If you ask Nicole Lopez-Alvar, food editor of the Miami New Times, where to find that city’s best pizza, one name will keep coming up: Old Greg’s Pizza. So why did the owners close it down?
Fear not, Miami pizza lovers. Greg Tetzner and Jackie Richie say they’ll be back.
Old Greg’s Pizza made the New York Times’ list of the country’s best pizzerias for 2022 and Time Out’s ranking of the 19 best pizza spots in the U.S. last year. As the Miami New Times reports, the restaurant closed its doors last month, not due to lack of business but thanks to a lease negotiation that just didn’t work out.
Tetzner and Richie wanted to renew their lease, but the terms of the agreement and problems with the building itself proved too challenging. “Our operation would be stunted of growth and safety [had we renewed],” Richie told the Miami New Times. “We would need to gut the restaurant entirely: electric, layout and plumbing. They are going to redevelop where our building is, so it didn’t make financial sense to continue here. We just need to expand the operation and sustain growth in a safe space.”
The pizza-making couple first started selling their sourdough-based pies—using a starter dubbed Old Greg—out of their home during the early days of the pandemic before opening a brick-and-mortar store in Miami’s Design District. Now they’re scouting for a new location.
Temporary closure was “the toughest decision we’ve ever had to make in our lives because we were all in,” Richie said in the interview. “Our entire existence revolved around the restaurant from open time to the time the very last dish was washed. It’s been madness since 2020. When everyone was at home at 0% chilling, we were at 300% with a pizza operation out of our tiny kitchen.”
The Miami New Times named Old Greg’s one of the city’s eight best pizzerias in April 2024. “We’ll never forget our first bite of one of the restaurant’s most popular pizzas, the O.G. Roni,” Lopez-Alvar wrote at the time. “It really is the pizza that started the fanfare—and our devotion.”
Lopez-Alvar continued: “For a crust that’s nearly an inch thick, it’s notably light, boasting a well-toasted bottom and covered with a slick of tomato and cheese that caramelizes into those extra-crisp patches that beg to be eaten first.”
That honor was one Richie and her husband will never forget, the Old Greg’s co-owner told the New Times. “We are so lucky and grateful. Seriously, never in my wildest dreams would I imagine my kryptonite would continue to be pizza, my favorite food in the world.”
