admin There was a little extra magic in the Magic City this past weekend: Casadonna, the brand new collab restaurant between powerhouses Groot Hospitality and Tao Group Hospitality, opened its doors in Miami’s hyper-hot Edgewater neighborhood. Between David Grutman’s (Groot) and Noah Tepperberg and Jason Strauss’s (Tao) not-so-little black books, the guestlist was cosmic—and the vibes compelling.
The celebrations unfolded over a two-day launch. Friday’s kickoff cocktail, DJ’ed by Ella Balinska, drew the likes of former world number 1 tennis players Serena Williams and Caroline Wozniacki–and the current world number 1, Aryna Sabalenka, too.
Victoria and David Beckham were in the crowd, as were DJ Khaled, Winnie Harlow, Quavo, Ben Gorham, Zac Efron, Skrillex (in town for Miami’s annual III Points festival), and many more. The next morning, once the nighttime revelry had faded, Melissa Wood Tepperberg, founder of Melissa Wood Health and Noah Tepperberg’s wife, told me she loved the “elevated energy” of Miami–and that, of everywhere in the world, it’s the city where she has the most fun. Casadonna night one upheld that sentiment.
On Saturday, Isabela Rangel Grutman, who runs a resortwear line called Rangel, held a glitzy fashion show luncheon as part two of the opening. She had designed a capsule collection called Le Sud with La Sirène, a Brazil-based swimwear line (Brazilian Rangel Grutman is from Belo Horizonte), that was styled with Arezzo shoes. With eco-fabrics and easygoing, casual prints—plus the convivial verve of the serene morning, where TikTok star Alix Earle, Lionel Messi’s wife Antonela Roccuzzo, and Victoria Beckham all mingled beneath the bay breezes—the moment complemented what Rangel Grutman had told me ahead of Casadonna’s ribbon-cutting: “Miami is open-hearted, and I think Casadonna exemplifies that. It sort of feels like a love letter—we’re in a city and a space that’s welcoming and warm.”
Beckham, in turn, echoed that. She and Rangel Grutman are very close, and the pop-star-turned-designer said: “I always say this is my happy place. People have really, truly welcomed us here.” Victoria and David split time between Miami and the U.K.; David owns a soccer team in the area called Inter Miami, for which Messi plays (to enormous fanfare).
The weekend served as an amuse bouche for what’s to come once the Ken Fulk-designed Casadonna opens to the public this Thursday: coastal Italian cuisine, delicious cocktails, plenty of tropical-chic areas to socialize, and a million-dollar view to Biscayne Bay from a rarefied waterfront location right in the middle of Miami City. And there’s a bit of history in the air, too: Casadonna, a compound term of the Italian words meaning house and woman, is home to the Miami Women’s Club, one of the oldest charitable organizations in the city. The building is on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places. You can feel the century-plus worth of legacy and specialness in its bones—which is a comforting feeling in a town where the new-new-new is usually venerated.
“Casadonna is unlike anything we’ve ever done before,” said David Grutman on Saturday, standing out and looking at that view. “With the synergies we’ll make with Tao Group, plus the rich history of this setting, I really think we’ve created an icon.”
