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Jacksonville's Italian Shortlist: Where I Actually Go for Pasta 🍝✨
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items Italian is the hardest thing to get right around here, and not because nobody's trying. Every strip center has a red-sauce place with a laminated menu and a photo of the Amalfi Coast on the wall, and most of them are fine in the way a cafeteria is fi...
Taverna ✨ This is my answer when someone asks where to eat Italian in Jacksonville and I only get one sentence. Sam and Kiley Efron have run it since 2009 and it still feels like the most confident room in the city — modern takes on the classics rather than...
Taverna San Marco
Josephine ✨ Josh Floyd opened this in late 2022 in the old Barrique space and named it after his grandmother, and the room is the prettiest Italian dining room in town — Murano glass chandeliers, vintage Parisian streetlamps, about a hundred seats that somehow...
Josephine Avondale
V Pizza + Sidecar ✨ The original V is in a converted paint store on Hendricks and they smartly never sanded off the industrial bones. The clay ovens are imported and run at 900 degrees, so a pizza is done in about ninety seconds — San Marzano tomatoe...
V Pizza
Carmine's Pie House ✨ Loud, covered in murals and junk, menu written like the owner is talking directly at you — and the Chicago deep dish is legitimately some of the best you'll find outside Chicago. The Monster Meatball is the thing to start with, and there's a salad...
Carmine's Pie House
Prati Italia ✨ Tom Gray is a James Beard nominee and this is his Italian room, which makes it the only genuinely chef-driven Italian at the Town Center rather than another group concept. Roman-style pizzas, handmade pastas — the campanelle is what I order — and ...
Prati Italia
Enza's Italian Restaurant ✨ From the parking lot it's a strip center. Inside it's been the best Italian in Mandarin since Enza and Mike Huff opened it in 2004, and the gap isn't close. The Chicken Alla Enza is the whole reason to come — sausage, artichoke hearts, olives, cape...
Enzas
Ciao Trattoria Italiana ✨ This is the newest room from Chef Tonino, who also runs Gusto at the beach, so the cooking has a lineage rather than appearing out of nowhere. Service is family-style and the two things worth ordering are the chicken parmigiana and the eight-ounce ...
Ciao Jax
Bella Vista Italian Restaurant ✨ Giovanni Prignano opened this in 2023 and the move here is the Cacio e Pepe, finished tableside inside a hollowed wheel of imported cheese. It is theater, and it is also very good, which is rarer than it should be. The involtini di melanzane is the...
Take Out Available Rosalia's Italian Restaurant & Pizzeria | Jacksonville
Aron's Pizza ✨ The closest thing to real New York thin crust without getting on I-95, and it's been that way in Orange Park for a long time. Past the pizza it runs a full Italian kitchen — the lobster ravioli in the rosatto sauce is what I order when I'm not doin...
Aron's Pizza
Mezza Luna Ristorante ✨ A block off the ocean in Beaches Town Center and effectively three restaurants in one — a bar with live music Monday through Thursday, a covered courtyard, and a proper dining room if you want quiet. Wade Kirwan has run the kitchen since 2019 and ...
Mezzaluna Jax
Al's Pizza ✨ Al Mansur started this in 1988 and built the reputation on refusing frozen dough, conveyor ovens and canned vegetables, which was a bolder position in 1988 than it sounds now. The Neptune Beach shop at Third and Atlantic is the one locals mean when...
Al's Pizza
Gusto "A Taste of Rome" ✨ Tonino Di Bella and Walter Bianchi built this around a specifically Roman menu instead of generic Italian-American, and you can taste the difference in the pastas. There's an open pizza kitchen at the back and a stage up front with live music most ...
Gusto Jax
Joseph's Pizza & Italian Restaurant ✨ Open since 1956 and it claims to be Jacksonville's oldest pizzeria, which as far as I can tell nobody has successfully disputed. They still grind meat fresh daily and make the dough in house, and the breads and rolls come out of the same kitchen. ...
Joseph's Pizza
Caffe Andiamo ✨ The Recupito family cook from Salerno recipes and have been feeding this stretch of Ponte Vedra for decades, which is why it feels settled in a way newer places don't. It's a genuine scratch kitchen — pasta made in house, mozzarella pulled in house...
Caffe Andiamo
Poppy's Italiano ✨ Family owned since 2017 and the comfort option on this stretch of A1A — small, warm, no attitude whatsoever. The carbonara is the dish people get evangelical about and I'm not going to argue with them. Everything runs on a house-made sauce, portion...
Poppy's Italiano
Simone's Wood Fired Craft Kitchen ✨ Kevin and Simone Boose run this together — he trained at the CIA in Hyde Park, she handles the room and every dessert. Everything comes off a Neapolitan wood oven or a wood grill, with pizzas, breads and pasta made fresh daily and specials that cha...
Simone's Wood Fired
Cucina South Italian Bistro ✨ Llew Sutton's bistro on the south end of the island, and the drive up A1A is half of why I like going. Bread service is house-made ciabatta with truffled balsamic and it sets the tone properly. The osso buco over creamy polenta is the big order; t...
Cucina South
Ciao Italian Eatery ✨ Chef Luca runs this with his son Brandon right on Centre Street, a short walk from the marina, and it's the most pleasant dinner in downtown Fernandina. The pizza is ultra-thin-crust and genuinely good, but the veal piccata is the thing regulars or...
Ciao Italiana Eatery
Arte Pizza ✨ A block off Centre Street and open since 2008, this is the casual Fernandina counterpart to Ciao — hand-tossed pizza, big pastas, Italian classics, families everywhere. The Supreme is the house pie and it's the right call. The weekday deals are th...
Arte Pizza and Pasta
Terra & Acqua ✨ Simone Parisi is from Florence and cooks northern Italian, which makes this a different proposition from most of the red-sauce rooms on this list. Pasta, ravioli, gnocchi, lasagna and focaccia are all made in house, and there's a wood-fired oven g...
Terra Acqua Restaurant
Nonna's Trattoria ✨ Sixteen years in, owned by Adamo and run day to day with his two sons, who greet people at the door and cook from family recipes. It sits at the head of Aviles Street, the oldest street in the country, so the walk to dinner is genuinely part of th...
Nonnas Trattoria
Casa Benedetto's ✨ Sicilian-American cooking with recipes traced back to a grandparents' bakery in Brooklyn, which is exactly why the menu reads older and better than the newer places. Fried rice balls to start, then braciole or the linguini with clam sauce; the esc...
Casa Benedetto's