MIAReview
photo credit: Cleveland Jennings
Miami Slice
Included In
You do not eat the pizza at Miami Slice. You interrogate it. You poke it. You inspect its surface. You hold a half-finished slice up to the light and demand its secrets like a weary detective on a TV cop drama.
How are you so crispy, twerp? What’s in this garlic confit cream, punk? How in the hell aren’t you greasy, even with those little cupped pepperonis that usually make the lower third of our face shine like a diamond slathered in Crisco?
There is pizza, and then there is pizza so good it makes you mad. That is the kind of pizza Miami Slice makes.
photo credit: Cleveland Jennings
This small shop on the northern edge of Downtown serves hefty New York-style slices. But here’s where Miami Slice differs from your average NYC slice—it’s so crispy. You lift a slice up by its crust and its posture remains stiff as a five-star general. The dough is audibly crunchy, yet airy inside. It makes the sound of fall leaves crunching underfoot when you fold it in half, but won’t cut the roof of your mouth as you take a bite. It is pizza so perfectly calibrated we want to order a slice to go and immediately donate it to science.
Miami Slice serves our favorite pizza in Miami, at a time when the competition has never been more fierce. And a predictable consequence of this is the substantial line that’s always out the door, and occasionally in a state of mild disorganization. If you’re trying to place a takeout order, expect an ordeal that could last several hours. Dining in is usually faster—but could still be a two-hour affair on a busy day during tourist season. Show up on a Thursday 30 minutes before they open if you really don't want to deal with that long of a wait. Just remember to find the person with a clipboard upon arrival and give them your name and number; that line you see is only for takeout.
photo credit: Cleveland Jennings
Dining in at Miami Slice means sitting at a 15-seat counter and ordering from a selection of five slices. That—plus a couple rotating desserts, beer, wine, soda, and coffee—is the whole menu (at least at the time of this writing). We understand if, after hearing all this, you’re mentally weighing whether or not five slices of pizza are really worth such struggles.
This, of course, depends on how much you like pizza. There are no shortage of pies around Miami that are much quicker, easier, and more affordable. But none of them will send you into an existential spiral the way Miami Slice does. None of them will make you reconsider the earthly limitations of dough, cheese, and pepperoni. None of them are this unreasonably, confoundingly, maddeningly good. None of them are Miami Slice, the very tiny home of the very best pizza in Miami.
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photo credit: Cleveland Jennings
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