About Us
Our Story
Lita is a modern Iberian restaurant in Aberdeen Township, New Jersey—and the third restaurant from Neilly Robinson and Chef David Viana: the duo behind the beloved restaurant and cooking school Heirloom Kitchen, and the award-winning Heirloom at The St Laurent.
Lita, named for his mother Rosa Lita, it’s a celebration of the culinary legacy of David’s family, who immigrated from Portugal to Newark, New Jersey in the 1970s. David was born into this bustling Portuguese neighborhood and first learned a love of food from his grandmother, Isaura. They spent afternoons together after school, and David watched and helped her prepare Portuguese classics like fejauda, rissóis de camarão and fideo.
In the 20th century, Newark was known as Little Lisboa for the vitality of its Portuguese immigrant community. With Lita, David and the team are excited to be revisiting this history with a modern Iberian menu, a robust regional wine program, and the warm hospitality Rosa Lita and Isaura always provided.
Food
Many of Isaura’s dishes take center stage on the menu at Lita, with David and Chef de Cuisine Mike Iorio at the helm. Most of the menu is prepared in the open fire hearth oven that anchors the restaurant–it sits in the middle of the dining room.
Guests will start with ‘Essenciais’, a highly shareable collection of Spanish and Portuguese light bites and tapas, before diving into a bevy of charred vegetables, rich stews, fresh seafood and iconic meat dishes including Frango Assado and Pica Pau. Lita’s signature paellas are classically prepared in the hearth oven for the very best crispy crunchy socarrat.
Dessert
The dessert menu is short and sweet. It features comforting but perfectly executed classics like the pastel de nata, and creme catalão. But the showstopper is an indulgent, baked Madeira for two that is flambéed table side.
Drinks
Cocktails
Lita’s cocktail menu is inspired by Iberian spirits but celebrates ingredients from around the world.
Bar Manager Ricardo Rodriguez (formerly of Miami’s Broken Shaker) has crafted 16 cocktails across 4 categories: Highballs, Classico, Casiero and Martinis.
Signatures include:
Tinto De Verano | a spin on a Spanish specialty,
made with red table wine and citrus soda
Clover Club | a classic, updated with rhubarb
Umeboshi | vodka, plum sake and coconut chai foam
Spanish Martini | a personal favorite of ours
Wine
The wine list at Lita features exclusively Iberian selections from a range of old and young producers across Spain, Portugal and the peninsula’s neighboring islands.
La Otra
Next door to Lita is La Otra, an intimate neighborhood cocktail bar. Bar Manager Ricardo Rodriguez has developed a collection of globally inspired cocktails, veering away from the strictly Iberian inspiration driving the drinks program at Lita.
Guests can swing by for a cocktail before dinner, or spend an evening just at La Otra.
This summer, La Otra will also launch cocktail classes created and taught by Ricardo.
Our Team
Lita operates with a unique team structure. Every team member is fully cross trained and rotates between front of house and back of house positions on a weekly basis. All non-management team members start at the same base salary, and split tips evenly. This model prioritizes equity across the team by ensuring equal pay, and by eliminating the industry’s outdated FOH vs. BOH hierarchy.
David Viana
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David was born and raised in Little Lisboa: Newark, New Jersey’s Portuguese immigrant community. Growing up, he spent afternoons with his grandmother, Isaura, who introduced him to many of the dishes that grace Lita’s menu today.
He turned his early love of food into a storied career, rising through the ranks at Mesa Grill, Eleven Madison Park, Marea and Villa Joya in Portugal. He joined the team at Heirloom Kitchen in 2016, where he received three-and-a-half stars from The Star-Ledger within weeks. In 2018 he was nominated as Best Chef Mid Atlantic by The James Beard Foundation, shortly before competing on Top Chef’s 16th season.
In addition to leading the culinary helm at Lita, he is the Executive Chef at Heirloom Kitchen and Heirloom Kitchen at The St Laurent. When he’s not working he is spending time with his son, Cole, teaching him to make fejauda and taking him to Chuck E Cheese.
Neilly Robinson
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Neilly is the Managing Director of Lita, Heirloom Kitchen and Heirloom Kitchen at The St Laurent.
