Piesanos Stone Fired Pizza

I am a huge fan of this place. It is connected to the Holiday Inn that we were staying at, which made it super convenient to pop in and have a beer or some dinner there. They had so many different beers on tap (about 40 I think), and their food was amazing. They are most famous for their pizzas and their garlic bread balls (which were fabulous). They also have 4 TVs behind the bar, so you can easily sit there and watch the game and have a beer. The servers are extremely friendly too. Highly recommend checking this place out.

4 stars because the service was great. Normally I’d say it would be a 3 star. Rachel F. and the kitchen were very accommodating. I showed up right when they switched to the late-​night menu yet they let me order items that were on the normal dinner menu. Staff was positive and helpful. Food good but not extraordinary.

Food is pretty good and open late (ish) I got the Sumer salad and the hot wings. They have a bunch of beers on tap and not just your normal boring selection.
Rachel the bar tender/​server was super funny, nice and helpful And even snuck in my salad order even though I ordered a few min after 10pm when it was only the late night menu. I will def come back

Only thing good was the garlic rolls. I ordered chicken marsala, it was really bad. Under cooked chicken, watery mushroom soup as sauce and had no taste. The wings were okay but I ordered boneless and got bone in. Oh well come here weekly next month, now I know to eat elsewhere. Mikey D’s here I come better than Piesano’s

Very conveniently connected to the Holiday Inn where I was staying. Have a ton of beer on tap to choose from. Awesome personal pizzas. Baked ziti was a little bland but was decent. Would recommend if ever in the area. I will be back again.

Loved this place, probably the best pizza I have had in Gainesville this whole time.
The crust was crispy, the sauce was delicious. Great looking restaurant. The order was completed exactly. We ordered a supreme or something with all the veggies in one side and the meat on the other!
Bottom line I would order from there again!

Love their pizza and calzones! Very good dough and was very fresh. The pasta dishes that I tried were mediocre and not very authentic however (carbonara and rigatoni).

Excellent pizza, service was good but not great. The pizza and beer menu make this place worth it.

Best lunch in town! Not expensive, fast, great for groups and the rolls are to die for!

What a great meal. We went for the Gator Radio show and we just expecting typical hotel/​bar food. This place is a legitimate Italian restaurant. The pasta was cooked perfectly all four in my party were impressed. Way above our expectations .
We will be back and often. I can’t wait because I want to try more menu items .
Service was good and friendly and the place was clean. If your in the area grab a meal you won’t be disappointed.
5 star for sure

Had them for lunch the other day. Have to say that they offer so much food for the price at lunch. I went with my co-​workers around noon and we were quickly greater, seated, and brought out drinks out in minutes. They also brought out there homemade bread that they dip in vinegar that is amazing! I got there 1# lunch special which gave me a slice of pizza, a half a netball sandwich and a salad for $ 7.99. I honestly could not complete it all even though it was so good. Can’t wait to go back again and try other things on the menu.

OK, so this place is legitimately awesome! I have been here a couple of times and the chicken caesar salad is good. The meatballs rock the house! The cheese pizza is super yummy. Sometimes, you find extra hott peeps all around since it’s such a hip joint. Really a great place. $ 10-​$ 15 per person.

Great place to get a cold beer and a great pizza. Very good service. I loved the atmosphere with all the TVs on sports. Being at the corner of 13^th and University isnt a bad thing either. Oh yeh, Gainesville aint so bad either. I recomend the supreme pjzza. Cant wait to go back.

Great pit stop for food to go on the road!!!
Calzone is huge & heavenly! The meatball is great! The salad with all the fruit & walnuts was yummy! And those rolls everyone raves about in the reviews well it all true absolute amazeballs!!!
Delicious find!!!

I did not think I was going to like Piesanos. Looking at the menu it seemed a generic Italian pizza restaurant. However looks are deceiving.
The pizza is surprisingly good. The crust is excellent, and the toppings are surprisingly authentic for the downstairs of a Holiday Inn. The calabrese peppers are a must have topping, and the pepperoni is much higher quality than other local pizza places. It is excellent pizza.
There is an extensive selection of beer, something like 40+ taps. The waiters gladly bring samples, and though I hadn’t had it, the beer flights would be an excellent deal. I wish I had more of a taste for beer, because I would love Piesanos for that. In addition, the wine selection is not bad either.
The rolls are another must eat. They are not simply garlic rolls or regular rolls, but rolls with an Italian dressing poured over in a way I had never seen before.
I have not had the other entrees or appetizers, but given the quality of their pizza and beer, I would imagine they are also excellent.
The only negative would be the atmosphere. Both times I was there with my girlfriend and did not really want to stare at one of the TVs, but had I been there to catch a game, it would have been great.
All in all, a great way to enjoy a sit down pizza dinner on a Friday night or during a game.

