Picture someone at your table with a long knife, carving paper-thin slices of Iberian ham off the bone and fanning them out next to aged manchego. That is how a meal can start at Narbona, the Uruguayan market and restaurant that took over the old Joseph's Classic Market space at Boca Center, off Military Trail near Town Center mall. Here is the part most people miss: the house-made pasta on your dinner plate is the same pasta sitting in the market case by the front door. You can eat it now, or buy it and take it home. The move is usually both.

That dual setup is the whole point. It is a grocery run and a dinner reservation sharing one roof, which is rare in Boca and genuinely changes how you use the place. Most people walk in, sit down, eat, and leave, never realizing the market counter is the real find.

What You're Getting Into

Walk in and you hit the market side first: house-made dry pasta, private-label honey and herbs, a fresh fish and meat counter, and a wine wall stocked with Narbona Wine Lodge bottles from their own vineyard in Uruguay. Look for the Tannat, Uruguay's signature red, which you will not find at your regular grocery store.

The kitchen runs all day. Mornings lean brunch, with acai bowls, avocado toast, pancakes, and parfaits. Come lunch and dinner the menu shifts to empanadas, burrata, salads, artisanal sandwiches, brick-oven pizza, and a long list of pastas. The entrees lean South American steakhouse: grilled salmon ($36), a whole butterflied branzino ($40), sesame-crusted ahi tuna ($37), grilled picanha ($35), and the Uruguayan-style short rib called tira de asado ($36). The pastas, like the tagliatelle ragu ($28), tie straight back to the house-made pasta sitting in the market case.

If you want to start big, ask about the cheese board carved tableside, a shareable spread of manchego and thin-sliced Iberian ham. To go all in on dinner, the asado toto ($58) is a short rib braised for 24 hours and served over creamy aligot potatoes. The through-line is that the restaurant and the market are not two businesses pretending to be one. It is the rare Boca spot that earns a slot in your normal week instead of just a special occasion.

The Insider Move

Treat one visit as two. Come for brunch on the weekend, eat your acai bowl or avocado toast, then shop the market before you leave. You walk out with house-made pasta, a jar of private-label honey, and a bottle of Narbona Tannat, which quietly turns a single trip into dinner at home later that week. And if there is room, sit at the bar. From there you can watch the pasta get made fresh right in front of you, which is the kind of thing most people never know to look for.

What People Are Saying

Regulars are loyal here. One Yelp reviewer said her family has raved about Narbona since opening week, and on the delivery apps you see the same people reordering the margherita pizza and the salmon entree on repeat. When Boca Raton Magazine reviewed the restaurant, the Cinco Jotas board carved tableside got top billing as the decadent way to begin a meal. The common thread is simple: people come back because one stop solves two problems, specialty ingredients you cannot find elsewhere and a real sit-down dinner, all under the same roof.

A Little Background

Narbona traces back to a wine lodge built in Uruguay in 1909, still one of the oldest in the country. That heritage is why you see the Narbona Wine Lodge label on the wall and Uruguayan staples like the chivito sandwich, the empanadas, and dulce de leche desserts on the menu. The Boca location brings all of it into one market-plus-restaurant format.

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