Pasta, the Wynwood restaurant known for its house-made agnolotti and slow-braised ragùs, has closed permanently after two years in business. The announcement came on the restaurant's social media account, ending the Miami run of a concept that chefs Juan Manuel Umbert and Janice Buraschi first built in Lima, Peru.
Umbert and Buraschi opened Pasta at 124 NW 28th Street in Wynwood in 2024, bringing a tightly focused menu of just a couple of appetizers, desserts, and pasta dishes to a neighborhood that was rapidly filling with Italian restaurants, according to the Miami Herald. Umbert serves as chef and co-owner, while Buraschi worked as the restaurant's pastry chef and co-owner. Before Miami, the pair had opened their original Pasta restaurant in Lima in 2019, where the Herald's reporting notes it became a hit by offering an alternative to the usual Peruvian fare diners expected.
From Lima to Wynwood's Crowded Italian Scene
Umbert had told the Herald he believed Wynwood would become Miami's answer to Brooklyn's Williamsburg, a bet on the neighborhood's creative energy and foot traffic. Instead, Pasta ran into unexpected competition from a wave of Italian restaurants opening in the surrounding blocks, per the same report. That crowding wasn't unique to Pasta's stretch of the neighborhood — a separate Herald report on the Wynwood dining scene described multiple Italian restaurants opening within a block or two of one another, with Doma owner Luca Lomonaco calling the market “oversaturated” with Italian options in comments to the Miami Herald.
That same report quoted restaurant consultant Felix Bendersky predicting a shakeout among Wynwood's competing taco restaurants, warning, “You'll have a couple that will make it, and the rest will fail,” and suggesting Italian spots could face a similar fate. Elsewhere in Wynwood, Otto & Pepe had opened as another pasta-focused Italian restaurant just around the corner on 27th Avenue, while Sparrow Italia opened two blocks south of Pasta around the same time and the celebrity-magnet spot Mother Wolf landed nearby in the Design District, according to earlier Herald coverage.
What Made Pasta's Menu Stand Out
Even with a short menu — six starters and nine pastas, by the Herald's count — Pasta built a following around dishes that blended Italian technique with Peruvian sensibility. Umbert described the restaurant's culinary philosophy to Miami New Times, saying, “The goal is not to make Italian-Peruvian food, but to enhance the traditional Italian dishes with techniques and elements of Peruvian cooking.”
Signature plates included agnolotti di funghi finished with butter and 36-month Parmigiano Reggiano, and pappardelle tossed in a beef cheek ragù braised for 15 hours, both detailed in the Herald's earlier review of the restaurant. The menu also featured fettuccine verdi with caramelized leeks, lemon, and Parmigiano Reggiano, along with a tarta de quesos — a cheesecake made with mascarpone and gorgonzola rather than the more typical cream cheese base.
A Concept Years in the Making
The Wynwood location wasn't Pasta's first outpost. Miami New Times reported that Umbert and Buraschi's original Lima restaurant was a 25-seat Italian eatery that had only been open since July 2019 before the couple decided to expand to Miami. The Wynwood space itself was considerably larger, with Eater Miami reporting the 2,400-square-foot restaurant seated 77 diners when it opened for dinner service in October 2024.
New Times had framed Pasta's Miami debut as part of a broader pasta renaissance taking hold across the city's Italian restaurant scene, with homemade noodles becoming a central selling point for a wave of new openings. Two years later, that same crowded landscape is part of the backdrop against which Pasta's Wynwood chapter has come to a close, even as the exact circumstances behind the shutdown remain tied only to the restaurant's own social media announcement.
