Grand showcase
Barbacoa, Delano South Beach, Impala, ROTS, Bar di Bello, Okomusu, favorite Burgundy restaurants, MORE
Next week, we’re debuting The FOUND 45, our new, definitive list of FOUND’s favorite restaurants in each of our six markets. Care to respond to this email and tell us your favorite restaurant in your favorite city?
RESTAURANTS • São Paulo, Brazil
Meat cute
As a native of São Paulo, you could say I’m particular about my Brazilian barbecue establishments (churrascarias). On a recent trip to the homeland, I went back to Barbacoa in the prosperous Itaim Bibi neighborhood. While the globally recognized Fogo de Chão franchise has become an ubiquitous destination for visitors, it’s Barbacoa that currently wears the crown for me.
It starts at the salad bar, set within mahogany-paneled columns and beneath sky-lit ceiling panels in the center of an elegant dining room. Unlike the pre-made salads at stateside Brazilian BBQ places, Barbacoa’s is filled with a variety of fresh greens and seemingly endless build-your-own salad buffet options, like fist-sized chunks of hearts of palm. The proteins, like crusted ahi tuna, fresh carpaccio, and salmon sashimi, are a far cry from the bulk-buy variations I’ve seen too often at churrascarias lately.
A team of nearly 100 act like they’d bend over backwards for you, a true Brazilian service experience. Even at the bar area, where you’ll wait to be seated on a busy day, baskets of warm pão de queijo (cheese bread) are delivered alongside pre-dinner caipirinhas made with surgical precision.
The meats are procured and butchered by the specifications of chef and partner Jefferson Finger, who’s become an ambassador for Brazilian beef around the world, including in Italy and Japan, where Barbacoa has long-standing locations. On my visit, Finger was circling the room, shaking hands with tables of family regulars and corporate power lunchers, while keeping his eyes on carvers slicing glistening picanha, marbled prime ribeye, and gorgeous lamb chops.
Barbacoa has two other à la carte steakhouses in São Paulo and three more around Brazil, but this is the only rodizio (all you can eat) in the portfolio. And it’s Finger’s attention to every detail that makes this the grandest showcase for what Barbacoa is doing better than anybody else in São Paulo right now. –Adrian Spinelli
→ Barbacoa (São Paulo) • Rua Doutor Renato Paes de Barros, 65.
REAL ESTATE • Providence, RI
Three for-sale properties that came to market in the last 30 days.
→ 85 Congdon St (College Hill) • 9BR/4.2BA, 5500 SF two-family • Ask: $2.15M • side-by-side duplexes w/ private outdoor spaces • Annual taxes: $18,990 • Days on market: 3 • Agent: Spencer Kelleher, William Raveis Inspire.
→ 102 Prospect St (College Hill, above) • 6BR/4.2BA, 6150 SF house • Ask: $3.495M • Colonial Revival built in 1906 w/ Gilded Age craftmanship • Annual taxes: $24,393 • Days on market: 24 • Agent: Jim DeRentis, Residential Properties.
→ 310 Blackstone Blvd (Blackstone Boulevard) • 5BR/4.2BA, 5703 SF house • Ask: $4.895M • new build w/ traditional design, modern amenities • Annual taxes: $12,242 • Days on market: 18 • Agent: Jim DeRentis, Residential Properties.
GETAWAYS • Miami
Icon, reborn
South Beach simply isn’t South Beach without the Delano operating at its full potential. After its shocking 2020 closure, the historic Art Deco hotel returned in June as part of Ennismore. The iconic Rose Bar and famed infinity pool are back, joined by new food and beverage offerings and revamped interiors.
South Beach locals know the lore, and anyone who’s properly visited Miami in the last 30 years has doubtless graced the Delano’s lobby. It was hotelier Ian Schrager who put the hotel back on the map in the 1990s with a surrealist Philippe Starck-designed lobby, creating a legendary nightlife hub graced by the likes of Madonna, Kate Moss, and Lenny Kravitz.
Ennismore, knowing it had some big shoes to fill, smartly tapped Schrager protégé Ben Pundole as chief brand officer. A talented hospitality veteran in his own right, Pundole was also responsible for ushering in the good vibes at EDITION Hotels (another Schrager venture).
