Best restaurants for pizza in Sarasota and Bradenton? Here are my favorites

While it's important to plan ahead for Valentine's Day and peruse my newly published list of the best romantic restaurants, let's not forget about National Pizza Day coming up on Feb. 9, and my annual list of the best pizza places in Sarasota and Bradenton.

Similar to last year's list, this year's selections range from authentic Italian restaurants serving the classic Neapolitan pizza margherita made with San Marzano tomatoes, mozzarella, fresh basil leaves, salt, and extra-virgin olive oil, to completely American pizza pies inspired by the McDonald's Big Mac.

Two of the spots are among my favorite restaurants that opened in 2023, while the other 11 are classics that I managed to visit recently. Presented in alphabetical order, here are my current favorite places for crave-worthy pizza in Sarasota and Bradenton, spanning Siesta Key to Anna Maria Island.

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Agrigento Pizzeria Caffe

5227 Manatee Ave. W., Bradenton; 941-792-1414; facebook.com/agrigentonypizza

A West Bradenton hidden gem located in the Fairway Center, where EnRich Bistro is soon to open, Agrigento serves thin and crispy New York-style pizza by the slice or pie from its open kitchen. It features the popular Bakers Pride brand of ovens that date back to the Bronx in 1945.

Agrigento's classic cheese pizza is one of the best in the area, but I'm also a big fan of their specialty pies, such as the primavera, which reflects the owners' Italian and Venezuelan roots with fresh tomato sauce and mozzarella topped by corn kernels and finely sliced ham. I also highly recommend the nova pizza with red sauce and mozzarella, topped by bacon crumbles, sliced leek, and generous chunks of ricotta.

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Bavaro’s Pizza Napoletana & Pastaria

27 Fletcher Ave., Sarasota; 941-552-9131; bavarospizza.com

Occupying a handsome, nearly-century-old building just east of 301 in downtown Sarasota, Bavaro’s is my favorite place in the region (they also have locations throughout Tampa Bay) for real-deal Neapolitan pizza. The Sarasota location, with indoor and covered outdoor seating, has everything from a wood-fired brick oven designed by third-generation Neapolitan craftsmen to century-old Neapolitan recipes.

Purists will be richly rewarded with the margherita pizza, while hardcore carnivores should go with the Tre-Carne. The latter finds the same San Marzano tomato sauce and fresh fior di latte cheese used on the margherita, topped by spicy fennel sausage, spicy soppressata, and speck, with a nice splash of extra virgin olive oil.

Boo's Ice House & Dog Bar

1314 10th St., Sarasota; 941-960-2669; boosdogbar.com

I love dogs, pizza, and adult beverages (perhaps not in that order), and I found myself completely blissed out when I visited Boo's Ice House & Dog Bar, which opened in downtown Sarasota's Rosemary District around May. An entertainment complex featuring an indoor/outdoor dog park and a full bar, it's also a first-rate pizzeria opened by Chef David Grammer, who gained recognition in the area as the owner and operator of Goodfellas Cafe & Winery on Clark Road for 13 years before it closed in 2022.

The wood-fired pizza boasts a thin, smartly-charred, highly craveable crust. The one I had earlier this year, topped with fresh mozzarella, fresh tomato chunks, red sauce, and fresh basil leaves easily ranks among the best pizza pies I've had this year from anywhere — and add extra points for the cute name, the NeoPAWlitan.

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Cafe Epicure

1298 N. Palm Ave., Sarasota; 941-366-5648; cafeepicure.com

An authentic Italian trattoria with sidewalk seating just off lower Main Street in downtown Sarasota, Cafe Epicure has been producing thin-crust, Neapolitan-style pizzas from its handsome wood-fired oven for more than two decades. The elegant simplicity of the margherita is hard to resist, but there are numerous options — I’m counting over 20 off the dinner menu — worth exploring, including their exceptional rendition of pizza capricciosa.

Our outstanding server, Jelena, introduced me to this beauty, and I keep coming back to it. The pizza is topped with the cafe's superior ham (all their salumi is excellent, by the way), artichokes, mushrooms, and olives. Incidentally, you will find similarly outstanding pizza served at Cafe Epicure's older, more upscale sister restaurant Mediterraneo, which opened in 1996 and is on upper Main Street.

