Spring 2025 produced one of the more memorable spirit-meets-kitchen pairings of the year in Miami. Chef Nando Chang brought the original Itamae concept back as a limited residency at Maty's Midtown: a homecoming run that followed his sister Val Chang's 2024 James Beard win and Nando's own nomination that cycle. The residency closed months ago. The cocktail it featured is still worth talking about.

The kitchen revived Itamae's Nikkei dishes with a refined edge: smoked and grilled fish collars, makis, nigiris, bold, clean flavors, ingredient-forward. Service ran Wednesday through Saturday evenings and Sundays during the day, alongside Nando's omakase concept Itamae Ao.

A Ramp Gin cocktail you couldn't get anywhere else

Costa Spirits had Isolation Proof Ramp Gin on the residency's cocktail list, paired with yuzu and fresh cilantro for a savory-citrus profile that lived next to Nando's bright Nikkei plates without crowding them. The pairing only worked because ramps and Nikkei share a vocabulary: brine, alliums, a green snap that doesn't read as garnish.

Isolation Proof is distilled in the Western Catskills of New York from forest-foraged botanicals. Ramps, wild leeks, have a six-week window, and the brand bottles them at peak. That math is what made the residency work as a timing exercise: a six-week pop-up serving a six-week harvest, served by a chef whose name was on the year's most-read Beard list.

Why it mattered

A spirit like Ramp Gin doesn't get the floor at most restaurants because most beverage programs aren't built to feature one bottle for six weeks and rotate it out. Itamae's residency was the opposite, a kitchen and a bar program in lockstep around peak ingredients, on both plates and in glassware. Those are the rooms our portfolio is built for.

The Itamae residency is gone. The model, programming-led, terroir-honest, short on hesitation, is what we're still tracking, and what we expect to see more of as Miami's serious operators sort themselves from the spectacle.