Since 1991
Rustic Pizza started in 1991 in Cerro, Havana — the same year our chef was born. Three decades later, that family recipe found a new home in Miami: Roman-style pizza, Italian foundations, Cuban touches.
Rustic Pizza is a Roman-style pizzeria built on Italian foundations and finished with Cuban touches. Thin, hand-stretched crust, simmered sauce, and the kind of flavor that only comes from a family that has been making pizza for more than thirty years. What started in a wooden house in Havana now lives in Hialeah.
A rustic, Roman-based pizza: Italian technique at its core, with Cuban flavor woven through. It is the recipe Osniel grew up inside and spent years refining — first in his family kitchen, later as a trained chef. Honest dough, real ingredients, and a point of view you cannot fake.
More than thirty years, two countries, and one family recipe. Here is how Rustic Pizza became what it is today.
Armando Jesús Espinosa and Regla Laiza Recino begin selling pizza from their home in Cerro, Havana. The same year, their twin sons Osniel and Osiel are born — the family and the business start together.
Osniel is drawn to food and cooking. He trains as a chef in international cuisine and falls in love with pizza and Italian food in particular.
Osniel takes the reins of the family business and expands it with a dulcería — a sweets concept entirely his own.
Facing repression and a lack of opportunity in Cuba, Osniel emigrates to the United States to build a new future.
Settling in, Osniel gets involved in fitness and healthy food, sharpening his craft for a new audience.
Osniel takes hold of his own future and opens his first food truck under the Rustic Pizza name — carrying the family recipe into Miami.
Rustic Pizza grows from a truck into a restaurant in Hialeah, as Osniel and his partner Jordy Baylac join forces to bring the family story to a permanent home.
Ready to taste the story? Explore the menu, drop us a note, or swing by. The next chapter is being written here in Hialeah.