Starck’s original lobby color palette of whites and creams with apple green accents has been honored, via potted palms and a voluminous, sculptural sofa. The grand flow-through lobby also features a modern interpretation of its former billowing white curtains with gauzy chandeliers and wallcoverings. It all comes together to feel like an appropriate and luxurious modernization of the space, while paying homage to what made the lobby one-of-a-kind.
After dinner, we descended back to the lobby and found seats at the Rose Bar. Pundole and a Delano Members Club relations manager were milling around the lobby with groups of fashionable looking guests. A tourist couple bellied up to the bar next to us. The woman didn’t know the Delano had closed, but she had fond memories of being there fifteen years ago and wanted to show her husband. The scene felt right: the same familiar motley crew of South Beach characters still roaming the lobby, all these years later. I’m happy to say the Delano is back, baby, and order has been restored to South Beach. –Shayne Benowitz
RESTAURANTS & BARS • London
Not so tame
Meedu Saad is best known as executive chef and co-owner of Kiln, the Soho Thai spot beloved of chefs, FOUND readers – pretty much everyone. In March, he opened Impala, a huge, vibey charcoal grill restaurant with influences from North Africa to north London that’s one of London’s most talked-about openings of the year.
The food is North African-inspired, with influences from Saad’s Egyptian heritage. It starts with Aish Baladi, a puffed-up circular wholegrain Egyptian bread dusted with bran, baked to order, served with olive oil and harissa. A highlight is the pastilla, a paper-thin pastry triangle filled with dense mutton and pickled walnut, plated alongside a fruity and sweet brown sauce. From the slightly larger plates section, grilled short ribs are juicy and light on spice, while sheftalia are standout sausages stuffed with Tamworth pork, wrapped in caul fat with a sticky-sweet glaze. From the mains, monkfish in grape leaves is lightly cooked and could be heavier on flavour, though the accompanying tabbouleh is pleasingly savoury.
Impala got its name from the cherry-red 1964 Chevrolet that Saad drove during his summers in Egypt. It’s a fitting name for a restaurant that’s sexy, colourful and already immensely popular. –Laura Price
GOODS & SERVICES • Big Ticket
→ KAIT BAUMAN, chef & owner, Norcina & Frankie’s (SF): I’m trying to figure out how to import a 1970 Fiat 500 back from Tuscany. (I’m a bit of a nut for vintage cars — ask my neighbors.)
→ FERNANDO DE NUÑEZ Y LUGONES, CEO & founder, VERTICAL Developments (Miami): My new tennis racket. It’s one of those purchases that immediately makes you want to get out on the court more often. Whether it’s actually improved my game is still up for debate, but it’s certainly made me more enthusiastic about playing.
→ GABRIEL CORTEZ, educator & organizer (SF): I just copped an MPC Live III Retro Edition. Baby was not cheap! But she is very very pretty. For my first one person show, I’m bringing together narrative, poetry, and live sample-based sounds to tell a story of Black diaspora across the US and Panama. I’ve had a pre-owned MPC One for a few years but wanted something a bit more portable that I could more easily haul around as I practice finger drumming around the apartment and eventually bring it up with me on stage. My show, “Between Two Rising Seas,” debuts at MACLA Fall 2027.
AROUND FOUND • Other Notable Intel & Recs
→ NY: Heading into peak season, FOUND NY addressed the annual question, What’s NYC’s Restaurant of the Summer? Two early contenders emerge, and a ROTS Nines is served up for good measure.
→ LA: A highly produced 1970s-Milan-inspired dining room with an encompassing sense of place, Bar di Bello serves well-executed Northern Italian classics, plus a full bar. It opened in Silver Lake in April. Bring a date.
→ PARIS: A tiny counter, tucked just off the noise of Rue Charlot, Okomusu is entirely devoted to Osaka culinary specialty okonomiyaki: a hearty pancake of eggs, flour, and cabbage, topped according to the mood with shrimp, pork, or vegetables. The menu asks for real attention, with enough variations and add-ons that picking one feels less like ordering and more like making a life-altering decision.
GETAWAYS LINKS: When hospitality fails, the problem might be the guest • In the South of France, Dan Flavin is the exhibition we need right now • In Deauville, France, espying the design details at remade Hotel Barrière Le Normandy • Meditations on a French summer vacation • Summer on the Slovenian Riviera.
GETAWAYS • The Nines
Restaurants, Burgundy
The Nines are FOUND’s distilled lists of the best.
Maison Lameloise (Chagny), revered restaurant, since 1921, traditional Burgundian dishes served by tasting menu or à la carte