Miami has no shortage of renowned restaurants—one was just featured in the New York Times' Best Restaurants in America list, and a quiet newcomer in South Miami just landed on yet another prestigious lineup. Recoveco, the intimate restaurant from wife-and-husband team Maria Teresa Gallina and Nicolas Martinez, has been named to Bon Appétit’s “20 Best New Restaurants in America” list for 2025.
The annual list spotlights restaurants that opened between March 2024 and March 2025, celebrating chefs whose storytelling shines through their cooking. Recoveco, which opened last summer at 6000 SW 74th St., stood out for its inventive use of South Florida’s overlooked ingredients and its precise yet poetic plating.
RECOMMENDED: These young Miami chefs were just crowned best in the city
The dish that captured the magazine’s attention—and was featured on its October cover—is the ballyhoo appetizer. While the slender fish is usually thought of as bait in the Florida Keys, at Recoveco it becomes a centerpiece. The chefs slice the body into 12 neat pieces, bathe it in white soy ponzu and plate it with its needle-nose jutting dramatically across the dish. Bon Appétit writer Kate Kassin called it “a work of art.”
Gallina and Martinez met years ago while working as sous chefs at Brad Kilgore’s Alter, one of Wynwood’s pioneering fine-dining restaurants. At Recoveco, they channel that training into a menu rooted in South Florida’s bounty but elevated with their own sense of discovery.
In addition to ballyhoo, diners encounter mamey sapote pits transformed into a syrup that’s drizzled over chocolate cake with bursts of finger lime. Sapodilla, a fruit resembling a coconut but tasting like malty butterscotch, is worked into sticky toffee pudding. Each dish feels like a revelation, coaxing beauty out of ingredients that might otherwise be ignored.
Set in a minimalist dining room with concrete ceilings and spindly pendant lights, Recoveco doesn’t rely on flash. Instead, it delivers dishes that spark surprise and gratitude for South Florida’s natural abundance. With this national honor, Gallina and Martinez have firmly placed their restaurant—and Miami’s inventive food scene—on the culinary map.