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Our Team

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Owner

Mark Soyka

“All  the property I own is because I want to open a restaurant,” Soyka said. “It’s like a theater. Every night is a different play in a restaurant.”

It’s why he opened Soyka 17 years ago, an impossible lifetime for a restaurant, and watched its effect spread like a wish paid forward in this neighborhood adjacent to Little River. He had seen what News Cafe did for South Beach in 1988. The picturesque spot ahead of the city’s revival was a favorite haunt of the late Gianni Versace and has become a landmark. Ditto for Van Dyke Cafe, which helped revitalize Lincoln Road in the ’90s to the point at which rising property values made it impossible not to sell.​

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But it’s on this swath of property he owns between 54th and 58th streets on Biscayne Boulevard, the center of his creative universe across from his Morningside home of more than 20 years, where Soyka planned his first restaurant in 15 years: Café Roval.

Soyka is not a foodie, a gourmand, an aristocratic eater. (“I’m not culinary. I don’t even cook,” he said.) But he understands that restaurants are the lifeblood of a community.

He grew up behind the counter at his parents’ deli in Tel Aviv at 5. When he left for Manhattan after his conscripted military service, he studied at the New York School of Interior Design before opening his first restaurant, a cabaret named Upstairs at Green Street in New York City.

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When he came to Miami in 1985, it was to help the late real estate mogul Tony Goldman begin renovating South Beach. He never left.

Café Roval is purely a passion project. Soyka wanted a high-end restaurant in a relaxed atmosphere that focused on the Mediterranean cuisine he loves to eat.

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The restaurant’s interior is warm and rustic thanks to the coral rock walls, with oil paintings, polished concrete floors and exposed rafters. Soyka hand-picked every piece inside the restaurant, from the paintings to the chandeliers. It’s as if he were creating a dining room for himself, bursting with creative flair.

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“I’m eclectic. If I see a piece I like it and I put it in there,” he said. “It all comes together. ... I like to design them, to host them, to build them. They’re my babies. Soyka talks about Café Roval with the certainty of a man who has an inside stock tip. He believes in it. And given his track record, it’s probably enough to make it a success.  “If you do it right and love it, it will love you back,” Soyka said.

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