Kevin Kelley got into the restaurant business after he acquired a three-story office building in downtown Dallas for his growing personal injury law firm. “We had retail space on the first floor, and no one would lease [it],” Kelley recalled. “So, I said I’m going to go ahead and create a restaurant. If nobody wants to eat at the restaurant, at least I’ll enjoy it because it’s my own.”
The timing was not great. Kitchen + Kocktails by Kevin Kelley, a southern soul food restaurant, opened at the height of the pandemic in May 2020. Yet three years later, thanks in large part to its phenomenal liquor sales, Kitchen + Kocktails was among Dallas’ top grossing restaurant, D Magazine reported, and Kelley went on to establish additional Kitchen + Kocktails locations in Atlanta, Philadelphia, Chicago, Charlotte and Washington, D.C.
Its seventh and latest location opened in Miami’s Wynwood Arts District this past January. And so far, the amount of business at the 7,500-square-foot restaurant at 2838 N.W. 2nd Ave. (where Bottled Blonde once operated) has “exceeded expectations,” Kelley said.
(Erik Bojnansky for Biscayne Times)
Interior of Kitchen + Kocktails in Wynwood.
Indeed, he says the Wynwood area itself was the ideal spot for his restaurant.
“We feel like Wynwood is for everybody. Wynwood is creative, it’s artsy, it’s fun,” Kelley said. “You have families here, you have creators here, you have young people, you have old people, you have every mix of race that comes through Wynwood, and everyone feels comfortable when they’re here.”
(Erik Bojnansky for Biscayne Times)
Inside Shiso in Wynwood.
Kelley is just one of multiple Black entrepreneurs who have opened food and beverage establishments in Miami’s Wynwood Arts District in recent years. Since 2025, at least three high-profile Black-owned food and beverage establishments have opened in the area. The same month Kitchen + Kocktails rolled out, Chicago entrepreneur Ebony Austin and Real Housewife of Atlanta star Yandy Smith opened Nouveau Miami at 108 N.W. 25th St. And in November, the Miami spinoff of New York steakhouse Brooklyn Chop House, co-founded by music executive Robert “Don Pooh” Cummings, opened on the seventh floor of the Moxy Hotel at 255 N.W. 25th St.
(Erik Bojnansky for Biscayne Times)
Kevin Kelley speaks to one of his restaurant's bartenders inside Kitchen + Kocktails in Miami’s Wynwood.
And last year, less than 500 feet from Kitchen + Kocktails, renowned local chef Raheem Sealey teamed up with Ohio-based Forward Hospitality Group to activate Asian smokehouse restaurant Shiso on the second floor of the 239 N.W. 25th St. building.
“I’ve loved Wynwood from back in the day,” said Sealey, whose résumé includes being the executive chef of Wynwood dining hotspot Kyu and the founder of Coconut Grove barbecue restaurant Drinking Pig BBQ. “And I still believe in the neighborhood, and I still think it’s cool. Like everything else, it is different than what it used to be, different from what I remember it, but I still think Wynwood has a lot of character.”
(Erik Bojnansky for Biscayne Times)
Inside Dukunoo Jamaican Kitchen.
Shrusan Gray, co-owner of Dukunoo Jamaican Kitchen at 316 N.W. 24th St., said Wynwood has more Black-owned restaurants now than it did when she and her husband Rodrick Leighton opened their Caribbean restaurant there in 2019.
(Courtesy of Dukunoo)
Shrusan Gray and Rodrick Leighton, owners of Dukunoo Jamaican Kitchen.
“The only other Black food place in Wynwood was House of Mac, and they later went up the road to Allapattah,” recalled Gray, who owns an OB/GYN practice in Hollywood. (An inquiry to House of Mac, owned by former Pitbull manager Derrick “Chef Teach” Turton, went unanswered by deadline.)
From arts district to boom town
Wynwood was once one of the main manufacturing hubs of Miami until cheap labor abroad devastated the neighborhood’s economy in the late 1980s and early 1990s. By the early 2000s, Wynwood’s warehouses were converted into galleries, art studios and street canvases for massive graffiti murals. By the 2010s, restaurants and bars, most operated by locals, moved in.
