A neighborhood dinner spot on Calle Ocho just made one of the most closely watched lists in American dining. Tin Tin, at 2555 SW 8th Street in Little Havana, was named to The New York Times' Restaurant List 2026, a national selection of standout restaurants across the country. It has been open for less than a year.

From a cafecito counter to a national list

Tin Tin is the big sister of Tinta y Café, the Cuban coffee and sandwich shop that has been a Miami fixture since 2005, with locations in Coral Gables and Miami Shores. For two decades, Tinta y Café has been where a lot of Miami picks up a coffee and a sandwich on the way to work. Tin Tin takes that same family and that same sense of warmth and puts it on a bigger stage, with dinner, cocktails and a full dining room in the heart of Little Havana.

The restaurant calls its food Miami cuisine. In practice, that means Cuban cooking run through French and Italian technique: dishes that feel familiar to anyone who grew up eating in this city, then turn a corner you did not see coming. Being singled out by the Times puts a neighborhood room on Calle Ocho in the same conversation as the country's most talked about restaurants, without a velvet rope or a South Beach address in sight.

The people in the kitchen

Chef and owner Sachi Statz grew up inside Tinta y Café, watching her family run the restaurant before she studied at the Miami Culinary Institute. Along the way she landed an internship at El Celler de Can Roca, a three-Michelin-star restaurant, and brought that discipline home to a busy Miami coffee shop.

Her partner at the stove, chef and owner Víctor Santos, has spent about two decades cooking in South Florida and New England. He worked alongside Norman Van Aken and Douglas Rodríguez, two names synonymous with the birth of modern Miami cooking, refined his craft at the Clarke Cooke House in New England, and later ran the kitchen at Tuyo atop the Miami Culinary Institute downtown. For the past five years he has overseen culinary operations at Tinta y Café. Malu Statz, who has run operations for the family business for 20 years, and Carlos Santamarina, whose father helped found Tinta y Café, round out the ownership team.

What to order

The dishes that define Tin Tin are the ones that make you laugh a little when you read them, then make complete sense when they land. Ropa vieja shows up wrapped as a Wellington, with creamed yuca, sautéed citrus cabbage and a salsa espagnole. Fruta bomba y jamón serrano pairs compressed papaya with herb oil and cured ham, a Cuban breakfast fruit dressed for dinner. Malanga, the root vegetable every abuela keeps in the pantry, becomes gnocchi cacio e pepe with grana padano and crispy speck.

For a bigger plate, the duo of beef sets a grilled prime strip steak next to braised rabo encendido over Carolina Gold rice with a sweet plantain terrine. The pan-roasted Bell & Evans chicken arrives with arroz con pollo, romesco and an olive relish. A curated wine list and a cocktail program built for lingering fill out the night, and there is a happy hour for anyone who wants to test the waters at the bar first.

How to get a table

Tin Tin is open Tuesday through Saturday from 4:30 to 10 p.m. and on Sunday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. It is closed Mondays. Reservations are on Resy through the restaurant's site, and for larger parties the team asks you to call 786-637-2883 or email [email protected]. The restaurant also hosts private dinners and buyouts.

Expect the booking calendar to tighten now that the rest of the country knows about it. If you live nearby, Sunday afternoon is the move, and if you have never been to Tinta y Café either, make it a double: coffee at the original, dinner on Calle Ocho.