Best Italian Restaurants in Frisco TX

Search Italian restaurants Frisco TX and you will get sixty listings, most of them chains with a red-sauce menu you have already eaten in four other states. The good ones are in there. They are just buried.

The short answer: Frisco’s Italian scene splits three ways. There is the upscale tier at HALL Park and The Star, built for anniversaries and expense accounts. There is a small group of family-run trattorias cooking actual regional Italian food. And there is genuinely excellent Neapolitan pizza, which is the category Frisco does best.

This guide covers all three, with addresses, what to order and which nights need a reservation. It sits alongside our wider rundown of the best restaurants in Frisco TX, which sorts the whole city by cuisine. If you only remember one thing from this page: the pizza here is better than the pasta, and it is not close.

Italian Restaurants Frisco TX: At a Glance

Price bands are per person before drinks: $ is roughly $12 to $18, $$ lands around $20 to $38, $$$ starts near $45 and climbs. Everything here is a 2026 snapshot. Frisco restaurants open, move and change hours constantly, so confirm before you drive over.

The Upscale End: Where to Book a Real Dinner

Two rooms in Frisco do serious Italian at a serious price, and they sit about ten minutes apart. Both take reservations. Both need them on a Saturday.

Palato Italian Kitchen and Lounge

Palato is inside the HALL Park Hotel at 3220 Internet Boulevard, and the patio looks straight out over Kaleidoscope Park. That view is the whole argument for eating here in spring and fall. Executive chef Eric Sakai built the menu out of years cooking across Italy, and the kitchen is exhibition-style, so you watch the wood-fired oven work while you eat.

The format is broad on purpose: espresso in the lounge in the morning, a weekday express lunch that runs around $20 with a soup, salad or dessert included and turns around in twenty minutes, weekend brunch, and a full upscale dinner with an Italian wine program and a cocktail bar. The express lunch is the sleeper value in Frisco Italian dining, honestly. Same kitchen, a third of the dinner bill.

They run recurring weeknight programming too, an aperitivo hour, a wine night midweek, live music later in the week, which is worth checking if you are staying nearby and want something to do that is not a stadium. The signature cocktail was going for about $12 last I checked.

My take: come for lunch or the patio at golden hour. Dinner is very good and priced like it. If the weather is bad and you cannot sit outside, some of the magic goes with it.

Lombardi Cucina Italiana

Lombardi sits at 6655 Winning Drive inside The Star District, which makes it the default nice dinner after a day on the Dallas Cowboys campus. The room is built to look like an open-air villa: olive trees, Italian marble, Venetian chandeliers. It is a lot. It also works.

The menu leans on fatto a mano pasta, made by hand, alongside a deep bench of fresh fish and meats. There is Sunday brunch from late morning until mid-afternoon, a martini and oyster social hour on weekday evenings, and live music Friday and Saturday nights from about 7:30 to 10:30. Dinner runs to 11 p.m. on weekends, which in Frisco counts as late.

Book it. Weekend tables here go roughly a week out, and walking up at 7:30 on a Saturday with a party of six is optimistic. If you are already planning a day at The Star and the Cowboys headquarters, lock the reservation when you buy the tour tickets.

The Family-Run Trattorias

This is the tier most visitors miss, because these places sit in strip centers off Preston Road and Warren Parkway rather than in a shiny district with valet parking. It is also where the most interesting cooking in Frisco Italian happens.

Caffe Baonecci

If you want one recommendation off this whole page, take this one. Baonecci is at 7151 Preston Road, Suite 451, and it is run by Walter and Stefania Gambaccini, who are from Lucca in Tuscany. They spent years running a small, highly regarded trattoria of the same name in North Beach, San Francisco, then moved the family to Texas in 2021 and reopened here.

Stefania cooks. Walter runs the room. What comes out is Lucchese food, which is a specific thing and not the generic Italian-American canon: tagliatelle in San Marzano tomato sauce, tortellini stuffed with porcini, carpaccio di bresaola, lasagna and bolognese made the way a household in Tuscany would make them. The gnudi, when it appears as a special, and the risotto ai funghi both get talked about a lot by regulars.

Then there is the pizza, which is its own argument. Walter describes it as thin and crackly but not dry, baked directly on stone, closer to Roman than Neapolitan. They were reportedly the only kitchen in San Francisco doing that style. The house pie, Pizza Baonecci, comes with prosciutto, arugula and shaved Parmigiano. They added a full bar for Texas, so the Negroni and Aperol Spritz are covered.

The honest caveats: it is small, it is dinner-focused with limited weekday hours and it closes on some days that other places do not, so check before you go. It is also not trying to be the cheapest table in town, and Walter says so openly. Worth it.

