MIAReview
photo credit: Cleveland Jennings
Walrus Rodeo
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What is Walrus Rodeo? It’s complicated.
They serve Italian dishes like potato gnocchi and lasagna but don’t identify as an Italian restaurant. They make pizzas in a wood fired pizza oven, but aren’t a pizzeria (it actually says so on their website, business cards, and matchbooks). And although it’s in the same Buena Vista strip mall as Boia De, its sister restaurant and one of Miami’s absolute best restaurants, Walrus Rodeo is not another Boia De.
photo credit: David Bley
photo credit: David Bley
photo credit: David Bley
photo credit: David Bley
Like a younger sibling eager to form its own identity, almost everything about Walrus Rodeo feels designed to make this clear and sidestep any categorization whatsoever. The host stand and side stations are garage toolkits. The Western-themed wallpaper has boomboxes and surfers hiding among the saloons and horses. And that wood fired oven does the work of a full kitchen: roasting, baking, and grilling everything on orange embers and temperamental flames.
The menu is equally all-over-the-place—featuring a green lamb lasagna, charbroiled oysters doused with prosecco, and a carrot tartare that has surpassed all of the tuna or steak versions we've ever tried. Don't ask us to define this cuisine as anything other than delicious.
If its name didn’t already get the point across, Walrus Rodeo doesn’t take itself too seriously. But it does take you—the guest—seriously. And maybe that’s why all this delightful chaos works: behind the goofiness is skill. The service is sincere, knowledgeable, and unpretentious. The food is exciting, but it’s not a once-in-a-lifetime reservation that intimidates the hell out of you.
Charbroiled Oystersphoto credit: Cleveland Jennings
Chicoriesphoto credit: Cleveland Jennings
Potato Gnocchiphoto credit: Cleveland Jennings
It’s one of those rare special occasion restaurants that’s also perfect for most regular occasions. It’s an impressive but not boring date spot—even if you’re just taking yourself on a date. Sit solo at their kitchen counter, and you’ll be entertained all night by cooks stretching pizza dough and rearranging pans around the fire. If you stick to the starters, salads, pastas, and the rodeo za, you'll have a perfect meal no matter who you’re here with.
The possibilities are plenty because Walrus Rodeo is defiantly unrestrictive. And in a landscape where so many trendy Miami restaurants blur into one homogenous mass, Walrus Rodeo has taken a sharp left in the opposite direction—and in the process made us feel like we’re tasting pizza, lasagna, and carrots for the very first time. Sure, it’s a little confusing, but Walrus Rodeo takes simple things we’ve grown to see as banal or mundane and makes them exciting again. Kids know that feeling well. But for a restaurant to capture it, that’s a rare and complicated achievement.
Food Rundown
photo credit: Cleveland Jennings
Carrot Tartare
photo credit: Cleveland Jennings
Mustard Green Lasagna
photo credit: Cleveland Jennings
Potato Gnocchi
photo credit: Cleveland Jennings
Rodeo Za
photo credit: Cleveland Jennings
Pork Belly