Exhausted from lounging on the shores of South Beach or drained from hours of shopping on Lincoln Road, Pizza Rustica offers the perfect lunch solution. Located on the corner of 9th St. and Washington Ave., Pizza Rustica is known by locals and out-of-towners for its famous Roman-style pizza.
Loading its pizza with fresh toppings and dripping its crust in extra virgin olive oil, Pizza Rustica utilizes the square shaped pizza to give customers the biggest bang for their buck. A “slice,” consisting of about eight three-by-two inch squares costs $3.75 (with slight variation between style of slices), and depending on the toppings, a large eighteen-inch square can cost as little as $13. But the best part about the pizza is that all the toppings manage to stay firmly cemented on the slice allowing each bite to give a savory blast of flavor, rather than the typical situation of toppings falling off a slice while trying to take a bite.
“We offer a very generous slice for a very good price,” daytime manager Luis Chauarria said. “The amount of toppings and the quality of the ingredients make it a better pizza.”
Open from 11a.m. to 6 a.m., locals can be found occupying the bar tops and outside chairs at all hours and University of Miami students frequent the joint most often on weekends after tanning on the beaches.
“Our pizza is so well known that during the Miami vs. Florida State game, even Seminoles came here to eat,” Chauarria said.
Pizza Rustica knows how to give its customers exactly what they want. Pizza connoisseurs can chow down on anything and everything from cheese pizza to specialty slices with the most popular ones including BBQ chicken, New York steak, chicken Florentine, spinach and blue cheese and caprese salad. It even offers a pizza for the chocolate lovers, pizza chocolate, which is a thin crust pizza filled with fine hazelnut chocolate imported from Europe.
The only downside to Pizza Rustica is dealing with South Beach traffic and the parlor’s lack of space to accommodate all customers’ with a place to sit and eat.
Although not as easy as ordering a delivery from Papa John’s, the quality and quantity is worth the drive, giving this pizza parlor four out of five pepperonis.
Bari Lieberman can be contacted a
b.Lieberman@umiami.edu.