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SPACE Architecture + Design
A proposed rendering of the exterior of the new Pi'ami in South Beach.
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SPACE Architecture + Design
A proposed rendering of the interior of Pi'ami, with two brick archways serving as focal points.
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Pi at the Mercantile Exchange (MX) in Downtown St. Louis
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Emily Clack Photography
The District of Pi in Washington, DC
The wit and the wisdom just keeps on coming...
It’s fair to say that Chris Sommers and Frank Uible brought a collective smile to the city six years ago when they chose to open their flagship Pi Pizzeria on March 14 (3.14…π day). Pi on the Spot (the city’s first food truck) charmed us as well, as did the announcement of The District of Pi, located in Penn Quarter, a few blocks from the White House.
And those of us who know Sommers smiled when we heard that Cincinnati (his wife’s hometown) would be the location of the newest Pi (the seventh), but there was a legit LOL the moment we learned that the next Pi would be located in Miami’s South Beach, and be called…wait for it…Pi’ami. So far, so goo... brilliant.
The exact location is 124 Collins Avenue—a prestigious, low-numbered address on a high-end street— next door to the 27,000 square foot Story, one of Miami’s newest and busiest nightclubs. A former pizza restaurant occupied the space, said Sommers, so the build-out will be “a lot less than it could have been.”
When asked about the appeal of Miami, Sommers said that replicating the density of places like Washington DC is “almost impossible,” but that South Beach had “incredible density…that's become year round.”
Another factor was the relative lack of pizza restaurants, a fact corroborated by Sommers' friend Evan Benn, the new Food Editor of the Miami Herald and former dining critic for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
“I see this as a great opportunity, a tremendous opportunity,” Sommers said, referencing what he thought was an overabundance of steak and seafood houses. “It’s not that pizza is non-existent in South Beach,” he said, “but it’s not big there.”
Acclaimed restaurants and restaurateurs are emerging there, Sommers said, due to the sheer numbers of both people and disposable income. Hearing his description conjured images of the Las Vegas of twenty years ago, just before it became a culinary hotbed. “Everybody wants in,” Sommers said. “The dining scene has become significant there.”
And apparently that particular block of Collins Avenue is so en fuego that the landlord was entertaining “many, many offers,” according to Sommers, but as luck would have it, both his wife and daughter had eaten at Pi in St. Louis--and liked it. “Had it not been for those two women,” Sommers reasoned, “we’d for sure not have gotten that space,” a space he is excited about.
“There is almost no brick in Miami,” Sommers noted, “yet the focal point of the prior restaurant were two brick archways,” which Tom Niemeier and his team at SPACE Architecture + Design will utilize, creating something akin to a modern classic pizzeria, according to Sommers.
Plans call for a U-shaped bar and dining room seating for 120; along the street, a wall of doors will open onto a 50-seat patio. Sommers predicts Pi’ami will open before winter, in either November or December, he predicts.
Sommers says that he and Uible hope to open “two [Pi’s] this year, three the next, and four the year after that.”
Good intentions, gentlemen, but first things first. We'll let Will Smith welcome you aboard:
Party in the city where the heat is on // All night, on the beach till the break of dawn // Welcome to Miami // Bienvenido a Miami
Bouncin’ in the club where the heat is on // All night, on the beach till the break of dawn // I'm goin' to Miami // Welcome to Miami