Well I’ll be honest. I was pretty skeptical about a pizza place that dared open across the street from Leo’s! With that said, this place rocks. Piesano’s isn’t Leonardo’s, but it’s great in its own way.
We were swiftly accommodated even though Gainesville was still abuzz from the home gator game. We had great seating which faced two large televisions, airing the best in prime time college football. Our waitress was EXTREMELY personable and friendly. She was patient and offered great suggestions.
We ended up getting a medium American Veggie pizza sans olives. Our pizza was succulent, layered, and textured. For a drink we decided to order a flight of 4 sample beers, and this was a great investment! I loved the selections available, and the sample sizes were seriously hearty. Our food and drink came out almost instantaneously despite the huge crowd.
For a pizza place across from Leo’s, Piesano’s gets some ballsy points. The quality meal paired with excellent service made for a great night! I absolutely recommend this place for a fun meal out!!!

Wish there was one of these at home. Great food. Friendly staff. Casual atmosphere. Good beer selection. The rolls to start were divine (calorie-​free, right?). I had the Greek veggie personal pizza and a house salad. The pizza was awesome. I loved the taste of the crust. The salad wasn’t anything special, but hey… a salad is a salad. Also enjoyed a couple of local beers. Have to give it to our server. She was sweet and helpful and attentive but she was honest when we asked for beer recommendations and said she was underage, so she asked the bartender for his thoughts. Kudos for a fun spot close to campus.

Stopped here to get dinner, since it’s connected to the hotel (Holiday Inn).
Atmosphere: Normally this is the easy part, but this place seems to be confused as to whether it wants to be a sports bar or an Italian restaurant. There are two entrances for entering from the street or from the hotel. Both lead directly to the hostess. I assume it was intentional because it’s perfect for catching anyone. There is a large bar on the East side of the restaurant that takes up about a quarter of that wall. The main dining area consists of booths and table, which can be easily set together or apart depending on party size. It is an open floor, so I can imagine that busy nights could get loud. It was a Sunday, so there were very few guests.
Here’s what I don’t like about the atmosphere: go with one theme and stick with it. There are hints of Italian street café in the use of the colors, wood, lighting, etc. However, there are flatscreen TVs all around with sports of various kinds. It may just be my personal preference, but that irked me to no end as it clashed horribly in my mind.
Staff: from the hostess to the waitress, everyone was fantastic! I was seated in moments and had my beverage on the table in what seems to be no time. My waitress was consistent in ensuring I had a full glass at all times. The staff gets 5 stars (if I could rate separately).
Food: My waitress brought me the house rolls, which were surprisingly delicious. They are soaked in some sort of oil and balsamic vinegar and have what appears to be parmesan cheese coating them. Simply great! I ordered the personal Aloha pizza (called Hawaiian everywhere else) and it was very good. It wasn’t amazing, but it was good. I prefer this type of pizza (or wood-​fired even more) over those pizzas one can get from certain national chains.
Overall, it’s a decent place to eat and the pricing is appropriate for what you receive. If the atmosphere didn’t annoy me so much, I would probably make this a regular stop on my trips to the area.

First of all, I have to say that I am not exactly a fan of Piesanos in general: I’ve dined at their other local restaurants and the issue I have with them is that while their pizza is quite good, their pasta dishes are uninspired and they lack a pesto sauce pasta option. So if they claim to be authentic. .. well, maybe they mean their quality is better than many Italian-​American places but their approach is very Americanized and not authentic Italian if they’re at all aiming for such.
So why a four-​star review then? Because this new location is a perfect example of a tough yet successful remodeling of an otherwise tired and difficult space – they’ve made what once was a Denny’s warm, sophisticated, welcoming and even included plenty of TVs for game days. The bar is long and has a wealth of beer options, including many Florida-​based brews. Plenty of IPAs, plenty of novel, cool, things to try, plus a full bar for your martinis and the like. The service is prompt and cordial. The pizza as good as ever and the pasta dishes and salads, well, same menu as the other two locations, for better or worse.
So you have a pizza-​centric Italian place with TVs tuned to sports, a comfortable interior, good service, and plenty of beer options. Like a block from campus, at that. In other words, they have put in a pizza palace but also quite by accident (or not?) established probably the best sports bar close to campus. Yes kids, the best sports bar for a game day near UF. And that’s a sports bar with good, maybe even pretty great, pizza. I still am unimpressed with their salads, starters, or pastas, but on pizza and beer alone they have enough game to have one of the best options within a stone’s throw of UF.

