***** Piccola Italia, 1692 Coral Way, Coral Gables, Florida 33145 (305) 856-7744.

Piccola Italia is a “brick oven” takeout only—pizza joint in Coral Gables. This joint has an amazing long–very reasonably priced menu packed with pizzas, pastas, salads, sandwiches. You can check www.piccolaitaliapizza.com for menu/prices.

Like I just said, this is a takeout joint…so don’t plan on sitting down for a leisurely lunch or dinner.

Let’s talk food…I absolutely loved the 16″ thin crusted-sweet sauce pizza that I had for $12.99. I also thought that the meat lasagna ($9.95), 14″ chicken parmigiana sub ($8), tortellini alfredo ($9.50) that I had was delicious. This takeout’s food is probably as good as the stuff served by your favorite neighborhood red-sauce joint. Just so you know, I picked up–and reheated my stuff when I got home to Boca.

Got one problem with this joint…that being it’s not in my neighborhood.

If you live or work near Piccola Italia, you now got a great takeout joint to get stuff from. Piccola is open Tuesday-Friday 11am-11pm, Saturday noon-11pm and Sunday 1pm-11pm…the joint is closed on Monday.