Major Food Group is celebrating a major milestone this year: 10 years since opening the doors to the first Carbone restaurant location in New York’s SoHo. The hospitality group, founded by Jeff Zalaznick and chefs Mario Carbone and Rich Torrisi in 2011, has since opened numerous restaurant concepts, and expanded the Carbone brand to other major U.S. cities and abroad to Hong Kong, Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
This month, the group will publish a coffee table book with Assouline to mark Carbone’s 10th anniversary, and open the second location of its offshoot concept Carbone Vino.
Opening in Miami’s Coconut Grove neighborhood, Carbone Vino will be the group’s ninth restaurant across the city. “I would have never guessed that just a few short years ago,” Carbone says of the group’s rapid expansion in Miami, which kicked off with Carbone opening in Miami Beach at the start of 2021. The restaurant ended up being a huge success in the city, which saw an influx of business and development during the pandemic.
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“And then this really positive snowball started to happen of momentum; developers started to bring us projects and landlords, and great opportunities started to come,” Carbone says. “There’re so many neighborhoods, it’s such a fast-growing city, that it can take what is now our nine concepts here.”
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Their latest restaurant opening marks the second location of the wine-focused concept, which was introduced in Dallas in 2022. Carbone Vino was inspired by Italian “enotecas,” and the Miami location features a robust wine cellar with more than 3,000 bottles, including a sizable selection of old-world varietals. The dining room, led by Bishop Design, features rich bronze and gold accents, velvet drapes and leather banquettes, with artwork curated for the space by gallerist Vito Schnabel.
“The style of food is very much pulling from that [Carbone] cookbook,” says Carbone of the menu. “From that mid-century nostalgic, family style — our style — Italian food,” he adds. “And given that it is a member of the Carbone family, you will be able to get the classic Carbone dishes here, done exactly as they are in Carbone: the Caesar salad, rigatoni, veal parm, carrot cake — all of those dishes will be here.”
Ahead of the opening, Carbone has been using Carbone Privado, their New York members club, as a test kitchen, and is looking forward to bringing fresh dishes to Carbone Vino that will live alongside Carbone mainstays and options from the Dallas menu.
On Dec. 12, Major Food Group in collaboration with Assouline will publish “Carbone,” a coffee table book to memorialize the years since opening their first Carbone location.
The book, in collaboration with writer Gabe Ulla, includes recipes from the restaurant along with stories from the founding owners — Carbone, Zalaznick and Torrisi — about the people and experiences that have rooted the restaurant in New York dining lore. “Capturing the story between the three of us, of how this restaurant came to be,” Carbone says. “And then 10 years of food and memories.”
“I really wanted the finished product to be a study of how we do it there — food, service and vibe — and really take the people that are there, that have been there from the beginning, and have them tell their story of what they do,” he adds. “The finished product is exactly that. It’s a time capsule of the 10 years, and hopefully someone that picks it up that’s never been there, when they’re done with it, they have a real sense of what a night at Carbone is like.”
Reading through the final book before it went to print was an emotional experience for the chef, and a moment to reflect amid so much growth within the group.
“It’s so rare that you just take a second, take a beat, stop and say, ‘Let’s get this down on paper,'” Carbone says. “Instead of just always looking forward, let’s take a second, let’s look back, let’s give thanks and let’s memorialize this first 10 years.”