Lucali

Lucali is one restaurant we'll always be able to brag to New Yorkers about. It's not that they don't have one. They do (and it makes exceptional pizza). But their Lucali requires a wait that could exceed five hours. At the one in Sunset Harbour, as long as you get there before 6pm, there's a good chance you'll walk right in with no wait at all.

But even if the thought of an early dinner makes your Miami bones quiver, Lucali is still worth waiting an hour on a busy night. Plus, there's a bar next door called Bay Club that’s good for drinks while you wait.

photo credit: Emily Schindler

Whether you waltz right in or have to kill some time next door, your reward will be a pie that defies comparison. Unlike most pizza, which tends to neatly follow some sort of regional style, Lucali’s is on its own planet. It’s almost a perfect hybrid between a classic New York paper-plate slice and a crispy thin-crust pie. It tastes like it was made with alien technology that hasn’t been given to the rest of the world’s pizzerias. The dough is soft towards the middle and starts to get crispier and crunchier the closer you get to the crust. The ratio of sauce to cheese tastes like it’s been perfectly calibrated by little green scientists from a planet where pizza is the most precious natural resource.

photo credit: Emily Schindler

photo credit: Emily Schindler

Inside it looks like an auto garage that’s been taken over by sullen pizza monks who stand wordlessly in the back corner and concentrate on rolling out dough with wine bottles. The lighting is mostly candles, which makes it feel like winter even when it’s 97 degrees outside.

Depending on the size of your group and your hunger levels, there are other small plates and pastas worth sharing: a very good baked artichoke, chicken parm, and some rotating pasta specials (if it has vodka sauce, order it). But they are all background dancers for the pizza our friends up north spend so many more hours than us waiting for.

Food Rundown

photo credit: Emily Schindler

Pizza

We remember our first bite of Lucali more vividly than our last five birthdays. Even if you have iron-strong preconceived pizza preferences of precise thickness and sauce-to-cheese ratios and all that good stuff, one slice of this wipes it all away.

photo credit: Emily Schindler

Calzone

Coming here and ordering a calzone instead of a pizza feels like going to the Super Bowl and watching hockey on your phone. However, the calzones here are really good, super cheesy, and do come with some extra sauce that makes the whole thing even better. Just use it to supplement a pizza. It’s a supporting actor, not the main star.

Spicy Vodka Fusilli

The pasta specials here change often, but if it has vodka sauce in it—order it. That's the star of this dish, and the creamy vodka sauce that clings to each noodle for dear life makes up for the fact that it's not very spicy.

photo credit: Emily Schindler

Baked Artichoke

When you're taking down multiple slices of pizza, it's nice to have a vegetable like this on the side. So order it—or just get it as a topping on your pizza. Both are good options.

Chicken Wings

Eight oven-baked wings are arranged in a single file line with a pair of very good sauces: one is slightly sweet and spicy and the other is a classic bleu cheese. The bones slide right out of these suckers with little to no resistance.