A self taught entrepreneur, Neilly founded Heirloom Kitchen–the group’s first restaurant–in 2013 with her mom, Judy. Growing up, their family dinner table was always beautiful and bountiful. So, after a decade working in fashion in New York City she decided to return to her Jersey roots, creating a restaurant and cooking school. Now celebrating its 10th anniversary, Heirloom Kitchen has grown into one of the east coast’s most beloved restaurants, with Chef David Viana leading the kitchen.
In the summer of 2022, on the heels of a wildly successful pop up in Philadelphia, Neilly and David launched Heirloom at The St. Laurent in Asbury Park: an upscale restaurant and bar in a restored historic hotel. Lita is the duo’s third concept.
Neilly supervises everything across Heirloom Hospitality. She oversees people and culture, marketing and creative, and number crunching, all the while ensuring that no detail gets overlooked.
When she isn’t working she’s busy researching where she’s traveling to next!
*Neilly is 2024 James Beard Foundation Women's Entrepreneurial Leadership Fellow
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Danny is an east coast hospitality veteran who supervises all the day-to-day operations at Lita and Heirloom at The St. Laurent.
He joins Lita’s team as a lifelong friend of David’s, and as an expert in service. He has spent more than a decade with Mark Daniel Hospitality, overseeing three 100+ seat restaurants with robust bar programs across New Jersey.
At Lita, he is spearheading the restaurant’s unique team structure. Every team member is cross trained in front of house and back of house operations, a model that prioritizes equity and elevates each guest’s experience.
Danny McGill
Ricardo Rodriguez
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Born and raised in Miami, Ricardo is a Cuban American who found his way into the beverage industry via restaurant kitchens. He kick started his career at James Beard nominated Cacao and 190 before moving behind the bar.
He has trained with award winning bartender Julio Cabrera and was a finalist in The Bacardi Legacy Cocktail Competition. Before joining the team at Lita he was a bartender at Broken Shaker and the Bar Manager of its sister restaurant, Twenty-Seven Restaurant.
Candace Li
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Candace Li is a New Jersey native who grew up surrounded by very diverse cultures and cuisine. Her journey into the culinary world isn’t as romanticized as others; she describes her pivotal moment of wanting to be a chef as learning to boil water for instant Ramen; and yet, it was still a moment of individualization and empowerment. After realizing she was fascinated by food and cooking, she pursued a degree in Baking & Pastry and Culinary Science from the Culinary Institute of America. After graduation, Li moved out to San Francisco, where she worked her way up the ranks from a commis to Executive Pastry Sous Chef at Atelier Crenn. During her time in San Francisco, Li dove into the art of sourdough and bread baking, and joined the opening team at Jane the Bakery. She discovered a love for the sweeter side of the culinary world through the elegance and finesse of French and Japanese pastries. One of her favorite desserts is pastel de nata, a staple in Portuguese cuisine, that checks all the boxes in terms of textures, flavor, and nostalgia. She loves that dessert is the edible language of celebrations and special occasions, making her every day and purpose in her career just that. At Lita, Li works to create desserts that are bold, unfussy, and match the vibe of the restaurant, while simultaneously being nostalgic and rooted in tradition, whether that is through technique or flavor. When she’s not baking, Li enjoys exploring other art forms such as music, dancing, community, and anything crafty.
Nicole Castro Garro
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Nicole grew up in Dover, New Jersey surrounded by a myriad of cultural foods. Most local restaurants were Colombian or Puerto Rican,; food at home was Costa Rican or Jamaican, and her dad cooked in Italian kitchens and brought home those skills when making Sunday dinners. Her first formal dive into the world of wine was managing Terroir Tribeca under the General & Manager himself, Paul Grieco. That time was even more a lesson in multidimensional hospitality than it was about the specific grape juice in the glass. From Terroir, Nicole helped grow a startup company called Lifetime Vintage, focusing on operations and wine education for private events and corporate clients. The company ultimately grew to be acquired by Convive Wine & Spirits in New York’s East Village. Now with a full return to the restaurant floor, she is thrilled to bring her passion of wine, food, and storytelling to Team Lita. Nicole believes that what makes the world of wine special is all the conversations you can have surrounding wine, the celebration of the farmers who make it, and the people you’re sharing your table with.