Valentina Huerta has a gift for making you feel like the most welcome person in the room. It’s my first visit to Mixela (pronounced me-shell-uh), and one by one, she places her husband’s plates before me, describing them with obvious pride. Hokkaido scallops come as translucent rounds pooled in a yuzu-serrano chile aguachile with kiwi and smoked chayote. Venezuelan arepas arrive as griddled masa cakes split and spilling over with a creamy chicken and avocado filling. A maki roll layered with bluefin tuna, burdock root, cucumber, and green beans is gilded with nutty, chile-laced salsa macha. Flaky empanadas filled with green chile beef join the procession. It’s a menu that hopscotches across continents, and that’s the point.
Understanding Mixela means understanding chef and co-owner Gian Franco Brugaletta. “The restaurant is a reflection of him,” Huerta emphasizes. “It’s very personal.” Even the name hints at that idea. Derived from miscela, the Italian word for “mix,” it’s less a brand and more a biography, with a chapter that began on the French Riviera.
Huerta left Mexico at 17 to study culinary arts in Arizona, earning an associate’s degree at Scottsdale Community College before landing a scholarship to culinary school in Monaco. That’s where she met Brugaletta, born in Venezuela and raised in a Sicilian household, then working as a chef for the Italian BiCE Group. The résumé behind him was already impressive—culinary school in Venezuela, a master’s in Italian cooking earned in the Piedmont, and an externship at La Madonnina del Pescatore, Chef Moreno Cedroni’s two-Michelin-star seafood-driven restaurant on Italy’s Adriatic coast.
They fell for each other, got married, and spent years doing the long-distance dance, as Phoenix slowly won Brugaletta over. “He would work the season over there, then come here, ride his motorcycle, and talk about how beautiful the weather was,” Huerta recalls. Meanwhile, she was building a career as a Marriott general manager while Brugaletta climbed the ranks in Monaco kitchens, eventually spending a decade as the executive sushi chef at Buddha-Bar Monte-Carlo. “In that world of luxury where money is no object, it’s really fun to be a chef,” Huerta says. “He was invited onto yachts, did some parts of the prince’s wedding, and was flown into Baur au Lac in Switzerland for a party because someone wanted his sushi.”
A restaurant in Arizona, however, was a shared dream. When the opportunity arose, Huerta didn’t wait for Brugaletta to relocate. “I actually bought the restaurant without him and started construction,” she recounts. Huerta balanced the buildout with her corporate role for what would become Nonna Urban Eatery in Old Town Scottsdale. “Gian Franco moved in October of 2016, and Nonna opened in December,” she shares. “As soon as he got here, I said, ‘Here—this is your baby. I hope you like it, because I have to go back to work.’ It was insane,” she laughs. “But we do insane things sometimes, and that’s okay.”
Over the next several years, their successful venture grew into three concepts: the restaurant, a food truck, and Nomada Provisions, a coffee shop and wine cafe stocked with cheeses, prepared foods, and pantry staples. Running three businesses was sometimes a challenge, so when a landlord issue at Nonna arose, “We said, ‘You know what, let’s just turn the shop into a restaurant,’” Huerta says. They kept the food truck running through construction, and in 2024, Mixela opened in the former Nomada space in the Loma Linda Historic District.
The charming restaurant seats around 50 across a small bar, dining room, and bougainvillea-draped patio. An aperitivo-driven menu favors small plates meant to be shared, alongside a concise list of wines, beer, and cocktails, many of which are mezcal-based, like the Mixelita, a mezcal-based margarita bolstered with tamarind, the sweet‑tart fruit of a tropical tree. “That’s purely because of me,” Huerta adds. “I love mezcal and want to show that it can be an incredibly versatile spirit.”
The food is where Brugaletta’s voice takes over, shaped by what the season brings. “There’s sushi, there’s Latin American inspiration, there’s European technique, and it’s all in a beautifully packaged, intimate setting,” says Huerta. Signatures like the aforementioned empanadas plus hamachi with black truffle and pickled plums are constants, but the menu changes often, sometimes daily. “We don’t change the entire menu,” Huerta notes, “we change items. For example, we always have a seasonal vegetarian option and a seasonal pasta. We used to have a pumpkin rigatoni, then a penne with mushrooms, right now cannelloni with ricotta and leeks, and for the summer maybe gnocchi.”
Brugaletta is, by her account, obsessive in the best possible way. “When you’ve had a career where you cooked 1,500 blue lobsters for royalty, everything needs to be perfect,” says Huerta. “He’s incredibly talented and has such technique. He has an old-school European mentality with very high standards.” “Even though he sometimes drives me crazy,” she adds with a laugh, “it’s wonderful.”
It’s a concept the community has clearly embraced, and she couldn’t be more grateful. “We had a more touristy crowd at Nonna, while Mixela is full of people from the neighborhood,” says Huerta, who herself lives four blocks away. “I love that they can walk here or ride their bikes. It’s a beautiful melting pot and the people that we have met are just great human beings.”
“With Glai Baan and now Tandy’s in the neighborhood, and Asi Es La Vida and Rewined, I feel like this area is starting to be a Midtown focal point,” she continues. “At Mixela, the food speaks for itself, and I think we’ve created a very welcoming environment for people who just want a respite. We feel very lucky.'”
written by: christina barrueta
photographed by: luke irvin
𖡡 3410 north 24th street, phoenix, arizona 85016
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