Upland Pizza Miami Beach Is A Thumbs Up
I really don’t know why I keep coming down to Miami, but I do. I especially like coming down and not telling the Pizza Expert I was here until after I have left. All if the best restaurants and pizza joints are in… drum roll please… brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrump!!! Newwwwww York. So what do I do? Wind up going to the NY-Miami connections. Like… hmmmm, Lucali (did that one) and now, in keeping with finding these little NYC-MIA (New York Missing In Action) gems, I wind up at Upland on 1st and Collins, just on the opposite corner of Prime Fish.
It’s here you will find yourself inside a nice comfortable black tiled and wood trimmed dining room to an open kitchen with a wood fired authentic pizza oven. Dubbed a Californian eatery, I’ll dispense with the nuances in branding and stick to “it’s an Italian restaurant.”
Just inside the Upland’s entrance, the wall behind the hostess is lined with decorative canning jars of preserved lemons from Northern California, yet another reminder that the best lemons and limoncello come from the Sorrentine Peninsula and the coast of Amalfi, and islands of Procida, Ischia, and Capri. Italy, yeah. Same place as neapolitan style pizza.
So, of course, the Mad Greek argued with the hosted and demanded these lemons come from Italy.
Upland Pizza Miami Beach
The Upland menu is an eclectic little menu with extremely tasty Italian fare like wood-fired prawns, pappardelle with spicy sausage ragù, a delucious buccatini and coal-roasted short rib, bucatini cacio e pepe (delicious), but only four choices for a nice neapolitan pizza.
So, when in Rome… get the margherita stracciatella di bufala with roasted heirloom tomatoes, garlic and basil (cooked crispy well done)
On first bite you will notice the texture is firm and the bite is crisp with a slight flop at the tip. Every bite to the crust is perfect. Possibly the most balanced neapolitan pizza I’ve ever tasted and in Miami of all places.
And each and every bite had the unmistakable flavor combination accented by the stracciatella di bufala. For all you rookies out there like “The Pizza Expert”, stracciatella di bufala is a stringy, sweet type of gourmet Italian cheese that comes from from the very rich milk of water buffaloes.
I found the taste to be wonderfully complex for a very simple and straight forward margherita abeetza di napoli. Even a wisp of crushed red pepper took away from the carefully and wonderfully balanced taste of this truly fine pizza at Upland.
I withhold my rating on this one as a departure from the norm and ask The Pizza Expert to follow up with a coordinated review and rating of a pizza which belongs in the Worst Pizza Hall of Fame as simply one of the best.
(Pizza Expert says 7/8 slices for Upland Pizza Miami Beach)