This beloved Italian restaurant in Coral Gables celebrates a bittersweet anniversary

Celebrating a restaurant’s 35th anniversary is a special event, especially in the booming Coral Gables culinary landscape.

But for Tatiana Pernetti, CEO and president of Caffe Abbracci on Aragon Avenue, emotions can’t help but be mixed. Her larger-than-life father, Nino Pernetti, who opened the beloved Italian restaurant in July 1989, died in 2022 at the age of 76 after an 18-month battle with the aftereffects of COVID.

Two years later, preparing for the anniversary, so significant when restaurants struggle to make it 10 years in the business, is bittersweet.

“Things are going great here, but it’s very sad for me personally and for the whole team,” she said. “We really feel his absence.”

But true to form, Caffe Abbracci will forge ahead with a party for its patrons on Thursday, July 11, with all-day drink specials, the unveiling of new menu items, live music and a cigar roller. The first 35 reservations for four or more get a free bottle of champagne.

Treating customers as members of a big extended family is second nature to Caffe Abbracci, where the affable Nino Pernetti was known for performing “the Nino shuffle,” roaming from table to table, chatting with guests about their meals and anything else they might want to talk about. Whether the diners were famous actors or athletes and ate quietly without being bothered, business types cutting deals or just devoted locals who loved the restaurant’s comforting traditional atmosphere, they were always greeted warmly by Pernetti, who could greet guests in seven languages.

Loris Curzio, vice president and general manager of the restaurant, has worked at Caffe Abbracci since 1990, a year after it opened. He said that the insistence on making guests feel at home is Nino Pernetti’s legacy.

“Nino told us that the first thing to take care of are the customers,” he said. “Then we worry about the good food, good prices and good service. That’s the reason for our success.”

With the Gables dining scene exploding, making room for national figures like Thomas Keller and his Bouchon Bistro or old favorites like Michelle Bernstein, who plans to open a new version of her Sra Martinez later this year, you might think a classic like Caffe Abbracci would suffer. Not so, Curzio said.

“Customers tell us they go and visit the new places,” he said. “Then they say, ‘But we still like to come back home. There’s no place like home.’ That makes us feel very proud.”

Tatiana knows the loyalty Miami customers have for Caffe Abbracci started with her father, who was such a vital part of the city’s history it named a street after him, Nino Pernetti Way. But over the past two years, as she makes the rounds around the dining room that Nino Pernetti made for so many years, she has noticed a shift.

“We used to say the customers were all friends with my dad, friends he had when he lived in Venezuela or France or Italy and now they live here,” she said. “But sometimes now when I’m at the restaurant I go around and people will say, ‘We started coming here with my parents’ or ‘My mom was friends with your dad.’ The second generation is here. It’s not just our dads — it’s me and the son or daughter or even grandchildren of people who have been regulars. The loyalty continues through generations.”

That loyalty works both ways, she said. She and her sister Katerina have recently made changes to modernize the restaurant: renovating the kitchen, putting in a new marble bar top, updating the bathrooms. It’s also much easier to split the check there now, she says.

But they have no plans to significantly alter the world that Nino Pernetti created.

“We are not changing the spirit of the restaurant at all,” she said. “I associate this with my dad. I could never do anything to steer too far from his vision.”

Caffe Abbracci

Where: 318 Aragon Ave., Coral Gables

Anniversary celebration: Starting at noon July 11

More information: www.caffeabbracci.com or 305-441-0700