Val+tino, the Italian-Mediterranean revival built around chef Giovanni Rocchio and his acclaimed pasta dishes, has permanently shut after four months — and owners say a new restaurant and cuisine will replace it this fall.
The unexpected closing follows the chef’s abrupt exit from the restaurant in late February. In March, Linder told the South Florida Sun Sentinel that Val+tino, minus Rocchio at the helm, would undergo a quiet rebranding “by mid-May” with a new name, signage and seasonal menu. Instead, it closed May 5.
A May 8 Facebook post, three days after the final dinner service, acknowledged that “Val+tino is temporarily closed for the entire summer” but didn’t say why.
(Eduardo Schneider for SFL Hospitality Group / Courtesy)
Chef Giovanni Rocchio says he quit in February after 40 days on the job at Val+tino, which closed three months later in early May. Rocchio was known for handmade pasta dishes, which drew acclaim and a heavy following. (Eduardo Schneider for SFL Hospitality Group / Courtesy)
Plans to keep the same cuisine intact have since been scrapped, Linder texted Wednesday afternoon.
“A new great concept is coming,” Linder said. “I made a great business decision to shut it down and open a concept that will make money.”
Val+tino was designed to be the rebirth of Rocchio’s revered Valentino Cucina Italiana, which shuttered in 2020. Then Rocchio, along with a pastry chef, quit after 40 days on the job on Feb. 20, citing a “toxic environment” with management over staffing. Linder replaced him with newly promoted chef Jake Abbott but nixed a handful of Rocchio’s handmade pasta dishes including butternut squash tortelli with brown butter and sage and cavatelli osso buco with porcini and ricotta salata.
Val+tino co-owner Warren Thompson vowed to reopen the space, still under lease, before “the start of [Fort Lauderdale] Boat Show season” in late October, he said. Thompson blames the demise of the restaurant at 620 S. Federal Highway not on Rocchio’s departure but on a slump in customers caused by the ongoing $28 million makeover of the Henry E. Kinney Tunnel six blocks north.
“It’s tough launching a brand in the middle of all that construction,” says Thompson, whose Virginia-based Thompson Restaurants co-owns YOT Bar + Kitchen, Canyon and South Bar + Kitchen with Linder. Val+tino was removed from the hospitality group’s website last week.
“We didn’t close because of any one chef or individual,” he says. “What we open there next won’t depend on any one chef. We can’t afford another misstep, so we have to do our research and market analysis.”
The new restaurant, Linder adds, will be led by Abbott, Val+tino’s former head chef. Its next-door neighbor Canyon, the 29-year-old Southwest cafe also operated by Linder, will stay open, he says.
Rocchio, for his part, says Kinney tunnel work, “which has been happening since the original Valentino,” caused little impact to business. He says the bigger culprits included a pattern of “reckless spending” on high-end dinnerware, kitchen equipment and glassware during and after his exit, and extra labor costs from overstaffing dinner service.
Mike Stocker/South Florida Sun Sentinel
In this 2022 file photo, owner-restaurateur Mike Linder, shown here inside Fort Lauderdale restaurant Canyon, operated Val+tino with co-owner Warren Thompson. (Mike Stocker/South Florida Sun Sentinel)
“The spending was out of control,” Rocchio says. “You got to make money first. Mike was saying OK with the expenses, and what did I care? I wasn’t the owner.
“Without me there, I knew business would drop, but I never thought they’d go out of business,” he says. “To pull the plug before summer, now customers will be like, ‘Oh, I’m so over it now.’ ”
Former Val+tino server Keith Davis, who’s worked with Rocchio since Valentino Cucina Italiana debuted in 2006, says business plummeted 50 percent after the chef’s February departure and never bounced back.
“We were doing 100-plus covers on the weekends and 60 during the week when we first opened,” Davis says. “When Gio left, we weren’t even cracking 50 dinners on weekends and 30 on weekdays.”
In a text to a Sun Sentinel reporter on Wednesday, Linder said Rocchio and Davis’ comments about expenses and slow dining traffic were “incorrect,” but declined to elaborate.
Staff writer Phillip Valys can be reached at pvalys@sunsentinel.com. Follow on Instagram @p.v.guide and X/Twitter @PhilValys.