The Best Pizza Near Aqua Crua, by the Record
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Rank 1. I Tigli
Pizza
Wholemeal flours and a long natural ferment give the dough at this San Bonifacio pizzeria a crust that shatters before giving way to something pillowy inside. The chef has been refining that balance for what feels like forever, and the toppings stretch well past margherita into fish and seasonal vegetables. It's the kind of pizza that makes you wonder why anyone settled for less, without quite saying so out loud.
- 50 Top Pizza #7 · 50 Top Pizza World
- 50 Top Pizza #4 · 50 Top Pizza Italy
- Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant
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Rank 2. Gustificio
Italian Contemporary Barbecue
The smell of baked pastry hits you at the door, but the charcoal grill is what this place is about. It's a lively trattoria-style restaurant in a small Veneto town where prime cuts are the main event, cooked over embers with obvious conviction. The menu nods to season and tradition while slipping in the occasional contemporary detour, and Wednesdays bring a short run of gourmet pizzas that feels less like a gimmick than it sounds.
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Rank 3. Gigi Pipa
Wood-fired Pizza
A former match factory in Este is now a pizzeria with a garden, which is exactly the kind of origin story that sounds invented but isn't. The chef runs three styles of pizza, wood-fired classics, tasting pies in a contemporary style, and thin Roman rounds, with vegetables and ingredients pulled largely from small local producers. Ranked in the 50 Top Pizza Italy and World lists, it earns a Forno Verde special award for its green sourcing focus.
- 50 Top Pizza #88 · 50 Top Pizza World
- 50 Top Pizza #29 · 50 Top Pizza Italy
- 50 Top Pizza 2026 · Forno Verde · 50 Top Pizza Italy Special Awards
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Rank 4. Pedrocchino
Pizza
A pizzeria where the chef, Walter Rampazzo, turns the dough itself into the menu, offering versions made with seawater, charcoal, or put through a triple-cooking process of steam, fry, and bake. The space has grown over the years into a sprawling multi-room spot with nearly two hundred seats and a garden with a pool. Long-leavened doughs, a solid beer selection, and a wine list round things out.
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A pizzeria tucked among greenery in a quiet corner of the Veneto, where the dough goes through a long, slow rise and sometimes a double cook, fried then baked, before it lands on the table. The chef pairs bacalà alla vicentina with pizza like it's an obvious idea, which it isn't, and somehow pulls it off. Locally sourced ingredients throughout, and a roster of toppings that dares without losing the thread.
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A former tobacco-drying shed at the north edge of Abano Terme, now a pizzeria with high ceilings, open space, and a wood-fired oven doing serious work. The dough runs in several directions: traditional biga, whole wheat, burnt wheat, and contemporary Neapolitan, all landing crispy and light. Tables fill fast, which tells you something about how the price sits relative to what arrives. The outdoor areas help with overflow.
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Rank 7. CUORE – Luca Brancati
Neapolitan Pizza
Three dough styles under one roof: the classic Neapolitan round with a high puffed crust, Roman tray pizza sliced thin, and the house "Fa Crock," crispy outside and pillowy within. This is a serious pizza shop in a small Veneto town, run by a Campanian heart, so the fried starters, montanare, supplì, and mozzarella in carrozza, arrive as family tradition rather than afterthought. Toppings roam from Venetian asparagus to Calabrian 'nduja. The beer list comes with pairing notes, which few pizza places bother.
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Rank 8. Zio Mo’
Pizza
A sprawling pizza spot where the dough changes before you've settled on a favorite, because the kitchen is always mid-experiment. The mix of flours and hydration levels shifts with the seasons, so the menu runs from timeless classics to stuffed calzones to high-hydration variations that feel like a different argument for what pizza can be. The room is big and popular in the way a place gets when the neighborhood has actually adopted it. Ranked among 50 Top Pizza Italy.
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Rank 9. Renato Bosco
Pizza
Renato Bosco has spent years classifying pizza the way a scientist classifies species, and the menu reflects it: named doughs, named leavening styles, named formats, each doing something slightly different from the last. This is a pizza restaurant where tasting menus are genuinely how you're meant to eat, moving through pan, focaccia, and airy eight-slice rounds before landing on a round Tonda with a proper cornicione.
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The oregano is crushed by hand, which tells you something about how seriously this family-run pizzeria in Vigonza takes its craft. Franco Barbato has been making Neapolitan-style pies since he was a teenager, and the room still carries that pleasantly faded charm that no interior designer could fake. The marinara and buffalo mozzarella Verace are the heart of it, though the sausage and friarielli is the one to order if it's on.
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The place still has no sign out front, which either says something about confidence or about the family that built it on a Renault 4 delivery route. Balobino is a pizza restaurant in Lendinara, minimal and quiet, where the dough is taken as seriously as a religion and the crust aims for something the menu calls cloud-like. Natural wines and beers chosen with the same fussiness as the flour. It made 50 Top Pizza Italy's Excellent Pizzerias list.
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A pizzeria in the Venetian hinterland where the dough gets lighter every season and the seafood toppings are worth the detour from Venice proper. The beer list is taken as seriously as the pizza, which tells you something about the crowd. Dessert shows up at the end, which sounds obvious until it doesn't, and here it earns its place. A neighborhood spot that keeps quietly raising its own bar.
