Everything You Need to Know About Jon & Vinny’s in Miami

Florida Men make good in California.

Despite its origins in Southern California, Jon & Vinny’s roots are in South Florida. It’s the creation of a couple of Florida boys, Jon Shook and Vinny Dotolo.

Shook was made in Dade, and Dotolo hails from St. Petersburg. They met in culinary school here, then studied under Michelle Bernstein before moving out to California. There, they opened groundbreaking hit Animal, whose alumni include Boia De’s Alex Myers.

Their grandest L.A. success might be Jon & Vinny’s, though, a restaurant created to remind people of the places they went growing up. Nostalgia runs strong when it comes to Italian restaurants, and creating a connection to those core childhood memories is a big ingredient in their success.

“Growing up in Florida or on the East Coast, most everybody has their Italian restaurant that they went to, you know?” Shook says as he walks around the unfinished space outside the Rubell Museum. “Pre-baseball, post-baseball, pre-prom, all these kinds of things. Mine was Giuseppe’s, so that was a lot of the inspiration behind it and behind the menu.”

Expect a seriously upgraded version of the food you remember.

It’s not just the look of the Jon & Vinny’s that brings back memories — big, green booths with white tables and paper placemats. It’s the food — the salty, tomato-y, simple flavors that taste like they should end up in a red mess all over your face.

The paper, foldable menu is easy, broken down into salads, starters, pizzas, and pastas that are as approachable to a 10-year-old as they are appealing to a seasoned gourmand.

Don’t mistake Jon & Vinny’s uncomplicated ethos for ”simple,” though. The food is all thoughtfully created and could just as easily be served on white tablecloths with waiters in bow ties. Shook speaks proudly about his Bianca di Napoli tomatoes, sourcing them from the tomato capital of the world in Central California. He goes to great lengths to explain his housemade pasta, too, and lists off several other ingredients and where he sourced them from.

You’ll recognize the list: Spaghetti with tomato sauce. Spaghetti limone. Rigatoni with beef Bolognese. It’s as if your childhood tastes were updated with adult-level ingredients, so your nostalgia tastes as good as you remember.

“We make all of our own pastas in-house,” Shook says. “I think our pasta has a unique taste. Not in a bad way, but it’s a very clean taste. That makes a difference to a lot of people.” The pasta is best showcased in the spicy fusilli, Jon & Vinny’s take on the vodka sauce craze that’s hands down its bestseller.

This one comes in a manageable portion, the vodka sauce dish you can probably finish without the help of half your table. It comes with a kick, a big burst of tangy, creamy tomato, and a spice that eases down your mouth after you’ve finished chewing. The al dente fusilli is enough to hold up to the heavy sauce. Your server is going to recommend it, and you’d be well served to follow their advice.

The pizzas are no slouch, either.

Appetizers are also a simple-yet-great collection of bruschettas and salads that add modern twists to staples. There’s an avocado toast bruschetta, for example, made with lemon and crushed red chile. Mozzarella sticks are topped with fresh tomato sauce and grated parmesan. Ditto for the eggplant parm.

Meanwhile, pizzas are crispy and well-done, not quite New Haven-style, but crunchy in the way that the “fancy” pizza place used to make when you went there as a reward. That’s courtesy of a gas-powered Pizza Master oven that allows Jon & Vinny’s to cook the pies like a wood-fired oven might in far greater quantities. This is essential, Kinkela says, when doing the kind of volume Jon & Vinny’s excels at.

The lineup of specialty pies strikes a balance between creative and familiar, offering combinations of toppings you know, presented in unfamiliar-yet-inviting ways. For example, the Bronx Bomber takes the traditional tomato, mozzarella, and oregano lineup, and adds fennel sausage and onion. The spicy Lola adds crushed red chile, olive oil, pecorino, and Sicilian anchovy to the usual spicy pie.

And finally, while the Miami residency won’t be serving breakfast like the L.A. originals, it will still offer Jon & Vinny’s famous pancakes all day. You’ll find them on the kids’ menu, but adults are encouraged to order. You can also buy the pancake mix onsite if you want a little Jon & Vinny’s brunch at home.

It’s an approachable restaurant for after-museum meals.

The Miami outpost doesn’t look exactly like the L.A. Jon & Vinny’s, but step inside the space and visions of fifth grade after-practice pizzerias will come flooding back. Plain white walls are interrupted by stacks of pizza boxes. Waiters are wearing weathered white t-shirts and green aprons. Everything about it feels small and familiar.

It’s exactly the kind of place the Rubell Museum was looking for to fill its restaurant space when Leku closed abruptly last summer. The museum wanted something a little more approachable for the after-museum crowd and called Shook and Dotolo to see if they might be interested.

“The Rubells have known Jon and Vinny, they’re good friends. And when this opened up, they called them, I think, the end of July, and said you have to be open by Basel,” Kinkela says.

By late November, Jon & Vinny’s was welcoming its first Miami guests.

“We want to be the kind of place that fits with who the Rubells want in here. A place you can go and have lunch after you look at some art,” says Kinkela. “We want to be here for all the people in the neighborhood. For the hospitals. For the people going to the museums.”

Jon & Vinny’s isn’t a pop-up; Shook calls it a “residency,” more akin to what an artist would do if they were taking space at a modern art museum.

“Artists come to do a residency here at the museum and they can stay as long as they need to finish their work. And that’s how we’re approaching this.”

There’s no set timeframe for how long Jon & Vinny’s residency is going to last, but that’s precisely the point. Time is limited, but exactly how limited is anyone’s guess. Because this is the restaurant’s first real venture outside Southern California, everyone is waiting to see how it goes. Though if these opening days are any indication, it may already be a Miami Italian food standout.

“Our intention is to open now, see how it goes, and in March or April, if we’re still rocking and rolling and getting into season, we’ll close this down for the summer, renovate it, and make it a full Jon & Vinny’s. Who knows?”

Jon & Vinny’s is taking reservations now.