Already a fan of the Tower Square location, I was really happy to hear that Gator Beefs (Beef O’ Brady’s for those unfamiliar) was getting swapped out for a local spot of this caliber. I saw no downside to this, save for some extremely healthy competition from the handful of close pizza spots in the area, and was eager to go when I found out they opened. Happy to report a pleasant experience that will only get better with a few small things ironed out.
The Space:
As mentioned previously, this spot was once a Beef O’ Brady’s, and the building itself is attached to the Holiday Inn Select that sits at the corner of University Ave and 13^th.
Walking in you can tell these guys were ready to make magic happen. The interior looks awesome and is still closely modeled after the other locations, as far as decoration is concerned. Several HD TVs exist throughout the place, strategically positioned to make sure you have a good view of one, regardless of where you are seated. The bar space is ample, which is great considering the number of taps they have, as well as the full set of liquor options. They even indulged in a Bose sound system to further boost the quality of whatever is being watched, a surefire crowd-​pleaser for game days. They are obviously looking to shake it up a bit as far as integrity of service and atmosphere, and they have succeeded.
The Service:
This was the weak link of the experience, and they did have their Grand Opening Wednesday. We came it right at noon and were quickly seated, but between items being forgotten or served out of order, the lunch took a pretty risky 1 ½ (risky for someone on break from work, that is). Our party of 8 was not uniformly served waters, and we our libations came out one by one as well. They also have the infamous parmesan balsamic garlic rolls they serve complimentary, which we received almost immediately, but the saucers for these took an additional 10 minutes to ever come out. Torture, frankly.
We also had two people who got the Lunch Special #1, which comes with a side salad, a slice of cheese ‘za, and a half of a meatball sub. Neither of them got the meatball sub and, upon mentioning this at the end of the meal (mentioned at the end because there was enough food to be satisfied without it), they had simply been forgotten. The manager was quick to get them whipped up and packaged for take-​out, though, so even this bigger issue was not much of an issue at all. They also had made an extra by mistake, and allowed us to have that one as well to further soften things.
The Food:
What can I say: Piesanos has not once disappointed me with the flavor of anything I had had from them. The hardest part of choosing to dine with these guys is typically the price, but with their lunch specials (served 11am-​4pm), they become a shining star and will grab my business again very soon. Lunch Special #4 includes a side speciality salad and a slice of cheese ‘za, but upgrading this to a include additional toppings was only a couple of dollars and had me wishing my desk was a pillow. Also they have gluten-​free options, including a different crust for your pie.
Gorgonzola Salad (A): Delicious and accompanied by plenty of every ingredient, including large and flavorful bleu crumbs, walnuts, cherry tomatoes, sliced pimento peppers, and onions.
Pizza slice (Napoletana) (B+): The slice came nice and hot, was a fair size, and had plenty of the spicy pepperoni. My only minor complaints would be the slice was a touch greasier than I expected it would be, and the garlic was chopped a touch too fine (this is super nit-​picky and a non-​issue; just a personal opinion).
Rolls (B+): Doused in that delicious balsamic vinaigrette and covered with herbs and parmesan, these can only be resisted by an iron will or a soulless heart. These happened to be a tad tough, and more warm than hot, but they were devoured by our table instantly.
Final Thoughts:
This location specifically has a TON of taps, and they are doing something that I cannot believe has not been more common around town: being local craft-​centric! They have a few 3 Daughters (St. Augustine), a few Intuition Ale Works (Jacksonville), all of the year-​round Swamp Head (GNV) brews, and have already reserved a place on their new menus for First Magnitude (the new kids on the GNV block) when those guys officially open up their distribution. This does not even include the other choices, many of which are great in their own right.
My hat is off to the Piesanos team for seeing a HUGE opportunity to bolster great food, great entertainment, and great night life in one power play.