The best Italian restaurants in Miami, the new Little Italy of America

Rustic, dark, cozy—Michael Pirolo’s Macchialina is a laid-back, family-style trattoria serving homey Italian food. It’s in the heart of touristy South Beach but regularly packs in the locals—even the body-conscious ones. I’d even argue Pirolo’s handmade pasta and fresh seasonal specials are downright transcendental. First time at the restaurant? The ultra-creamy wild mushroom polenta and the cavatelli with baby meatballs are required for initiation.

Time Out tip: The four-course, family style tasting menu is a downright steal for $70, even if you’re adding the $55 wine pairing.

Perhaps you’re wondering why we’d put a place that doesn’t even claim to be Italian on a list of the best Italian restaurants in Miami. Just go there, order Luci’s chopped salad, the baked clams with nduja and lemon, saffron tagliatelle and pappardelle with rabbit, and finish with crispy tiramisu. No, these aren’t dishes transported from the Old World—they are better, creative and delicious. Trust us: This is stellar, Italian-inspired cooking that’s been among my favorite restaurants since the day it opened.

Time Out tip: Though it’s nearly impossible to book Boia De reservations online, you actually have a decent chance of scoring walk-in seats if you arrive early, right around opening time.

Otto & Peppe nailed a Wynwood-friendly vibe that’s both festive and comfortable. I also loved every single thing I’ve eaten from the menu, which is a few apps, house-made pastas and desserts similarly made just beyond the chef’s counter. Though they specialize in natural wines with a market in the front, Otto & Pepe also serves some seriously delicious cocktails. 

Order this: Yes, get as many pasta dishes as you can manage, but also the fried egg and soft potato polka-dotted with black truffles.

The folks from Michelin tossed around stars in Miami for the first time in 2022, and somehow they overlooked this gem, the Miami outpost of a D.C. power crowd favorite. Fiola is a nearly faultless restaurant, with a staff that knows the ideal level of attentive service, a wine program as good as any and cocktails made with serious care. All that is good and fine, but then there’s also the creative and often expertly executed dishes put out by chef Danny Ganem, a Miami native who likes to reinvent and rethink classic dishes, like a lasagna made with short rib and, if you can believe it, eel. 

Time Out tip: All this greatness will cost you—a hundred bucks a head, easy—so just remember Fiola next time dad or the boss offers to pick up the bill.

Miami native and among the 305’s favorite local chefs, Giorgio Rapicavoli tapped into his Italian roots when he opened Luca in 2021. I’ve yet to stumble on anything on this menu that’s not great, but the thing not to miss is the patate fritte, balls of fried potato dotting a custardy cream fonduta with a shaving of black truffle. Where to go from there? Try the tuna caprese with preserved tomato, panzanella salad, grilled monkfish with fennel or the memorable cacio e pepe. 

Time Out tip: If the weather’s nice, try grabbing a sidewalk spot on the charming, pedestrian-only Giralda Plaza, which feels a whole lot like Rapicavoli has taken you with him to Italy.

Wife and husband team Janice Buraschi and Juan Manuel Umbert exported their Lima-bred concept to Wynwood into a 77-seat industrial space where a long chef’s counter is the big draw. I enjoyed watching the two of them work in unison as much as I enjoyed their everything-done-in-house dishes, like a gooey stracciatella with just-baked sourdough.

Order this: The agnolotti shows the talent of these two chefs, the tiny ravioli like soup dumplings, with a deeply umami mushroom broth bursting from a bite.

Take a seat outside, smack in the center of Sunset Harbour, which has quietly turned into a popping locals’ favorite neighborhood in Miami Beach. Here, the menu is a mix of semi-authentic Italian and Italian-American classics, dreamed up as a collaboration of Pubbelly Sushi’s José Mendín and former Lucali chef Santo Agnello. Start with the beef carpaccio that’s a combination of textures and an umami explosion with truffles shaved over top; a branzino well grilled and served on a brothy bowl of clams; an eggplant parm bubbling in a cauldron of gooey cheese.

Order this: Casa Isola’s rigatoni with vodka sauce might be the best version of it on the beach—or at least the most reasonably priced (hear that, Carbone?).

Chef Massimo Bottura is among the world’s most-awarded chefs, and Torno Subito Miami is the latest outpost of a concept he’s opened in Singapore and Dubai. At times, the dishes at Torno Subito present a challenge of figuring out what’s below all the complexity—but the discovery ends up making the experience feel more special.

Order this: For your first time, do the eight-course, $165 tasting menu (although extras will likely push your bill toward four figures). For your second time, order a pizza and a glass of wine and get out for less than the tasting menu tip. 

Recently relocated from Brickell to The Citadel food hall, Stanzione 87 is one of the city’s best pizza spots. And pizza is Italian, so I say on that fact alone it qualifies for this list. But even those who hate on pizza (do they exist?) could build one fine Italian feast from Stanzione’s starters, like the kale caesar and mozz sticks. Now that's a fine way to spend an evening. 

Time Out tip: For those who can’t decide, there’s a Pizza Trio Mini pizza sampler where you can select three options for $30.

Considering how hard it is to get a table, how the bill will likely be more than your next car payment, and all the people who won’t stop talking about it, I might have headed into Carbone with the intention of not liking it. But then I start off at the lavishly decorated bar with a martini that’s exactly what it should be, I’m led to a table by a waitstaff who perfects formality, and I realize this place really is something special. The food is no less so: big plates of ribs and peppers, linguine and clams. Yes, this place is a scene, but you’ll suddenly want to be part of it.

Order this: The dish they’re known for, a spicy vodka sauce clung to al dente rigatoni.

