Amid Miami’s Pizza Renaissance, La Natural Follows Its Own Path
Miami’s restaurant scene is as bustling as our freeways, and pizza is like the Palmetto Expressway. That’s not to say our pizzerias are crazy, unpredictable, and full of chickens who escaped an overturned truck — but of all the categories, pizza may be the most crowded.
The work that goes into creating great pizza is the kind of energy we can get behind, though. Today, you can find world-class pizza of almost any style in almost any Miami neighborhood. It’s great for hungry Miamians. But for pizza makers, standing out is a challenge.
Up in Little River, a little, independently-owned restaurant behind a row of hedges has figured out how to rise above Miami’s glut of great pizza. La Natural has become a staple in any conversation about the city’s best pizza, making its name with a slate of sourdough crust pies that are unlike anything else.
It’s the brainchild of Javier Ramirez, the vision behind Brad Kilgore’s hit Alter, and East Asian concept Palmar. With three hit restaurants under his belt in one of the most notoriously difficult dining scenes in America, the former finance whiz seems to have cracked the city’s culinary code. On the night of La Natural’s fourth anniversary, he ordered us up some pizzas and dished on the secrets of the restaurant’s success.
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La Natural’s owner swapped finance for fine dining.
Javier Ramirez didn’t start out as a restaurant guy. He went to school to study economics, landing himself a prestigious job in the UK after graduation. It was after sampling the food there that he decided he wanted to start cooking for himself.
The food in parts of the UK wasn’t to his liking, so he bought a cookbook. “It was Jamie Oliver’s ‘The Naked Chef,’” he recalls. “I cooked it cover to cover.”
Like others who fell in love with cooking, Ramirez became quite the aspiring chef, hosting family dinners with his then-wife that morphed into dinner parties.
“I became the ‘chef friend,’” he says, “I don’t have a story of growing up in my grandma’s kitchen or anything, I was all self-taught, through books.”
Ten years later he took a job in Miami, immersing himself in the food scene and starting a blog called “Gourmand J.” In 2015, his employer abruptly closed, and Ramirez found himself at a career crossroads.
“I told my ex-wife, I think we should open a restaurant. And she was like, ‘You’re crazy. You’re 40 years old, unemployed, what’s the chance with your background?’”
Inspired by the gastronomy movement in Europe at the time, Ramirez brought to Miami what he felt was missing there — a gastronomic tasting menu experience hidden among the warehouses of Wynwood. He tapped Brad Kilgore to helm the kitchen, and the rest is Miami dining history. Alter went on to win numerous awards, launching the careers of both the chef and the owner.
Ramirez’s next venture was Palmar, filling a similar void he felt was missing in Chinese food. When it closed in 2022, he once again found himself with a decision to make.
“I had started making pizzas at home, and when I moved into my new home eight years ago, I told my ex-wife I wanted a wood burning oven so I could make restaurant quality pizza,” he said. “So, I started in my backyard. Every week I’d try a different flour ratio, a different method, until I came up with what we have today.”
Creating “social currency” with pizza made La Natural stand out.
Ramirez knew he wasn’t the first person to create great pizza in Miami. So following the model of his previous successes, he sought to find something to make him stand out.
“Every restaurant has to have what I call a social currency,” he says. “You can get all the great reviews you want but if you don’t have something you’re doing different or better than the rest, you’re going to get stuck in the mud. There has to be a differentiating factor.”
At La Natural, that differentiating factor is Ramirez’s sourdough crust, which gives his pies the same compelling flavor profile that’ll make you finish an entire sourdough loaf in the car before you get home. He calls the sourdough his Starry Night — a signature masterpiece that may well be his legacy.
“Everybody should have a Starry Night, that thing that you’re very proud of that you created,” he says. “My pizza dough is that.”
As the world learned during the pandemic, sourdough is no simple baking operation. It’s equal parts art, science, and animal husbandry, taking a living, breathing thing and raising it in your vision.
“People joke sourdough are like pets,” he laughs. “You gotta pet it, feed it at the right time with the right amounts. You leave it at room temperature for a week, it’s not gonna like that, it likes cold temperatures. But it needs to be at room temperature for it to grow. So it’s challenging, it’s like a science fair project.”
The pizzas are cooked in the traditional Neapolitan style, wood-fired with a nice char on the crust and served uncut.
Nothing gives me more pleasure than having people come here and giving them the best meal ever.— Javier Ramirez
“In Naples, pizzas are main courses so they’re not cut. You eat them with a fork and knife,” he points out as I manhandle La Natural’s burrata cheese pizza. “Or, you can use your hands like you are.”
The pizzas are first-rate, and Ramirez talks with special pride about his Calabrian chile pizza with provolone. He’s also made a name with his nontraditional white sauce pizzas topped with Sichuan pepper and scallions, or wild mushrooms and parsley.
Ramirez knew his sourdough pizza may not have been enough to carry the restaurant (especially in the tough trading climate that restaurants have been experiencing post-pandemic), so he consulted chef Diego Moya (Racines, Margot) to create the rest of the menu at La Natural. Moya’s dishes have become almost as recognizable as La Natural’s pizzas, with distinctive vegetable-forward fare like Japanese sweet potato with brown butter, and charred carrots with Aleppo honey that offer plenty of reasons for guests to return.
Pizza aside, La Natural is all about impeccable hospitality.
Ramirez is quick to point out that a restaurant needs more than just great food to keep people coming in. First off, he says you need a deep-seated love of hospitality.
“I love to please,” he says. “It’s one thing I think is very important in this industry, I love to see people with their faces lit up. Nothing gives me more pleasure than having people come here and giving them the best meal ever.”
Ramirez also insists you need a landlord who shares your vision.
“One thing I learned in Wynwood with Alter and Palmar is that, if I was going to sign a lease for a restaurant, [then] I want to work in a neighborhood where the landlords share a similar vision to mine,” he says. “This landlord, they came to my house. They tried my pizza. They’re the ones who said to me, ‘We want this pizza in our neighborhood.’”
The neighborhood, set along NW 2nd Ave. next to the railroad tracks between NW 71st and NW 75th Streets, wasn’t much at the time. Now, Little River is the hottest neighborhood in the city, welcoming wine bars, international restaurants, and a slew of other amenities in 2024.
“I was the first guy here,” he says, “I signed this lease six years ago. There was nothing here. I opened four years ago, still nothing here. We’re the flagship tenant and I’m very proud of that.”
While the neighborhood booms around him, Ramirez acknowledges he needs to keep things at La Natural interesting. So he’s incorporating monthly guest chef dinners in 2025, where renowned chefs from Miami and beyond take over the kitchen and put two of their signature dishes on the menu in addition to creating two special pizzas.
On this particular night, Ramirez welcomed Shelley Kleyn Armistead of Gjelina in Los Angeles. “It adds value to the restaurants and to the community,” he says of his monthly guest spots. “I did them at Alter and Palmar, and it keeps regulars coming in. They might say, well, I was there a couple of months ago. But if I’ve got a guest chef doing something? They’re gonna try that out.”
For now, Ramirez believes he’s found the perfect blend of food, hospitality, backing, and neighborhood, and isn’t planning a fourth big hit anytime soon. He’s content to serve Miami pizza that’s a little different than everything else, giving us something to look forward to after dealing with all that traffic.
