Juan Manuel Umbert
PASTA | Miami, FL
May 2025
Before he was in the kitchen, Juan Manuel Umbert played professional soccer in Peru. He signed to a team after high school, and began playing while also attending business classes at college. But, a career ending injury made Umbert put away the cleats. After graduating, he tried out the nine-to-five lifestyle, but didn’t feel fulfilled until he accepted a front-of-house job at a local restaurant. Umbert spent time in the kitchen as part of his training and instantly knew cooking was his calling. He joined the team at Astrid & Gastón in Lima and was thrown into the deep end. Hoping to gain more experience, Umbert enrolled at Le Cordon Bleu in London and staged at Michelin-starred kitchens around the city. After traveling throughout Europe, he moved to New York where he picked up a job at Blanca, feeling right at home on the small team at the tasting menu restaurant.
A few months later, Umbert returned to Peru and began working at Urban Kitchen, a culinary consulting group. There, he dove into the intricacies of Peruvian cooking before he helped open Siete as chef de cuisine. At the Mediterranean-inflected Latin American concept, Umbert learned how to effectively run a restaurant alongside his wife and pastry chef, Janice Buraschi. Ready to open their own restaurant, Umbert and Buraschi opened PASTA in Lima in 2019 with the hope of bringing more Italian food to Peru. The 25 seat pasta bar—inspired by their travels around Italy— was a success, and the duo got to work expanding the restaurant until the pandemic arrived. Forced to close temporarily and facing a shift in Peru’s political climate, Umbert and Buraschi decided to pivot. In 2024, they moved to Miami and opened PASTA’s second location. There, Umbert’s ambition is to create the best pasta in Miami, using fresh, house-made dough and serving technique-driven dishes.
