Miami Meat Czar at Center of Gift Gate Received $730K from City

Public records reveal that the chef and restaurant owner who appeared in a video giving a luxury gift box to a Miami Police officer has provided more than $733,700 worth of meat for City of Miami events since December 2023. That’s a lot of protein.

According to documents breaking down discretionary spending from the offices of then-District 3 Commissioner Joe Carollo and District 1 Commissioner Miguel Gabela, the city has paid Aldo Episona’s El Toro Loco Meat Distribution, LLC, and El Toro Loco Churrascaria (Steakhouse) hundreds of thousands of dollars for pork shoulder, frozen turkeys, and staff lunch between December 2023 to mid-December 2025.

The records show that Carollo’s office had nearly a dozen transactions with El Toro Loco Meat Distribution for his holiday pork shoulder and turkey giveaway events, totaling $666,673 over the last two years. In November 2025 alone, Carollo’s office spent more than $117,000 on pork shoulder and $200,500 on frozen turkeys. (The full breakdown is provided below.)

Notably, a lawsuit filed last year against Carollo, who served as the chairman of the Bayfront Park Management Trust, by former employees Jose Suarez and Jose Canto, alleged that “one of Carollo’s close friends and political supporters owns El Toro Loco, and Carollo allowed the El Toro Loco food truck stationed at Bayfront Park to dig “a massive, 200-foot long trench to lay electrical wire underground, aiming to steal electricity from an electric sign” at the park without proper permitting or engineering surveys.

The lawsuit stated that after Suarez told the food truck to remove the illegal trench and electrical wires, the truck installed a generator without a city permit. When Suarez tried to terminate El Toro Loco’s license from the Trust, the complaint continues, Carollo warned “that El Toro Loco was ‘very powerful political ally’ [sic] and friend and Suarez should steer clear of any further interference.”

Gabela’s District 1 office spent $448 at El Toro Loco Churrascaria in August 2024 for an office staff luncheon after a back-to-school giveaway event, records reveal. Additionally, El Toro Loco Meat Distribution billed his office $66,584 for 3,500 units of pork shoulder in December 2025.

The Coral Gables Police Department is currently investigating whether Miami Police Department officer and head of Internal Affairs, Winsor Lozano, broke department rules prohibiting officers from accepting gifts after a TikTok video showed him unboxing a luxury gift package filled with premium meat and other items from Espinosa.