanese New American restaurant.
By ERIC BARTON
