By a+ strategies, inc.
All pizza isn’t created equal. A well-known fact, which drives national conglomerates to promote price in lieu of recipes or technique. But, when you’re from a little town in Italy and pizza sauce courses through your veins, the infinitesimal details easy for others to miss are baked into your DNA.
Such is the case for Salvatore Viscomi, known to his friends and regular customers as, Rino. Chances are, if you’ve never been to Italy you have never heard of Soverato in a tucked away corner of the Amalfi region of the Old Country. It matters not because he has brought the coastal taste here to Miami Beach by way of Andrix Café, so you can save yourself a ticket.
Andrix Café is an Italian bakery anchoring the northeast corner where Espanola Way meets Washington Avenue. Why did they pick the old home of Teatro de Osteria?
“It was time to shape a new part of South Beach, says Viscomi. Not to relive the glory days of what once was, but to make it new memories.”
The 24-hour, 365-day cafe opened with the 2017 season and hit the ground running. Recently, Rino invited a gaggle of his fellow Miami Beach Chamber of Commerce members in for coffee, bombolones and a little demonstration.
The charm of Andrix Café is not just in the culture it has brought to the beach, but in its recipe and technique, perfected over four generations of Viscomi bakers. Rino gave a demonstration to the member attendees and explained why his pizza and pastry doughs are different.
“It’s not just about our water-to-flour ratio. It’s not just about the type of flour we use,” he said. “Those are important but It’s also our ability to leave the dough alone and let it do its thing. That way, once you eat it, it’s light and crispy or, in the case of our bomboloni, fluffy.”
The specifics behind what Andrix Café does and how they do it remain a well-guarded secret but the faces of members as they took their first and, even, final bites, bore the truth. Theirs is a truly different product. All of Andrix Café baked goods are housemade daily for ultimate and absolute freshness.
In preparing for its second high season, Andrix Café is rolling out an Aperitivo Menu, which coincides with their daily happy hours from 5 p.m. until 10 p.m. They include complimentary light bites, wine and beer specials plus pizza deals.
The heart of South Beach was due for a change and Andrix Café is the perfect harbinger of what’s to come. The marquee art on its walls from noted Italian painter and sculptor, Mark Tamburro, are there only to match the art created daily by award-winning pizzaiolos and their executive pastry chef, Giuseppe Bianchi, one of Italy’s top three in the field.
Whether you’ve been to Italy and long to go back or you’ve never been and want to feel what it’s like, it will only cost you the price of a bombolone to be transported from South Beach to the cobblestone streets of The Boot.
Take a look at their full menu on www.andrixcafe.com and be sure and follow Andrix Café on Instagram: @andrixcafemiami and Facebook: andrixcafe. 1443 Washington Avenue, Miami Beach, Fl; 305.763.8017.