Developers, meanwhile, knocked down many of those warehouses as they added another 1.7 million square feet of office, 1.5 million square feet of retail, and 4,500 residential units within the Wynwood Arts District, the bulk of which was built within the past three years, said William Kelley (no relation to Kevin Kelley), interim executive director of the Wynwood Business Improvement District.
The result was a new Wynwood where space to live, work and dine came at a premium. As of April, the median rent of an apartment in Wynwood was $3,350 a month, according to Zumper, a rate that was slightly higher than the $3,015 monthly median rent for the entire City of Miami. Listed rents for retail and restaurant space in Wynwood averaged $57.19 per square foot in the first quarter of 2026, a market report from Colliers stated. In comparison, the average rate sought by landlords throughout Miami-Dade County was $41.28 per square foot.
The Wynwood BID’s William Kelley said rents are high because Wynwood has evolved into a true live-work-play area filled with art, music and eclectic restaurants. And the value of that neighborhood only grows with every new restaurant opening.
(Courtesy of Forward Hospitality Group)
Raheem Sealey, co-owner of Shiso.
“It elevates the culinary experience, and that’s really great for Wynwood,” he said.
So, too, the additional 10,000 people that have been added to Wynwood’s population in the past decade, a figure that is only expected to grow once another 2,000 new apartments and condos come online, William Kelley said.
Gray said the thousands of people who reside in those developments have certainly been helpful for businesses in the area. That includes the 289-unit Wynwood 25 apartment complex that was completed soon after Dukunoo opened. But nearby residents also come with more stringent noise complaints, Gray added, while Dukunoo’s “biggest patrons” tend to drive in from Broward and West Palm Beach. Unfortunately, these same customers have problems finding a good place to park.
“More than ever, we have big problems with parking in Wynwood. I think Wynwood has to figure out a way to deal with that,” she said.
For their part, Wynwood BID has been trying to fix that problem through fees charged to new developments to help pay for the construction of more parking garages, according to a 2024-2025 annual report from the business improvement district. The BID is also trying to push for enhanced transit access, the report added.
Expanding beyond Wynwood
(Erik Bojnansky for Biscayne Times)
The Dukunoo courtyard.
Aside from parking challenges, Gray said it took years to obtain the proper permits from the City of Miami needed to build and open Dukunoo. Then, after being open for less than a year, the global COVID-19 pandemic hit, forcing everyone indoors for months. Faced with going out of business, Gray said she and her husband “gave it their all” to keep their first restaurant alive by remodeling their outdoor courtyard, negotiating a new lease, laying off staff and paying all their bills. Gray said she even took off from her physician work to get a handle on things.
“By Juneteenth, we were packed, and by 2021 our numbers were amazing. It was like we were not even coming out of a pandemic,” Gray said.
The restaurant is doing so well that Gray and Leighton are planning to open another Dukunoo location. “We have not gotten the official notification yet, but we are planning on opening in Sawgrass in Sunrise,” Gray said.
Kevin Kelley, who also owns KANVAS sports bar and Club VIVO in Dallas, said his focus is making sure that Kitchen + Kocktails continues to do well. (Kelley will soon open an eighth restaurant in Boston.) However, Kelley said he and his team have “plenty of ideas” for additional food and beverage concepts that he would not mind trying out in South Florida, if he can get support from a local government in the form of tax credits or other incentives.
“Every time we open a restaurant, we hire at least 100 people,” Kelley said, adding that the Wynwood location created 125 jobs with zero help from the city.
At the very least, Kelley said he hopes his restaurant’s policy of making every customer feel special will have some impact on Miami’s hospitality industry, where “often times the people who serve you make you feel as if you serve them.”
“Miami has a stigma that [its restaurant employees] think they’re better than you and when you’re a guest, you often [feel that],” Kelley said. “I’ve made sure that when we open this restaurant, that every guest that walks in the door understands that we serve them.”