The Major Food Group restaurant chain brought its Contessa concept to town in 2022 and added a spot as fashionable as the Design District around it. The place is a nostalgic interior designer’s dream, full of peaches and teals and antique-looking furniture. Immediately busy with pretty people, Contessa also delivers with the food, a collection of northern Italian favorites and also new inventions, like a squash carpaccio of thin-sliced butternut in a sweet-sour sauce.

Order this: One of the well-aged steaks, the tomatoey-buttery lobster pasta and the ice creams, made in-house and served in a silver dish as evocative of another era as the space around it.

One of the city’s finest and fanciest restaurants, Casa Tua is a sleek and chic, Italian country-inspired spot housed in a refurbished, 1925 Mediterranean-style home. There are many reasons to dine at Casa Tua, the least of which is the food, which is excellent. Go to brag to your friends, to burn a hole in your wallet to say you did, to charm the pants off your date. See? I just came up with four sound arguments for trying this place at least once.

Chef Marco Giugliano began working at his family's Napoli restaurant at 15 years old, but don't expect that these days he serves family-style red sauce dishes most Americans associate with Southern Italy. Instead, Giugliano seems on a mission to tear down and reinvent, tweezer-plating his way to a yellowfin tartare with sunchoke chips that looks gallery ready, a soft egg with black truffle that’s oozy and rich and an octopus tentacle dolled up with sauces and veg. It’s not all unfamiliar: the near-perfect tagliolini comes surprisingly simple, with French butter and black truffle.

Latin America’s Da Silva Hospitality Group landed in the U.S. with Zucca, putting down solid Sicilian-style roots. For the menu, think shared starters continuing on to steaks served like in Florence, dictionary-thick and sliced before arriving at your table. Miami’s Cocktail Cartel handles mixology at Zucca’s bar, or try something from the wine list, which goes deep with over 1,000 bottles on the list.

Casadonna just might be the most beautiful and glamorous restaurant-of-the-moment in Miami. It’s the restaurant equivalent of the supermodel breezing into a party of part-time influencers. At times, the dishes will feel appropriate to the space. But no matter how you feel about what’s coming out of the kitchen, it’s hard to find a prettier spot to spend an evening than under the trellises out back.

Order this: For dessert, there’s a chocolate cube that hides layers of cake, cream and mousse. 

Come once and they’ll ask you if you want the same seat over by the window, maybe bring over a welcome glass of something bubbly. Do you want to see the specials board yet or just enjoy the sunset? By the way, the chef is adding truffles to a few dishes. Oh, you just want the same thing you always get, the spaghetti with bottarga and porchetta for your date? It’s like this at either location, Coral Gables or Midtown, where you’ll feel like you’ve found a new neighborhood Italian place, even if this isn’t your neighborhood. It’s good, it’s affordable, the service is spot-on, and, yeah, let’s go again next week.

Order this: The cacio y pepe is twirled tableside in a giant wheel of cheese.

The ground-floor restaurant of the members-only Soho House is the only area that’s open to the public. But you’re not there for the clout, you’re there to eat well. Dining with friends? Split the black truffle pizza.

Time Out tip: On a date? The large buttonwood trees and string lights make for an idyllic, romantic setting.

Sorrento-born Angelo Elia inched his way south, opening restaurants in Boca Raton and Fort Lauderdale before landing in Aventura. It’s a splashy, modern space with crystal chandeliers, leather banquettes and folks dressed to the nines. Yet despite all the glitz and glam, Angelo’s menu skews traditional with classic Italian dishes like the kind chef’s grandmother taught him how to make when he was a young boy. Whether you’re saving your calories or ready to splurge, Angelo’s won’t send you home hungry.

Order this: Try the chicken parm and pasta a la vodka or lighten things up with an order of the octopus and the branzino. 

Technically this is an ex-pat from France, but Bagatelle has plenty of Mediterranean dishes that qualify as Italian, like the tartare served in little pie crusts and dusted with preserved egg, or the eggplant parm, rolled up into tiny cigars, grilled and sitting pretty on a red and white sauce. This is also the place on this list that wins a special award: best Italian restaurant to dance on the tables. The more sedate early reservations give way to a late-night vibe here that’s a downright scene.

Time Out tip: Even if you’re planning to dance on your seat, you can still wear stilettos: banquettes are equipped with cushions made to withstand high heels.

MC Kitchen was a pioneer in the then-quiet Design District when it opened its industrial-meets-cozy dining room in 2012. It's still putting out tasty pasta (the strozzapreti with sausage and mushrooms is a winner), creative pizzas (black truffle and brussels sprouts, seriously), and an arm’s length list of desserts.

Order this: At the end of a meal, go for the fancy cheese plate, because we are in the Design District after all.

This darling, family-owned ristorante doesn’t look like much from the outside. But inside, it’s abuzz with the sound of clinking glasses and fast-talking Italian servers taking orders and maneuvering large plates of fresh pasta about the cozy dining room. Sapore di Mare does the cheese-wheel preparation justice, tossing each dish in individually sized rounds of aged parmesan. 

Order this: Even if you think you don’t want them, get it with truffles. No one ever regrets ordering truffles.

Fratelli’s regional Italian dishes lure people from all over to Downtown for its smiley servers and honest, homestyle cooking. The popular fiocchi de pera—tender pockets of fresh pasta filled with pear and taleggio cheese—is so good you’ll want to swim in the creamy butter and sage sauce and lick the plate once you’re done.

To sum it up, this Downtown stalwart is Italian fine dining, Miami-style. You go for the uninterrupted water views, $30-plus pasta dishes and servers who occasionally pretend you’re not even there. But wow, ain’t it pretty. Divine culinary creations at ungodly prices.

Order this: It might cost you near three figures, but the salt-crusted branzino makes for a fun tableside unveiling.