Capo Pazzo Pizzeria + Kitchen

2053 Reynolds St., Sarasota; 941-487-8677; capopazzo.com

A cozy spot with indoor and covered outdoor seating opened last year in a Sarasota strip mall just south of Gulf Gate, Capo Pazzo has built an ardent following with its New York-style pizzas featuring high-quality ingredients and a crispy crust with a slight char. Their "Classic N.Y. Style" pizza is a masterpiece featuring a dynamic tomato sauce covered with shredded mozzarella augmented by mounds of additional, fresh mozzarella. In addition to red-sauce pizzas and Sicilian style, Capo serves white pizzas including the one I recently fell in love with that's topped with creamy burrata, cherry tomatoes, minced garlic, and generous slices of top-shelf prosciutto.

Fav's Italian Cucina

419 Old Main St., Bradenton; 941-708-3287; favsitaliancucina.com

Located in the heart of downtown Bradenton on Old Main Street, Fav’s Italian Cucina is where siblings Michael Favasuli and Maria Favasuli-Wagner make smile-inducing pizza consisting of dough made daily, hand-tossed to order, and cooked in the brick oven of the open kitchen. The most essential offering is their take on the margherita called the "Favarita."

It features melty mounds of their fresh, homemade mozzarella accompanied by tender slices of tomato, with the sweet basil set off brilliantly by savory bits of minced garlic. I also love their thin-crust cheese pizza topped with homemade meatball slices, as well as their take on Sicilian pizza, called the Bradenton Deep Dish, featuring a thicker crust topped with San Marzano tomatoes, mozzarella, asiago, and Romano cheeses.

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Il Panificio Pizzeria

1703 Main St., Sarasota; and 215 Avenida Madera, Siesta Key; panificiousa.com

I've spent the past two decades enjoying slices of pizza from Il Panificio's flagship location in downtown Sarasota. For this article, though, let me give a shout-out to the restaurant's other location. My wife, Kristin, and I stayed at a resort in Siesta Key Village for a couple of nights in December and ate our way up, down, and all around Ocean Boulevard, mostly on mediocre fare.

The large cheese pizza we had at Il Panificio on Avenida Madera, which we enjoyed on a sun-washed picnic table with a couple of cold bottles of beer, was superb, perhaps the best thing I ate during the entire staycation. Their thin-crust pizza somehow manages to be at once crispy and chewy, with a distinctive taste best described as highly addictive. Yeah, it's the perfect meal to enjoy following a day at world-famous Siesta Beach.

Joey D’s

multiple locations; joeydsfl.com

Since opening in Bradenton in 1994 (and now with multiple locations), Joey D’s has established itself as the top place in Sarasota-Manatee for “World Famous Chicago Pizza.” The thick, high walls of flavorful crust contain gobs of mozzarella and chunky tomato sauce made daily and spread generously on top of the cheese. Beneath the cheese and sauce, I prefer my pie stuffed with just a layer of pepperonis, or perhaps pepperonis and green olives.

In addition to deep dish, Joey D’s also serves traditional, Chicago-style thin crust pizza, also called tavern-style, which is cut into delightful squares. My current favorite is the Monsters of the Midway (pepperoni, sausage, ham, mushrooms, green peppers, black olives, green olives, bacon, and onions), which pairs delightfully with a pitcher of beer while watching the Bears, Blackhawks, or Da Bulls.

The Loaded Barrel Tavern

450 Old Main St., Bradenton; 941-745-8433; facebook.com/theloadedbarreltavern

If you're craving a wild pizza — especially one that tastes extra good late in the evening after an adult beverage or three — be sure to visit The Loaded Barrel Tavern in downtown Bradenton. The menu includes several fine options spotlighting their delightfully doughy crust, and you can always order a satisfying slice of cheese or pepperoni, but us regulars know to check Loaded Barrel’s Facebook every Monday for the weekly pizza special reveal, which can then also be ordered by the slice or pie.

My personal faves include their versions of sandwiches such as the Cuban, French dip, the grinder, and a sesame-crust pizza that brilliantly mimics a Big Mac. Another pizza I adore, Butcher's Bounty (mozzarella, pepperoni, bacon, ham, sausage, meatball), can be ordered any time as a whole pizza and occasionally pops up as the weekly special to be sold by the (enormous!) slice as well, which is what I enjoyed last month.

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Lucile Pizza & Wine Bar

1660 Main St., Sarasota; 941-330-0101; lucilesrq.com

Featuring a chic, intimate dining room lined with wine bottles and tables overlooking the open kitchen and an impressive wood-fired oven, Lucile is not your average pizzeria. It's decidedly more upscale, with a menu to match. The sister business of the acclaimed vegetable-centric Lila, located nearby on Main Street, Lucile now offers 11 plant-based pizzas. They mostly feature cashew "mozzarella," with toppings such as "plant-based pepperoni," "coconut bacon," and "sunflower-fennel sausage."