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Brama treats pizza as a design problem, running doughs through water kefir, sourdough, and spontaneous fermentation until they land somewhere lighter than you expected. The result covers a lot of ground: crispy round pies, small skillets, Roman paddles, each with its own texture and leavening. Toppings lean on seasonal produce and small producers. The room looks the part, the wine and beer list is short but considered, and 50 Top Pizza has taken notice.
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Rank 14. Donatelli 3011
Italian Pizza
A pizza restaurant in San Giovanni Lupatoto that takes its crust seriously enough to offer a dedicated sauce menu for dipping the leftovers, which says something about confidence. The interior leans industrial chic with soft lighting, giving it more metropolitan energy than the address might suggest. Toppings run from a straightforward Margherita to combinations involving gin tonic, and the kitchen makes everything fresh. Named on 50 Top Pizza Italy's Excellent Pizzerias list.
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The Alpini Bridge fills the window and the Brenta runs below, which is a pretty solid backdrop for a pizza place. This Bassano del Grappa pizzeria works several dough styles, from puffy Neapolitan to a thinner Venetian version, piling them with Southern Italian imports alongside local Asiago and cod. Desserts come with a nod to the local grappa tradition, and the wine list punches above its weight. Ranked in 50 Top Pizza Italy.
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A pizzeria on the outskirts of Verona where the dough alone involves up to eight different flours and fermentations long enough to make you feel guilty for eating the result so fast. The menu runs classic rounds, pizza by the slice, focaccia, farinata, and Detroit-style by reservation only, the last one paired with gin and tonics because why not. The gluten-free operation is run by the chef's son, a vice world champion in that category.
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Perched at the edge of Bosco Chiesanuova in the Lessini Mountains, Araldo is a pizzeria that treats local sourcing like a quiet obsession. Neapolitan rounds share the menu with Roman-style shovel pizzas made from ancient grains, named after a Cimbrian word from when medieval German settlers colonized these hills. Cheeses come from Monte Veronese dairies, cured meats from the village butcher. Good beer and wine list to match.
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A wood-fired oven built by Neapolitan artisans anchors the room at this Verona pizzeria, surrounded by hand-painted Vietri ceramics and the low hum of regulars who clearly never left. The dough ferments for 72 hours, which gives the crust that particular lightness that makes you eat more than you planned. Seasonal specials sit alongside the classics, and the desserts, including a millefoglie from celebrated local chef Giancarlo Perbellini, are not an afterthought.
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The wine cellar here could embarrass a proper restaurant, which tells you a lot about a pizza place. Prego is a sit-down pizzeria where stone-ground flour keeps the dough light and the pairings lean on a nutritionist's input, an unusual touch. Craft beer shows up, but wine is the real thread running through the meal. Desserts nod to Campania, so save room. It's on the 50 Top Pizza Italy Excellent Pizzerias list.
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Rank 20. Grigoris
Pizza
A pizzeria in the Venetian mainland that seats 300 people and still runs multiple shifts on weekends, which tells you something. The chef is self-taught and built his reputation on high-hydration sourdough, with San Marzano tomatoes and fiordilatte from Agerola keeping the sourcing honest. The seafood pizzas are the move, built around Sicilian anchovies, Scardovari mussels, and octopus. It placed on 50 Top Pizza Italy.
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Rank 21. Strazzaria
Venetian Pizza
Sitting on Campo del Ghetto Nuovo, this pizza restaurant opened recently with a specific idea: fold classic Venetian dishes into the pie. Risi e bisi, cuttlefish in their ink, tiny lagoon shrimp, all reimagined as toppings, which sounds like it shouldn't work until it does. Hundreds of wine bottles line the walls, the list is serious, and the staff actually knows it. A genuinely new concept for Venice, where new concepts are rare.
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Rank 22. Birraria La Corte
Neapolitan Pizza
Neapolitan pizza a short walk from the Rialto, served in a room that opens onto a courtyard with a square beyond it, which is as good as Venice gets for lunch. The dough is long-leavened and pillowy, and the team leans into local produce, lagoon vegetables and Sant'Erasmo artichoke alongside the occasional mainland import. It draws a steady mix of Italians and visitors who found it without too much trouble from the train station.
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A Neapolitan-style pizzeria tucked under an ancient portico in central Ferrara, where writing in Campanian dialect covers the walls and two ovens handle both traditional and gluten-free pies. The chef came up from Salerno and the dough shows it, long-leavened and properly puffy. Seating spills across two floors in a room that feels more southern Italy than northern. The "ruoto" pan pizzas, rooted in rural Campanian tradition, are worth the short walk from wherever you managed to park.
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The pizza at Me put Ferrara on the map for a style the team calls "true contemporary," Naples-rooted but lighter than you'd expect, with a steam-cooked option that tilts the bill toward restaurant territory. The cocktail pairings are part of the pitch, though a thoughtfully assembled international wine list is there for the holdouts. Desserts come in jars. It's a pizzeria that takes itself seriously without being insufferable about it.
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A pizzeria sitting out in open countryside, which already tells you something about the regulars who make the drive. The menu breaks pizzas into revisited, award-winning, and chef's specials, and the fish options are taken more seriously than you'd expect. Wines and beers run deep, service is warm without being fussy, and 50 Top Pizza Italy has it among their Excellent Pizzerias.