Florida’s best pizza is in Miami Beach, says a national magazine, and we’re not going to argue
Hidden inside a gray Miami Beach office building with no sign out front, the best pizza in Florida is quietly being made.
So says an extensive deep dive into pizza across the country by Food & Wine magazine, which discovered the life-affirming pizzas of Renato Viola.
In its newly released article, “The Best Pizza in Every State,” Food & Wine discovers what Miami-area folks with a taste for Neapolitan pizzas already know: Mister O1 Extraordinary Pizza lives up to its name.
Viola, who grew in the tiny town of Agripoli, in the province of Salerno, entered the United States on an O-1 visa for “individuals with extraordinary ability or achievement.” That ability? Making extraordinary pizza. He’s an actual pizza genius, as we told you in a
2017 Miami Herald story.
His traditional Neapolitanstyle pizzas are thin, with a charred edge and tender middle. His 13-inch Extraordinary pies, though, are star-shaped with a pouch of ricotta cheese in each of the eight points — an innovation that other pizzaiolos have since adopted.
And they are topped with combinations other pizzerias would never dare. The Fabio is topped with Gorgonzola bleu cheese, mozzarella and speck. The Star Lucca, spicy salami as well as the cheese-filled peaks. And the Coffee Paolo, with Gorgonzola, mozzarella, local honey and spicy salami —is dusted with fine-ground imported coffee. Yes, coffee. Extraordinary.
Mister O1 is among my searchable online list, How to Eat Like a Local in
Miami. Food & Wine was similarly, naturally smitten.
“All apologies to the Northeast pie guys trading on their heritage down here, but when you want the best, just go somewhere they speak Italian, the modern kind, like Mister 01 in Miami, named for the O-1 Visa granted to Renato Viola, a well-regarded pizza maker from the old country who came to the United States because some very smart person in government decided we needed his pizza skills.”
His pizza spot has grown from that original 18-seat spot in South Beach to four South Florida spots, plus two international locations. For our money, we’ll still take the South Beach location, where
Viola regularly pops in to throw the pies himself.
MISTER O1
Address: 1680 Michigan Ave. #101, Miami Beach
More info: 305-397-8189. Mistero1.com. How to Eat Like a Local in Miami
Carlos Frías: 305-376-4624, @Carlos_Frías