RESTAURANT NEWS | MIAMI
Flaky Sells the Memories of a Grandmother's Pastries
Broken Shaker co-founder Elad Zvi opens a takeout window serving handmade burekas.
FLAKY | MAP | INSTAGRAM
By Eric Barton
7:12 a.m. ET, Nov. 14, 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.
Every weekend when he was growing up, Elad Zvi’s grandmother baked burekas, the flaky Israeli pastries filled with cheese or potato. FLAKY, the ventanita he opens Nov. 18 at The Fifth hotel in Miami Beach, serves those same pastries from his memories.
What he's trying to recapture isn't a recipe. "What I'm trying to recreate is that feeling," Zvi told me. "The warmth, the comfort, the good emotions that come with those memories." For him, that feeling is the whole point of a restaurant. "For me, a great restaurant or bar isn't necessarily about having the best food or the most beautiful space. It's about how you make people feel. And that feeling isn't something you can measure with numbers or projections. You either have it or you don't."
Zvi emigrated from Israel to New York with $220 in his pocket and started out washing dishes at The Plaza Hotel. He co-founded Bar Lab in 2009 with Gabriel Orta, and the Broken Shaker, the bar that followed, was named among the World's 50 Best Bars four times. FLAKY is his first project under Shukai Hospitality, the company he started after more than 25 years in hospitality, with partners Lola Galloni and Mike Tewel. The window sits in the courtyard of The Fifth hotel in South of Fifth, with tropical greenery and café tables under black-and-white umbrellas.
The burekas are personal, and Zvi doesn't pretend otherwise. "When something is part of who you are, your lifestyle, your culture, and the way you live, you don't need to convince people. You just need to show them what you believe in." He isn't sure Miami has been waiting for this. "Will people try FLAKY and say, 'Wow, this is exactly what Miami has been missing'? I don't know. I can't predict that. But one thing I know for sure is that I believe in this concept 100 percent. And I think when you put that kind of belief and energy into something, people can feel it."
Elad Zvi
The menu is short: three burekas, handmade with French butter and $18 each: ricotta and feta with za'atar and lemon zest; potato with miso onion jam and black olives; and spinach and feta. Each comes with accompaniments to mix and match, a jammy egg, tahini, freshly grated tomato, pickles, and a spicy fermented ginger mango sauce. Almost all of that is traditional, Zvi said. "Grated tomato, tahini, pickles, eggs, and spicy sauces are all part of the culture of eating burekas. What we've done at FLAKY is introduce little twists without losing the soul of the original." The fermented mango sauce is where the Miami influence comes in. "The idea isn't to reinvent burekas. It's to respect the tradition while giving every bite something a little unexpected."
Zvi's argument for building a whole concept on one pastry is range. "You can take the exact same cheese burekas and eat them with grated tomato and something spicy, and you'll have one experience. Then take that same burekas and combine it with tahini, egg, and schug, and suddenly it's a completely different experience. That's what makes it exciting to me. The possibilities are endless." He isn't pitching burekas as a replacement for anything. "I don't think burgers, tacos, or pizza are going anywhere. They're delicious, affordable, packed with flavor, and people love them. And I'm definitely not here to say burekas are better." What he's bringing instead, he said, is "something different, something unique, and something that adds another layer to Miami's food scene."
With the burekas, the window pours house fizzes with botanical ingredients and herbs, a cucumber and blossom fizz among them, and a rotating soft serve, torched to order, plus slushies like the Flaky Colada and an iced coffee topped with salted banana-coconut foam.
Yes, it’s about the burekas. But what Zvi is really trying to serve is the memory, the smell of fresh-baked pastries just out of his grandmother’s oven. "At FLAKY, I want people to feel that same comfort and happiness, whether they grew up eating burekas or they're trying one for the first time."
