Type best restaurants near me into a phone in Miami and Boia De comes up with a Michelin star next to it and almost no description of what you would eat. That is partly the restaurant's own doing. There is no tasting menu here, no set progression, no chef's counter narration — you read a single page, order everything you want in one go, and the kitchen decides what comes out when and paces the table for you. It is a format that rewards knowing the menu before you sit down, because you place your entire order in the first five minutes. What follows is what is actually on that page, and roughly what it adds up to.
Ordering everything at once means the menu is a decision, not a conversation. Ask Karpo to talk you through what a table your size should put on one order sheet at Boia De before you go.
There is no tasting menu, and that changes how you order
Plenty of one-star restaurants remove the decision from you. Boia De does the opposite: it hands you a short list and asks you to commit. The staff take the full order at once specifically so the kitchen can course and pace the meal itself, which means what arrives second depends on what you asked for first.
The consequence is that under-ordering is the common failure, not over-ordering. A table that orders two pastas and nothing else gets two pastas, back to back, and a lot of waiting. The shape most people want is one or two cold things, two pastas between two people, and a dessert — that gives the kitchen enough material to build a rhythm out of.
The menu also changes regularly, which is genuinely a feature rather than a hedge. The prices and dish names below are current, but the composition rotates, and the pasta section rotates fastest.
The pasta section is the reason to come
Pappardelle alla lepre — wide ribbons with a rabbit ragù, usually with rosemary in it — is $30 and is the dish most regulars name without hesitating. It is rich without being heavy, and it is the clearest statement of what this kitchen is doing.
Around it: saffron tonnarelli alle vongole at $32, which puts clams against a saffron-tinted square-cut noodle; tagliolini nero at $35, the most expensive pasta on the page; nduja scarpinocc at $28, a stuffed shape carrying spreadable Calabrian sausage; gnocchetti al carrote at $28; and gnocchi pomodoro at $33, which sounds like the plain option and is not.
For two people, two pastas is the right number. Three between two is possible and starts to blur; the portions are composed rather than generous, but the sauces are concentrated enough that a third arrives after your palate has already made up its mind.
The cold half of the page
The openers do more work here than they do at most Italian restaurants, because they are what the kitchen uses to space out the pasta. Scallop crudo is $30 and the most delicate thing on the menu. Beef tartare is $25. Chicken liver and foie gras pâté is $27 and is the one that tends to over-deliver relative to its position on the page.
Cheaper and worth ordering anyway: baked clams at $16 and crispy polenta at $16, which is the dish that quietly holds the table together while you wait. Luci's chopped salad at $22 is the only thing resembling a vegetable course, and it is a real salad rather than a gesture.
Crispy octopus at $32 sits between the cold plates and the large ones and eats like a main for one person who does not want pasta.
One large plate, and the dessert everyone names
There are two things on the menu built to be shared across a table: lamb ribs fra diavola at $33, and an eight-ounce pork collar at $45. The pork collar is the single most expensive item on the food menu and the only dish that reads like a conventional main course.
Desserts are short and cheap relative to everything above them. Crispy tiramisu is $12 and is the one regulars come back for. Chocolate budino is also $12, mille foglie and carrot cake are $14 each, affogato is $9, and house-made ice cream and sorbet run $8 a scoop.
The wine list is the other half of the restaurant's reputation — it leans hard into bottles that are difficult to find elsewhere in the city, and the staff are unusually willing to steer rather than upsell. Say a number and they will work inside it.
What two people actually spend
Run the arithmetic on a normal order: crispy polenta, chicken liver pâté, pappardelle alla lepre, saffron tonnarelli, one tiramisu. That is $16 plus $27 plus $30 plus $32 plus $12, or $117 of food for two. Add tax, service and a modest bottle and you are at roughly $150 a head, which is the number the restaurant is generally quoted at.
You can go meaningfully lower. Two of the $16 openers, two pastas and no dessert lands under $100 of food for two people, and nobody at this restaurant treats a smaller order as a smaller table.
You can also go a lot higher without noticing, because scallop crudo, octopus and pork collar together are $107 before anything with flour in it appears.
Practical notes
Boia De is at 5205 NE 2nd Avenue in Little River, in a strip mall, which is not an affectation — the neighbourhood is genuinely built that way and the restaurant has never pretended otherwise.
It holds a star in the 2026 Michelin Guide. The dining room is small enough that reservations go quickly, and arriving at opening is the reliable way to get a seat at the bar without one.
Menu composition rotates. Treat the dish names above as the shape of the list rather than a guarantee, and expect the pasta section to have moved on.
Tags: #Miami #LittleRiver #BoiaDe #BestRestaurantsNearMe #MiamiDining #ItalianFood #Pasta #MichelinStar #MiamiEats #TastingNotes #WineList #NE2ndAve
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Ask Karpo first
Ask Karpo what is worth ordering at Boia De for the size of your table, what to drink with a rabbit ragù at a price you name, and where to go afterwards in Little River when the kitchen closes. It is faster than reading four reviews that all describe the same two dishes.
