A block or two apart in Wynwood, Diego Diaz Varela and Vikram Thadani are making the same argument this Hispanic Heritage Month without ever having planned it together: that Hispanic identity in Miami rarely fits inside one flag.
Wynwood has spent the past decade absorbing new restaurant concepts faster than almost any neighborhood in Miami, a shift Time Out Miami and the Miami Herald have both tracked as the district moved from graffiti covered warehouses to a dense corridor of rooftop bars and imported dining concepts. The area's appeal for international operators has become a recurring theme in local coverage: cheap enough to test a concept, visible enough to build a brand, close enough to the water to draw both tourists and residents. It is in that environment that La Ferneteria, an Argentine Italian concept from Buenos Aires, and Rishtedar, a Chilean born Indian dining room from Santiago, ended up as neighbors.
Diego Diaz Varela Brings a Buenos Aires Ritual North
La Ferneteria opened its Wynwood rooftop on December 4, 2024, at 230 NW 24th Street, marking the brand's first U.S. location after two outposts in Buenos Aires and one in Asuncion, Paraguay. Founder Diego Diaz Varela told Forbes Argentina that the plan to eventually reach the United States was set the day the first location opened in Palermo Soho in 2018, and that Miami was chosen for its scalability rather than sentiment. The menu leans on Italian technique, handmade pasta, wood fired dishes and a raw bar, but the restaurant's namesake pour is fernet, the bitter Italian liqueur that Argentines adopted decades ago and turned into a national habit, typically mixed with cola. Diaz Varela has described the concept to outlets including 305 Inside as an attempt to close the gap between Miami's separate scenes for dining and nightlife, pairing a full kitchen with a cocktail list and a late night crowd under one roof.
Vikram Thadani Carries Rishtedar From Santiago to Wynwood
A short walk away at 232 NW 24th Street, Rishtedar has been serving Indian food since April 2023, when it became the first U.S. outpost of a restaurant Vikram Thadani built in Santiago, Chile, over more than fifteen years, according to the Miami Herald. Thadani was born in Chile to Indian parents and started what he has called an import business before opening the original Rishtedar, which means "family" in Hindi. The Wynwood location keeps rituals from the Santiago original: a bindi applied at the door, a finger bowl of lemon, cardamom and rose water at the end of the meal, and a menu of tandoor, kebabs and masalas built around recipes Thadani has said reflect his own upbringing. Executive chef Atul Negi, who helped open the Santiago locations, relocated to Miami to run the kitchen, according to Food & Beverage Magazine.
Neither restaurant was built as a Hispanic Heritage Month story. La Ferneteria is Italian food filtered through Argentine habit. Rishtedar is Indian food filtered through a Chilean upbringing. But both landed within a few doors of each other in a Miami neighborhood built partly on the premise that a concept from somewhere else can become something new once it takes root here. That overlap, an Argentine importing an Italian ritual and a Chilean Indian importing his family's kitchen, sits closer to how migration actually works in South Florida than the single country framing Hispanic Heritage Month coverage tends to default to.
What happens next for either brand remains open. Diaz Varela has said La Ferneteria's ambition is to use Miami as a staging ground for further U.S. expansion, with Europe mentioned as a longer term possibility. Thadani has described Rishtedar's Wynwood run as validation of a concept he first hoped to bring stateside after visiting Miami in 2002. Whether either becomes a multi city name will depend less on the holiday calendar than on whether Wynwood's appetite for imported concepts keeps up with the number of operators betting on it.
