Miami Guide Take
The rare Miami restaurant where the building, the water, and the kitchen all pull in the same direction. The terrace looks east across Biscayne Bay to Miami Beach — so you get the skyline lit up in the evening without eating into the sun. Book outside, go around golden hour, order like you’re on the coast: raw, pasta, a whole fish for the table.
For decades the Miami Woman’s Club was one of the most beautiful buildings on Biscayne Boulevard that almost nobody got to walk into. Groot Hospitality and Tao Group changed that in October 2023, and the restoration is the whole argument — Ken Fulk’s interiors treat the Mediterranean revival bones as the star and build around them rather than over them. Walking in still lands.
The scale is unusual even for Miami: 20,000 square feet, 366 seats across the indoor rooms, the bar, and a terrace that runs the full bay-facing length of the building. That terrace is the reason to come. It faces east over Biscayne Bay, with Miami Beach on the far side — which means the evening light comes from behind you and hits the water and the Beach skyline instead of your table. You get the color without the glare, and the bay stays lit long after the sun is gone.
The cooking is coastal Italian, pulled from Naples, Taormina, Bari, Positano and Gaeta and plated in a contemporary register. Handmade pastas, crudo, whole fish, imported and local product treated with equal care. It’s a generous menu rather than a narrow one, and it rewards ordering the way you would on the actual coast: something raw to start, one pasta, a whole fish for the table. The wine list is deep and the cocktails are built with real intent for a room this size.
Come for a birthday, an anniversary, an out-of-town guest you want to impress, a first date you want to go well. Casadonna runs full and loud most nights, and that energy is a feature — this is a restaurant designed to feel like an occasion, and it delivers one.
