Brooklyn’s illustrious Lucali pizza shop and wine bar has called Miami Beach its second home since 2013, when founder Mark Iacono opened a cozy, brick-oven pizzeria in the bayfront enclave of Sunset Harbour. Like its NYC sister, Miami’s Lucali has earned a rep for slinging some of the best pizza in town. Unlike the perpetually slammed Lucali of the North, ours has managed to retain a bit of its neighborhood charm. That means plenty of locals and a solid chance of little to no wait if you show up before 6pm.
It’s a fairly limited menu, just pizza and calzones, salads, a few signatures and sides, and two desserts. But even with the higher-than-usual prices ($30 for a plain cheese, toppings range from $4 to $10 each), and even if you’re waiting up to an hour for your table, it’s worth it. One bite of the signature plain pie topped with fresh basil sprigs, the gorgeously dressed kale Caesar, or the warm Nutella dessert pizza dusted with powdered sugar explains the hype.
Celebrities flock to Lucali in New York—and the same is true in Miami (Will Smith and Taylor Swift made recent appearances). But the upscale pizza spot is actually quite lowkey, a rustic, candlelit smattering of wooden tables and chairs, scuffed up floors, the brick pizza oven and a marble counter with chopped wood stacked neatly below, where the pizza-making magic happens. It all serves to perfectly showcase the main event: crispy, thin-crust pies with a soft, chewy center and the ideal sauce-to-cheese ratio.
Another advantage over the New York Lucali? Here, if you’re craving a cocktail, you can simply pop next door to Bay Club, the adjoining bar where live music, comedy, karaoke, and happy hour deals on favorites like meatballs and wings have made loyal regulars of Miami Beach locals.