Foozo: Wood Fire at the Western Edge of Aventura

The White Hot comes out of the oven with the banana peppers still spitting against goat cheese, sea salt scattered over a crust that has just come off live flame. Ricotta sits in soft pools between roasted mushrooms and roasted garlic, and the first bite runs hotter and saltier than kosher pizza in this county usually dares. The address is 2520 NE 186th Street, the road Miami-Dade signs along most of its length as NE Miami Gardens Drive, in the unincorporated pocket called Ojus where North Miami Beach runs out and Aventura begins. Foozo opened on this stretch in March 2015, moved one block into its present room at the end of 2017, and has spent the decade since making a single argument: that a kosher dairy counter can cook from a wood oven and mean it.

Eight pizzas anchor the menu, and they are built on sauces rather than on toppings piled for volume. The White Hot at twenty two dollars is the one to judge the kitchen by: white sauce, fresh mozzarella, ricotta, goat cheese, roasted mushrooms, roasted garlic, banana peppers and sea salt, which is four dairy textures on one base and no tomato anywhere. The Foozo, at twenty one, works the other register, pesto under fresh mozzarella and ricotta with sundried tomatoes, black olives and red onion, sweet and resinous where the White Hot is sharp. The Pomodori strips everything back to roasted cherry tomatoes, roasted peppers and roasted garlic over fresh mozzarella, and the Margherita is left alone with fresh tomato sauce, fresh mozzarella and basil leaves, which is the honest test of any dough.