Can a restaurant serve food mostly grown in Florida? This new Miami Shores spot will try

The tribute paid to all things Florida at Miami Shores’ newest restaurant can be found in every delicate bite.

The white flesh and crispy scales of the tilefish that was swimming off the coast of Palm Beach just yesterday. The tender pork raised outside Orlando. The tiny green mangoes from a South Dade farm, fermented for months until they’re more olive than fruit and sliced into a crudo. The tang of sea grapes in the sorbet and the crunch of the tempura-fried squash blossom in the salad.

All from Florida, all in service to an epic culinary undertaking.

At EntreNos — meaning “between us” — the goal of putting Florida cuisine and ingredients in the spotlight is a mission. The restaurant, which opened Oct. 11, operates inside Tinta y Cafe on Northeast Second Avenue, taking over the space four nights a week and transforming the breakfast-and-lunch spot into a comfortable, casual haven for fine and inventive dining.

It’s the first restaurant for chef-creators Evan Burgess and Osmel Gonzalez, veterans of Michael Beltran’s Ariete, which was awarded its first Michelin star in 2022.

Burgess, formerly the executive sous chef at Ariete, calls EntreNos “a love letter to Florida.”

“I grew up in Broward and saw tons of dairy farms, but you didn’t see any of that dairy in Publix,” he said. “No meat from Florida. You go to a restaurant, and the fish isn’t from Florida. Michelin-starred restaurants are getting ingredients from around the world, and there are amazing ingredients in Florida. We agreed we’re sick of that system.”

Creating a restaurant that only serves Florida ingredients in its dishes is impossible, of course. Some things — potatoes and garlic, for example — simply don’t grow here. A recent menu item included ramps, a spring onion-like vegetable that grows in eastern mountain states.

But Burgess and Gonzalez are committed to using as many Florida ingredients as possible. At present, they say, about 80 percent of the menu is grown or raised or caught in the state.

Gonzalez, formerly the chef de cuisine at Ariete, said that the creation of the menu started with the growers.

“We were visiting local farmers just to see what they had available and what would be available by the time we opened,” he said.

Then they figured out what they could preserve, freeze, ferment, macerate or otherwise alter in order to keep using local ingredients out of season. Mangoes, for example, are harvested in the summer, but Burgess and Gonzalez preserved the fruits several different ways, including packing them with salt, slowly cooking then dehydrating them, creating “the best caramelized raisin you ever had,” Burgess said.

The trick works in reverse, too: Since most of the growing season in Florida is in the winter, they can preserve those ingredients to use in the summer.

“That’s how you’re always able to have vegetables on the menu,” Gonzalez said. “That’s how we planned the menu, going out and seeing what was available.”

Keeping the menu small helps with the mission, too. At the moment, there are four starters, three entrees, and two desserts, although that may change as EntreNos hits its stride. Open four nights a week, the restaurant is truly a three-person operation — Burgess, Gonzalez and server Stefani de Souza. Burgess and Gonzalez assume both front and back of the house roles, meaning they not only make your dinner but often bring it to your table as well.

The job also calls for a lot of driving around Miami. Burgess, who lives in Doral, and Gonzalez, who lives in Homestead, find themselves on the road a lot, picking up meat and seafood around the area and vegetables from such places as Tiny Farms in South Dade. The pork supplier drives down from central Florida to drop meat off at Burgess’ dad’s office in Broward.

Taking on every role from designing the menu to deciding whether wine glasses go on the table is definitely a change for them, the chefs agreed.

“At your first restaurant, everything is a challenge,” Gonzalez said. “When you’re working for other people, so you don’t do 100 percent of the work.”

When you work for someone else, you aren’t the one who has to find the perfect location, a chore the chefs agree was the most difficult. The space had to be big enough to host a second restaurant at night, yet small enough to be manageable for a three-person staff to manage.

“If the dining room was massive, it wouldn’t have been good for us,” Burgess said. “It’s just us, and we wanted to be in control of all the food, but then the kitchen couldn’t be too small, either.”

Moving into the relative coziness of Tinta y Cafe when it wasn’t in use was the perfect solution.

“Everyone has been supportive of us being here,” Gonzalez said. “I’ve got no word to describe how good they’ve been to us.”

So far, EntreNos is relying on Instagram posts and word of mouth to lure diners. Miami Shores hasn’t always been a steady location for upscale dining in the past, but so far both chefs are optimistic that the neighborhood — and beyond — will support the endeavor.

“People from the neighborhood are telling us they want a nice spot for dinner that’s not too expensive and not too casual,” Burgess said, adding that Wednesday through Friday night guests seem to be from the neighborhood, while Saturday draws diners from further afield. “We’re fortunate to be able to do this kind of work.”

EntreNos

Where: 9840 NE Second Ave., Miami Shores

Hours: 6:30-10:30 p.m. Wednesday-Saturday

Reservations and more information: www.entrenosmiami.com