Lucile also offers seven meat and dairy pizzas, and for this story, I focused on that side of the menu. These pies include their version of the margherita. The bubbly, flavorful crust — indeed, one of the most flavorful crusts in tow— is topped with sweet tomato sauce and generous portions of buffalo mozzarella, adorned with garden-fresh basil for another refreshing burst of natural sweetness. It's the kind of healthy and delicious pizza that one can envision enjoying guilt-free on a regular basis.

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Oak & Stone

multiple locations; oakandstone.com

Originating in 2016 with a University Parkway restaurant, Oak & Stone has since opened locations from Naples to St. Petersburg, with the downtown Bradenton location including a rooftop bar dubbed The Deck. The latter location is where I have been known to throw back embarrassing amounts of their super-thin pizzas, adorned with a variety of top-shelf toppings. Longtime favorites include the pepperoni pizza with 'ronis that arrive like crunchy cups of savory flavor; The Winger with Buffalo chicken tenders, hot sauce, and chunks of blue cheese; and the Sweet Heat with pepperoni, spicy capicola, pizza sauce, pickled jalapeno, mozzarella, and Mike’s Hot Honey.

This year, Oak & Stone also introduced a couple of new pizzas that I instantly fell in love with: The Farmer & Pig (prosciutto cooked to crispy perfection, arugula, mozzarella, Hot Honey, herbed extra-virgin olive oil, and freshly shaved pecorino Romano) and the South Philly (shaved ribeye, beer cheese, roasted mushrooms, onions, mozzarella, roasted red peppers), which tasted amazing even while watching my beloved Eagles self-destruct this season.

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Osteria 500

1580 Lakefront Drive, Sarasota; 941-866-8962; osteria500.com

The made-in-house pasta and pizza are the stars of Osteria 500, which opened this summer in the upscale new Waterside Place neighborhood of Lakewood Ranch and, really, no visit should be complete without trying at least one or both of these standouts. The restaurant offers about a dozen pizzas (which can be upgraded to a gluten-free crust for $2.95), and from the right seat, you can watch them being cooked in their wood-burning oven built atop a Fiat 500.

Typically, when visiting a pizzeria for the first time, I will order a plain cheese or margherita pizza. However, when I saw Osteria 500 served a capricciosa, I had to try it. The smartly charred thin crust teeming with flavor arrived topped with fresh mozzarella and tomato sauce and then premium quality servings of artichokes, mushrooms, sausage, and olives. It took all of my willpower not to eat the entire pie, which should easily satisfy a couple.

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Pizza Social

308 Pine Ave., Anna Maria; 941-251-4070; mypizzasocial.com

Located about half a mile from the Anna Maria City Pier on the island's charming Pine Avenue, Pizza Social is a cute, counter-service operation with a small shop centered around a big, turquoise-colored brick oven imported from Italy. It's the same place where they source their flour to make the pizza dough fresh daily. For most of the pizzas, the dough is covered with homemade sauce made from peeled tomatoes and topped with cheese made from whole milk mozzarella and a dollop of buffalo milk — resulting in a masterful pizza boasting a bubbly, nicely charred crust.

You will notice their commitment to quality ingredients in the fabulous basil leaves on the margherita, for instance, and especially when you sink your teeth into their signature pizza consisting of red sauce topped with Italian sausage, pepperoni, mushrooms, red onion, bell peppers, and mozzarella. Recently, I swooned over the taco pizza (red sauce, ground beef, Cholula hot sauce and mozzarella topped with tomato, shredded lettuce and tortilla crisps). I was also surprised last month by how much I enjoyed the Beach Please, which replaces red sauce with ranch and tops the pie with tender, well-seasoned chunks of fire-roasted chicken, bacon, mozzarella, lettuce, and tomato. As I've noted before, many pizzerias located near the beach serve very average pizza. That is not the case with this place, which should be a destination for anyone who is serious about consuming quality pizza.

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Wade Tatangelo is Ticket Editor for the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, and Florida Regional Dining and Entertainment Editor for the USA TODAY Network. Follow him on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. He can be reached by email at wade.tatangelo@heraldtribune.com. Support local journalism by subscribing.

This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: Best pizza restaurants in Sarasota and Bradenton