An Argentinian Restaurant on the Giralda Plaza: Graziano's

If you search argentinian restaurant near me from an office in downtown Coral Gables, the glass box at 394 Giralda Avenue is the most likely place to end up. Graziano's Coral Gables sits on the pedestrian stretch of Giralda, with a fire pit at the front and two large grills burning quebracho wood in the middle of the room. The family behind it traces its trade back to a Buenos Aires butcher shop opened in 1962, and that butcher's logic still drives the menu.

The Graziano story starts with Mario and Maria Graziano, who opened a butcher shop in Buenos Aires before moving to Miami, where an Argentine market and an outdoor grill became the seed of today's group. The family is now in its third generation and runs a string of mercados and restaurants across South Florida. Coral Gables is the flagship sit-down restaurant, and its own mercado, with a meat counter and Argentine groceries, is a short walk away on Galiano Street.

What sets the restaurant apart from most Miami steakhouses is the sourcing. Much of the beef is grass-fed Aberdeen Angus from the Logros Family Ranch in Río Segundo, Córdoba, raised without feedlots, antibiotics or hormones, and every cut is aged at least 21 days. The kitchen also advertises itself as seed-oil free, cooking with olive oil and animal fat rather than industrial vegetable oils, which is a rare promise on a menu this size.

Walk in and the layout makes the point for you. Floor-to-ceiling glass wraps the dining room, so you can see the fire pit and the two grills from the street, and the bar sits close enough to the fire that you feel it on cool evenings. The crowd changes with the clock: lawyers and bankers from the business district at lunch, after-work groups at the bar from 5pm, and families with grandparents filling the long tables on weekends.

Start at the parrilla appetizers. The provoleta parrillera, aged provolone from Estancia Santa Rosa in Santa Fe grilled with tomato and oregano, is $18. House-made chorizo with red peppers and salsa criolla and Argentine morcilla on grilled polenta are $16 each, and the clásicas mollejas, grilled beef sweetbreads with charred lemon, are also $16. Empanadas, baked or fried, run $6 each or five for $25, with fillings like beef with green olives and egg, or lamb with potato.

For mains, the Logros Ranch cuts are the reason to come. A 14-ounce ojo de bife, hand-cut rib eye, is $49, and a 14-ounce bife de chorizo, the Argentine sirloin strip, is $45. The showpiece is the costillar de res, Certified Angus short ribs cooked slowly for three hours over quebracho wood, at $75. A table of two hungry people can split the picanha al asador for two, a whole culotte marinated with ají panca, at $95.

Groups tend to order from the butcher-cuts section and pass the board around. The tomahawk for two is $169, the bistecca alla fiorentina for two is $99, and the bife del carnicero, a hand-cut spinalis that the kitchen limits to a few per night, is $165. Order that one early in the evening if you want it, because once the spinalis is gone the servers will steer you to the rib eye.

Not everyone at the table has to eat beef. The whole branzino comes off the asador with salmoriglio for $45, and the farm chicken, marinated for 72 hours in Dijon and Torrontés wine, is $49 whole or $32 for a half. Salads lean Italian-Argentine, like the butcher's chopped salad with soppressata and provolone at $18, a reminder of how much of Buenos Aires cooking came over from Italy.

Graziano's runs two services on weekdays. Monday to Thursday it is open 11:30am to 3pm for lunch and 5pm to 10:30pm for dinner. On Friday lunch runs 11:30am to 3:30pm and dinner 5pm to 11:30pm. Saturday is 12pm to 11:30pm straight through, and Sunday is 12pm to 10pm. Weekday lunch fills with the Coral Gables business district, so a 1:30pm booking is calmer than noon.

Book dinner through OpenTable or by phone at (305) 774-3599, especially on Fridays. That is Vinilo Night at the bar, a free weekly vinyl session from 7pm to 9pm with rotating DJs, vermouth service and cocktails, and the room gets busy. The bar is also the best seat if you come alone: you can watch the grill cooks work the quebracho embers and order a single empanada and a glass of Malbec without committing to a full steak dinner.

Giralda Avenue between Ponce de Leon Boulevard and Galiano Street is closed to traffic and lined with restaurant patios under strings of lights, so the walk starts the moment you step outside. One block south on Aragon Avenue you will find Books & Books, the independent bookshop in a 1920s Mediterranean Revival building, and next to it the Coral Gables Museum, housed in the city's former police and fire station.

From there, the Miracle Mile stretch of Coral Way is a few minutes further south, with old storefronts, the Actors' Playhouse in the restored Miracle Theatre, and plenty of places for a cortado after dinner. If you want Argentine groceries to take home, head to Graziano's mercado on Galiano Street, where the meat counter will cut the same Logros Ranch steaks you just ate, along with alfajores and dulce de leche.

Address: 394 Giralda Ave, Coral Gables, FL 33134, on the pedestrian block of Giralda. Phone: (305) 774-3599. Bookings: OpenTable or phone. Best value: empanadas at five for $25 and the $16 grilled appetizers. Splurge: the $75 three-hour short ribs or a spinalis for two if any are left. Good to know: the restaurant is seed-oil free, Friday nights bring free vinyl DJ sets at the bar, and street parking plus city garages surround the block. Ask Karpo in the Karpo APP for more Coral Gables dinner picks.