Best Pizza in Scottsdale

Chef-driven pies. Little-known regional Italian styles. Scottsdale’s rising pizza scene checks all the boxes and then some (fried pizza?). Hungry for a slice or four? Here’s your roadmap to the best pizza in Scottsdale.

Craft 64

After slinging pies in an Old Town adobe structure for nearly a decade, Craft 64 has become a Scottsdale staple. Craft 64 makes pizza in a Neapolitan-ish style. The mozzarella is handmade. Fresh produce comes from local purveyor McClendon’s Select. Airy, hefty, char-blistered pies emerge from a wood-fired Mugnaini oven that can flirt with 1,000 degrees. At Craft 64, imaginative pizzas like the Smokehouse (smoked sausage, smoked onions, wine-braised mushrooms) steal the show. The menu dark horse: specialty focaccias, especially one topped with meatballs. For drinkers, Craft 64 offers 36 tap handles, linking the “craft” in Craft 64 to both pizza and beer.

Andreoli Italian Grocer

Giovanni Scorzo’s neighborhood eatery isn’t known for pizza. He and his family serve Italian pastas, meats, and seafood in a convivial, trattoria-style setting. Even so, his menu is loaded with hidden gems (hint: grilled squid, eggplant sandwich). One gem is his Pizza San Francesco Di Paola. Ordered by the slice, this pizza is square, tall, bready, and crowned with tomato sauce and fresh mozzarella. The base is Scorzo’s excellent handmade focaccia. Order a slice to taste while you wait for your main courses. There are no tricks here, just a rustic, flavor-packed pizza like one you might taste in the Italian countryside.

Lou Malnati’s Pizzeria

Legendary Chicago-style deep dish. That’s the superstar at Lou Malnati’s in North Scottsdale. Pies come in a yawning skillet, with steaming seas of baked tomato and bubbling cheese. Lift your first slice and observe an epic cheese pull. This deep dish is just what you expect: hearty, soupy, melty, and absolutely packed with cheesy intensity. You can add a host of ingredients, including hot giardiniera, to dial up your pie even further. In this spacious restaurant with TVs showing sports and taps flowing, you even have the option to do something truly surprising: order thin crust. (It’s good, too!)

Forno 301

Owner Luca Dagliano has roots in Liguria, a region of Northern Italy. His pizzas adhere closely to tradition. They are generously sized, liberally topped, thin-but-not-paper-thin, and carry the light smoke of his wood-fired oven. At Forno 301, you can grab pizza for the road through an unlikely drive-thru window. The signature pie here is the Testosterone, topped with ham, eggs and bell peppers. Don’t miss the calzones – which are pretty much folded pizzas, crunching and oozing cheese as you knife in. For dessert, Forno scoops a memorable affogato: house-made gelato drowned in espresso.

Fratelli La Bufala

This Italian import – the second Fratelli location in the U.S. complementing the dozens from England to the Middle East – aims for a true Neapolitan pizza. With a paper-thin middle, puffy outer rim, and flour and dough imported from Naples, it scores a bullseye. Core pizzas stick to tradition. You can enjoy Italian classics like Margherita, Capricciosa, and Diavola. Pies have a luxuriously browned crust, one sign of an adept pizza maker who knows how to build as much flavor as possible. If you really love to explore new pizza horizons, the true party begins with the specials. Offerings like fried pesto pizza and ricotta-stuffed-crust make Fratelli a gem.

LAMP Wood Oven Pizzeria

Though it started with casual backyard pizza oven sessions, North Scottsdale neighborhood pizzeria LAMP, run by Lindsay and Matt Pilato, makes pizza at a level rivaling any pizzeria in town. Matt employs very long (24+ hour) fermentations to develop deep crust flavor and makes his own mozzarella. His pizza has chew, bready depth, and surprising lightness. Pizzas like the artfully balanced Rapini (broccoli rabe, pine nuts, chiles) and the spellbinding Gepetto (sausage, gorgonzola, onion marmalade) are among Arizona’s greats. Don’t miss Mignulata, a rich Sicilian bread stuffed with sausage and cauliflower.

Il Bosco Pizza

With a comfortable interior, cozy bar, and enchanting patio, Bill Forest’s neighborly pizzeria creates big experiences. Forest uses a brick oven and Arizona oak, turning out personal-size pizzas that elude traditional style buckets. They have a toasty crust with some chew and snap, flavorful dough, and carefully matched ingredients. Favorites include the Gabriela (Hatch chile!) and Valentina (pepperoni and a honey drizzle, the two combining with magical intensity). If you want to play pizzaiolo yourself and bake your own pie(s), Il Bosco sells take-home DIY kits to get you started.

Pizzeria Virtu

Gio Osso makes by-the-book Neapolitan, right on down to pizza dimensions (thin and airy) and using blistering heat, basil, Italian 00 flour, San Marzano tomatoes, and a swirl of olive oil. But Osso also runs Virtu, an elevated Italian restaurant. He introduces artful chef-driven touches to pizzas, taking them to new-and-refined places. A decadent potato pizza has a rich coating of provolone cream and rich pancetta. Another pizza unites bacon and chestnut honey. Cocktails are similarly creative, many building huge flavors by way of liqueurs and herbs.

Pomo Pizzeria Napoletana

Craving pizza and more than pizza? Visit Pomo. Owner Stefano Fabbri and his team skillfully peel Neapolitan pies out of a grand tiled oven. His pizza is leaf-thin, feather-light, and rimmed with a soft, squishy crust. Fabbri goes beyond Neapolitan, making pies in the style of Rimini, a beach town on Italy’s Adriatic coast. These have a thin, snappy crust that can stand up to bold toppings (porcini mushrooms, baked potato, truffle). And yes, Fabbri has still more cards in his deck. He bakes a specialty cheese-stuffed focaccia with black salt. Pomo also plates some of Scottsdale’s great pastas, including a last-meal-worthy lasagna.