Buy Local! A New Section of TWIFL

By Philip Cardella January 21, 2026

Miami, FL

I wanted to try something new with TWIFL. I genuinely want this thing, the whole website, to be mostly positive and yet most weeks that seems like a bit of a stretch. I've long wanted to write about food–particularly my quest for things I can get every other part of the United States I've lived in (remember, I've lived in CA, WA, IN and VA (DC area) for extended periods of time). But also, just local stuff I genuinely like.

Here's how I will select stuff for this section: I like it and determine it's local and then I write about it. If someone asks me to write a place up I'll check it out and if I like it, I'll write about it. If I don't like it...I won't write about it.

When we buy local we not only keep money in our economy we often get a chance to invest and reinvest in our community. More often than not, if you frequent a locally owned business enough you'll get to meet the owner or the owner's family or both!

Anyway...

What on earth, you ask, can I not get in Miami that you can get elsewhere?

There's three big ones and if you've spent most your life in Miami, you'll disagree, if you're not local and don't live here you'll be shocked but if you are local but grew up elsewhere you'll nod your head in agreement.

The three things I have trouble finding in Miami are a particular type of pizza that doesn't really have a style name but is ubiquitous elsewhere, sourdough bread that's actually sour and Mexican food.

Also, and this is really weird, farmers markets with actual local produce. I know you born and raised Miamians think farmers markets are cute and have prepared goods, whether they are handmade trinkets or food, and they do. But a proper farmers market is mostly produce. It's characterized and dominated by produce. And produce that was grown locally, by the person selling it, or they have a personal relationship with the person selling it (Robert is Here sells a mix of stuff he gets delivered from a major vendor and stuff he gets from local growers, and things he grows on site, for example).

We barely have that here–but there are still a few places where you can find local produce, which I'll get to eventually.

My food quest

I'll start with the Pizza Quest

While Miami has fantastic wood fired style pizza that, like it or not, is often literally California Style pizza, it doesn't have the sort of pizza this California boy craves the most. Sorry, folks, just about every wood or coal fired pizza you've had is California Style. Miami does have a lot of Neapolitan and Neapolitan adjacent places, but even those are often technically California style (Neapolitan is hyper specific, heavily regulated by an international body and requires literal certification). I love California Style! California Style pizza is essentially a merging of New York and Neapolitan (traditional coal fired) style crusts with just about any topping you can imagine available to put on it. New York and Neapolitan style pizzas traditionally only have one main topping, if that (cheese is the most popular New York Style pizza–look it up if you want).

What I'm looking for is a style that is more of a New York style pizza crust that's shrunk and damn near any type of topping can go on it, sometimes all at once. New York Style pizza is traditionally 18 inches with eight massive slices and one or fewer toppings on that low moisture mozzarella and its usually out of a gas fired oven (because Manhattan had a coal ban at one point in the late 19th century so people made due). So the style I'm looking for is essentially a California Style pizza meets a New York Style pizza.

West coasters, think Mountain Mikes, as an example of the style. Everyone else, think, sigh, Papa John's, Dominos or Pizza Hut if any of those places were not only edible, a bar I find Papa John's can't even reach, but delicious.

Anyway, I can barely find this here. Broward, sure. Miami-Dade County? Not yet.

Then there's the quest for proper sourdough

Sourdough bread that is actually from an aged fermented dough? Yes, I've found some here. Most of it has been connected to a nice lady at my church and the guy at some farmers' markets running a small business called AyA Delights. And I've only had that once.

Flour & Weirdoughs on Key Biscayne is actually pretty great, and there's another somewhere on Miami Beach but...I live in Westchester, those places are a hard to get to in the morning, when they tend to be open, because of the traffic.

And Flour & Weirdoughs website is advertising their Thanksgiving goods right now, in the back half of January. I genuinely love Flour & Weirdoughs but they're a long ways from my house and they tend to be a bit inconsistent when it comes to status updates.

Mexican Food

Yes, I've found decent "authentic" Mexican food (or more accurately, Mexican American food) and yes it was either in Homestead or Horse Country (far west end of Calle Ocho between the Turnpike and Krome Avenue). There's a couple of decent places in Little Havana of all places but it's not quite what I'm hoping for. What sent me over the top on doing a section like this is a little place past the Turnpike on Calle Ocho called Taqueria los Jalapeños. I'll write about them first in my weekly newsletter.

So what's the deal again with the Buy Local section?

So, the Buy Local section isn't going to be paid ads and it's not going to be proper reviews either, because a proper review must be open to negative reviews. If I don't like a place, I'm not going to write about it in the Buy Local section. If I do write about it it may be in the Finite Disappointment section.

Make sense?

I am endorsing these places, I suppose, but less in the formal sense and more in the neighborly sense. Many of the things in this section will indeed be food or food adjacent, but it won't always be about food.

See you out there!

Several of you have made donations to support this work and I thank you from the bottom of my heart. As I didn't ask you if I could share your names, I won't, yet, but I'll seek your input on that.

Work like this article, the videos and the photographs would normally take at least three or four professionals several hours to put together. While I do not pretend my work is to their quality (yet), I will say that it took a lot of time and effort to put together. If you appreciated it, please share it. If you loved it, please consider making a small donation to this work.