Trendy eatery pops up nightly in Coral Gables

When the sun sets, a popular Coral Gables lunch spot transforms from bright and airy to sleek and trendy.

By day, Café Ponce serves breakfast and lunch. But by night, it becomes Eating House, a temporary “pop-up” restaurant owned by a recent winner of a Food Network cooking competition. Chef Giorgio Rapicavoli runs his restaurant on speed and spontaneous ingenuity; as if he’s still battling it out on Chopped, which he won in January.

A month later, the 26-year-old Miami native opened Eating House with business partner Alex Casanova.

“It’s always been my dream to open a restaurant,” Rapicavoli said. “This is the easiest way to achieve that. Here I have absolute freedom to create whatever I want.”

The transformation begins a couple of hours before Eating House opens at 7 p.m. Banners go up, flat screen TVs display the restaurant’s black and white logo, an iPod is hooked up with hip-hop and R&B tunes, and even fluorescent track lights are added to create a cool lounge atmosphere.

At the end of the night, it all comes down for the café’s re-opening in the morning.

Eating House serves an eclectic mix of dishes inspired by Miami’s vast cultural diversity, as well as his Argentine and Italian heritage. A new menu is crafted daily, shaped by what is fresh and available at local markets and farms. Sometimes disaster strikes, but that’s when Rapicavoli’s skills really shine.

“Today when I came in, I saw the temperature in the freezer wasn’t right and all the ice cream had melted. So we went to the grocery store and bought ice cream cones, ground them and made an ice cream cone Mousse,” he said.

Pop-up restaurants have grown in popularity over the past year as a cost effective way to break into the culinary and restaurant business, especially for young chefs like Rapicavoli. In Miami, the trend started last summer with Vietnamese restaurant Phuc Yea! (now closed).

“The pop-up restaurant is an innovative business idea for our area — occupy an already-existing establishment during its off hours. It helps they do a helluva job making some damn good food. They weave in local products in their dishes, present menu items daily, at reasonable prices, and the staff shows they have a lot of love for what they’re doing,” said Hector Florin, a web publisher for the county who frequents the Eating House.

Rapicavoli has a team of three helping him in the kitchen, but he prefers to interact with the public and create an intimate, personal experience for each customer. He greets them at the door, walks around the tables to explain the night’s offerings and answer questions, and even brings out the food sometimes.

In a very short period of time, Rapicavoli has cultivated a loyal following, in part thanks to his winning on Chopped. On Friday and Saturday night, he said, the wait is about two hours.

Kendall resident Marisol Sierra said she has visited at least a dozen times since Eating House opened in February.

Like many other customers, she heard about the restaurant through social media and word of mouth.

“It’s absolutely awesome,” she said. “First of all, the service is incredible. And the concept is very unique, especially here in the Gables. He serves random things you don’t even imagine go together, but then they are so good.”

The ever-changing menu offers one-of-a-kind creations, such as Snake River Farm Pork Belly and Roasted Bone Marrow. There are a couple of signatures dishes that remain on the menu everyday, such as the delicious Pasta Carbonara, Peking Pig Ears and Fried Chicken Thighs served with waffles.

Rapicavoli attended Johnson and Wales University, but didn’t graduate. He learned to cook traditional dishes with his family and then began experimenting on his own. Prior to his Chopped win, he worked as a chef at 660 at the Anglers in Miami Beach.

“I never had any other option. I always knew I wanted to be a chef,” Rapicavoli said.

He plans to keep Eating House open through September to participate in Miami Spice, the annual promotion that offers discounted meals at top local restaurants.

And then he’s off to Italy to be a guest chef at the Terra Madre & International Congress, a global annual event that celebrates “slow food,” a grassroots movement founded in Italy that supports local farmers and growers and strives to preserve traditional and regional cuisine.

Rapicavoli and Casanova’s commitment to “slow food” practices are proudly displayed on their forearms with matching tattoos that read “good, clean and fair” in Italian.

When they return from Terra Madre, Rapicavoli said he wants to re-open Eating House in a permanent spot.

“We’re bringing something very different, something Miami needed.”
Coral Gables