17 Restaurant and Sushi Bar: Two Kitchens on One Corner of Alton Road

The fugazzeta comes out first, a disc of sautéed onion and mozzarella under olive oil and oregano, the kind of pizza that belongs to Buenos Aires rather than Naples. Thirty seconds later a plate of Ichiban tuna lands beside it, spicy mayo and masago and a slick of house ponzu. Someone at the next table is working through a bowl of mushroom risotto while their child eats a California roll with their fingers. Outside, Alton Road runs its permanent four lanes of traffic north toward the Julia Tuttle, and the Lincoln Road crowd drifts past the window. It is nine on a Tuesday night in South Beach, and this room has been doing exactly this since 2008.

The trick to reading this menu is to notice that the Italian half is not Italian American. It is Argentine Italian, and two dishes prove it. The first is the fugazzeta, the stuffed onion and cheese pizza that Genoese immigrants invented in Buenos Aires and that almost never appears on a kosher menu in Florida. The second is the marquise, a brownie cake layered with dulce de leche and finished with a cap of merengue, which is a dessert you order in Palermo or Recoleta and rarely anywhere else. Once you see those two, the rest of the Italian card reads differently: the eggplant parmesan built in breaded layers under marinara and melted mozzarella, the ricotta ravioli that comes in pink sauce or a creamy spinach and mushroom sauce, the mushroom risotto worked with both fresh and baby portobello and finished with parmesan.