Jimmy’s Eastside Diner, featured in “Moonlight,” has a new owner

Italian restaurateur, real estate investor and soccer club owner Tonino Doino bought Jimmy’s Eastside Diner, which was featured in the 2016 film “Moonlight.”

Doino, who owns the Lincoln Road restaurant Rosinella Italian Trattoria, paid about $4.3 million for the property at 7201 Biscayne Boulevard, according to the brokers involved in the deal and the buyer’s representative, Peter Saliamonas. The property is in Miami’s Upper Eastside, east of Little Haiti.

“Moonlight,” Barry Jenkins’ award-winning film set in Miami, featured the diner in a scene with actors Trevante Rhodes and André Holland.

The diner will remain the same and keep its employees, some of whom have worked there for decades. “We’re going to leave it alone as much as we can and let it run,” Saliamonas said.

Aghios Gerasimos, a Miami-based company named after the Patron Saint of Kefaloni in Greece and led by Angie Tetenes, sold the 2,563-square-foot building, records show. Alex Tsoulfas and Juliette Gruener of Miguel Pinto’s Apex Capital Realty brokered the all-cash deal, according to Tsoulfas.

“We would rather put our money in real estate than put it in the bank,” said Saliamonas, general manager of Rosinella. “We like the area a lot.”

Tetenes has owned and operated the diner for years. Records show her company paid $425,000 for the building and parking lot in two separate deals in 1998. It was constructed on 0.6 acres of land in 1968.

Doino has invested in real estate across the Miami area, including in Allapattah and Miami Beach. Last year, Doino and Saliamonas’ Miami Avenue Holdco sold a Sunset Harbour retail property to a company led by Wayne Boich for $21.3 million. In 2019, they sold a site in Allapattah to CenturyLink for $18.8 million.

“We’re focusing our attention on Italy. We bought a soccer team in Rome – that’s where we’re going to spend half the year,” Saliamonas said. The company is renovating a sports center for Roma City FC.