La Leggenda Pizzeria — Restaurant in Miami Beach

I would never go back. Too many other places nearby.

This restaurant is located in a charming street in Miami Beach. Atmosphere was nice and the pizza looked good, so my wife and I decided to eat here. Looking at the wine list, the wines were only listed by varietal; no vineyards, names, vintages. When asking our server about the wine, he didn’t know about them and brought out the bottles so we could see them. We ordered the Montepulciano, which was decent.

We ordered the Caprese salad, which was an interesting appetizer. A nice ball of mozzarella on top of some lettuce and surrounded by a ton of halved cherry-sized tomatoes. The only basil was a small leaf used for garnish on top. The mozz was delicious, but the rest was lacking. My wife and I were having to add salt, olive oil, and balsamic to give the rest some flavor.

For the pizza, we ordered the Mistica. It consists of mozz, salami, ricotta, artichokes, and tomato. The flavor was actually really nice. The problem was that the crust was soft, floppy, and very doughy. I have never had a Neapolitan style pizza that was so floppy. The ingredients slid right off of the pizza and we had to basically wad up the crust into a pouch to keep the pizza together. I will reiterate that the flavor and ingredients were good, it was just ruined by the worst crust I’ve ever had from an “award winning” pizza. They claim to have won a ton of awards for their pizza, but I can’t imagine any self-respecting Italian giving this pizza anything but a thumbs down.

Annoyingly, our server did not care at all about our displeasure. We initially thought maybe our pizza was just undercooked and we could get it fixed. I wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt. The server reminded us that he mentioned the pizza was soft. Unfortunately, I didn’t realize he meant “the softest, floppiest, doughiest pizza to ever call itself Napoletana.”

Icing on the cake was that we had a slice of pizza left and our server cleared the table without even offering to box it up. More of an annoyance than anything. Once he realized we were unhappy, we were left on our own until we paid the bill. Didn’t check back or let a manager know we were displeased or literally anything. Cleared the table (with food left on it) and got us our bill.

I’ll forgive a bad food experience if the restaurant does something to remediate it. But when the food sucks and the service sucks and they’re unapologetic about it, I’ll...

As a 1st gen Italian American who frequents Naples every year and one who still has the majority of our extended family back in Naples, I can say that this restaurant represents the worst and most embarrassing aspects of being Neapolitan.

I can confirm other reviews that state this place is discriminatory in the fact that they provide good service selectively. If you’re not part of the circle, you’ll essentially be ignored. They retain the 1960s Italian immigrant viewpoint of keeping your circle closed. What a joke.

The kid on the pizza oven clearly didn’t have any AVPN training with the oven despite them claiming to have the certification. For those interested in knowing, it’s an internationally recognized certification in how to cook Neapolitan pizza well. Pizza was doughy and soggy. Seems to make sense why their last meaningful award was nearly 10 years ago for their pizza.

Had one beer and saw the waiter maybe twice over the course of the entire dinner. He did not ask once if we needed something else to drink. The pizza took 45 minutes despite another table having ordered two pizzas with longer cook time 10 minutes after us getting theirs within 20 minutes. The pasta was dense and flavorless. It gave me agita the entire night .

The first pizza they brought out was completely wrong and I had to chase the waiter to let him know it was the wrong pizza….. we ordered the most basic pizza on the menu by the way.

They added an automatic 18% service charge for a TABLE OF TWO despite horrendous service.

From an Italian, this place is a poor excuse for Italians and has all of our worst qualities on full display. Lazy, rude, racist, disrespectful, proud in all the wrong ways, and above all cowardly. Go here and you’ll get what is called the “Balotelli treatment”.

There was one bright spot and that’s what the 1 star is for. The waitress that helped earlier in the day, what a wonderful soul. Clearly the stand out in the restaurant.

Che scemo scemo. 🇮🇹🇮🇹

Edit: And you can clearly see before they are just for show in addressing these culture problems. This kind of experience warrants a much more intentional response than what they’ve given below.

I’ve reached out to the restaurant leadership multiple times with no response. Don’t go here and support these snobby Italians and...

this is a hidden gem in Miami Beach, for now. My mouth was salivating just thinking about this pie I wanted to devour. Located in the East side of Espanola Way in between Washington and Collins is this joint found. Needless to say, parking is going to be a challenge so if you can make it on a weekday it'd be even better. The place is owned by Giovanni Gagliardi, from Naples, which is a pizza world champion and perfects his dough with yeast from Italy so you know this is good pizza here, no joke. Let me describe the pie I went for.. Regina: Prosciutto, Mozzarella, Parmigiano Reggiano 24 months, arugula and sweet grape tomatoes. Now this crust right here is to die for and that's a lot coming from moi, who usually leaves the crust for my wife lol, yes she loves dough. The arugula and grape tomatoes were fresh and the cheese is amazing because it's been aged for 24 months as described on the menu. Prosciutto is also really good and they add a lot of it so no holding back here. All these toppings sitting on a thin crust perfected by chef and fresh out of a brick oven in little time. So you are getting Neapolitan style wood fired pizza, what more can you ask for. This is one of the best pizza pies you could ever find in Miami and a lot of the pies are award winners so there's that. The pie is $18 but you get your money's worth because it's not small at all and very filling. Staff and Chef are all Italian here as well as Giovanni and that is always comforting when you go to an Italian joint because you know they are really passionate about their food. Fabio was super attentive and friendly and somewhat funny at times. Finished the meal with a cappuccino and took half of my pie to the wifey because what kind of husband would I be if I...