Three months after closing, popular Miami pizza spot reopens in Little River
When he closed his pizza restaurant Stanzione 87 in Brickell earlier this year, owner Franco Stanzione promised Miami he’d be back.
He has made good on that promise.
The new Stanzione has opened at The Citadel food hall just three months after the original restaurant’s closing. It’s taking over the space of Stanzione’s former pizza spot Ash.
So far, the restaurant, which was named one of the best 50 pizza spots in the country in 2022 by Italian guide 50 Top Pizza, is operating as though it’s a soft opening, with a partial menu available. The full menu comes with the grand opening on Aug. 15.
“It’s finally the right time in the right neighborhood,” Stanzione says.
The original Stanzione spent 11 years at 87 SW Eighth St., a considerable time in Miami’s restaurant landscape. Stanzione was just 23 when he opened it. But the neighborhood changed as neighborhoods do, and suddenly it was no longer an ideal location.
“We did great, but then Brickell changed dramatically,” he says now. “Eighty percent of my customers left Brickell. A lot went to Miami Shores.”
That bodes well for his customer base at The Citadel, which isn’t far from Miami Shores and is also home to such vendors as USBS Burgers & Fries; Manjay (Caribbean food) and Bar Kaiju, a popular monster-themed cocktail bar.
The new menu will feature many of the original’s popular items, like calzones, pepperoni and pesto pizza and the popular Margherita, which Stanzione calls one of the best in Miami (he’ll admit that La Leggenda Pizzeria on Miami Beach is also pretty adept at making that particular pizza). There will be a sandwich special each month, hopefully involving Stanzione’s Calabrian pepper sauce.
The new restaurant allows him to cook with a wood fire instead of just gas, always a positive for pizzas, but the real difference, Stanzione says, is that he’ll be able to be more of a hands-on presence.
“I don’t have four restaurants that I’m running to every day,” he says. “I’m not driving around Miami all day.”
The pizza scene in Miami has grown considerably in the past 11 years, but Stanzione says the landscape is more supportive than combative.
“It’s a tough market, definitely, but competition makes it all more interesting,” he says, praising such local favorites as Miami Slice and Vice City Pizza. “It’s a good community. We have good relationships with each other. I feel like we push each other to do better instead of trying to take each other’s customers.”
Stanzione
Where: The Citadel, 8300 NE Second Ave., Miami
More information: thecitadelmiami.com