A year ago this week, Miami Heat mega-stars, Dwyane Wade and Udonis Haslem, debuted their first restaurant together: 800 Degrees Woodfired Kitchen in Aventura (2956 NE 199th Street). The restaurant, which has outposts all over the globe, was franchised by Wade and Haslem in Miami — where they put their own spin on the menu and created the restaurant’s first full-service location complete with a bar, brunch, and namesake dishes like the UD chicken wings and the DWade burger. Eater Miami sat down with the duo to learn more about the restaurant’s first year, what they’ve learned, and what’s next for them in the culinary world.
On the menu’s evolution
DW: The menu started with pizza and then we were like, okay, we want to do something different. Then we went and added the UD wings and DWade burger. And it just kept going and going. And we realized that because of the family environment we wanted to have something for everyone and I think we accomplished that. I think we have collabed very well and we always got our ear to what is needed. Like chicken fingers wasn’t on our menu, right? We started having families bringing in younger kids and they were like, listen pizza is great, but kids like chicken fingers and fries. Let’s throw that on the menu.
UD: And as we get a little older, we tend to want to be a little more health conscious so we added in power bowls and different things like that, which was something that was important to us. So understanding that everything is moving towards health conscious nowadays we wanted to obviously implement that as well.
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