Salute Italian Restaurant

Out west at 5480 FM 423, Suite 100, Salute is the special-occasion neighborhood Italian: dark, warm, dinner-only, open roughly 4 to 10 p.m. daily (confirm current hours). The sauces are made in house and the portions are not shy. It is the kind of room where the staff talk you into an appetizer you did not plan on and you are glad about it later.

There is a sister location up in Prosper if you happen to be staying north. Same idea, same menu backbone.

Dua Trattoria

Dua sits at 5225 Warren Parkway, walking distance from the Stonebriar retail cluster, and describes itself as Italian with a Mediterranean twist. That twist is real: alongside the lobster ravioli, short rib ravioli, meat lasagna and melanzane parmigiana you will find cevapi, the little beef-and-veal sausages you would normally hunt for in a Balkan restaurant. The bombolotti in pink sauce with peas and mushrooms is the comfort order.

Two practical things make Dua useful. The bar is enormous, which matters if half your group wants a proper cocktail before food, and the patio is genuinely pleasant. It also does private parties and catering, so it lands on a lot of rehearsal-dinner shortlists. If you are planning something bigger, our guide to wedding and special-event venues in Frisco covers the rooms that handle groups.

Reserve through the usual booking sites for weekend evenings. Weekday lunch is walk-up territory. After shopping Stonebriar Centre, it is the closest thing to a real sit-down Italian meal you will find.

Gallo Nero

Gallo Nero is at 4851 Legacy Drive, Suite 504, down at the southern edge of the city. The outdoor seating is the draw and the starters are the strength. The bread and the appetizer list are consistently well reviewed; the entrees get a more mixed verdict, with the vodka sauce as the dish most often singled out as worth ordering.

My read: treat it as a patio lunch or a casual midweek dinner rather than the night you were planning to remember. On a mild afternoon it is a very easy place to sit for two hours.

The Pizza, Which Is the Best Part

Frisco has two wood-fired Neapolitan kitchens that would hold their own in a much bigger city. Between them they have collected most of the pizza awards North Texas hands out. If you have one Italian meal to spend here, this is where I would spend it.

Pizzeria Testa

Testa is at 8660 Church Street, down in the old Frisco Rail District, which already makes it the most atmospheric Italian address in the city. The family traces its pizza lineage back more than two centuries to Antonia Testa, who was pizzaiolo to King Ferdinand I of Bourbon. That is a hell of a résumé line.

The ingredients are the point. Tipo 00 flour imported from Naples, San Marzano tomatoes, buffalo-milk mozzarella brought in from outside Naples, sausage made in house. The Margherita runs around $16 and the S.T.G. version with mozzarella di bufala about $18. The Marinara, which has no cheese at all, is $14 and is the pizza to order if you want to know whether a kitchen can actually make dough. Salsiccia and Calabrese sit around $18, the Contadina with rosemary potatoes and pancetta about $19.

The move for a group is a Metro: a meter-long pizza, roughly $58 for a straight Margherita up to about $68 if you want it divided into four different quarters. It is a spectacle and it feeds a table. Save room for the tiramisu (around $13) or a cannoli (around $7). Prices were current in 2026; check the menu.

Testa has taken Best of Big D honors from D Magazine, a Best of DFW pizza nod and a Top 100 placement from the Dallas Morning News dining guide, and a spot on a Top 50 Dallas restaurants list. It also has a patio that has made local best-patio lists. Go on a weekday if you can; weekends fill.

Cane Rosso

Cane Rosso is at 3685 The Star Boulevard, Suite 200, and it does the same Neapolitan style with a louder, more casual room. This is the one that took D Magazine’s Best Pizza in Dallas five years running in the early 2010s, and the Frisco outpost carries the standard well. Wood-fired pies, fresh pasta, sandwiches, salads. Open from 11 a.m. daily, later on Friday and Saturday.

Because of where it sits, Cane Rosso is the practical pick before a game or an event: you can eat a proper pizza in forty minutes and walk to whatever you have tickets for. Testa is the better pizza. Cane Rosso is the better logistics.

Eddie’s Napolis and the weeknight tier

Not every Italian dinner needs to be an event. Eddie’s Napolis at 8822 Teel Parkway, Suite 410, is the neighborhood answer: chicken parmesan done properly, stuffed shells, a marinara people go out of their way to praise, and a bill that does not sting. Portions are generous and the service is warm.

Below that sits the fast-casual layer, including build-your-own Italian street food counters in the retail corridors. Fine for a quick lunch, forgettable for dinner. If you have one night, spend it upstream.

Worth the Short Drive Out of Frisco

Frisco’s city limits are an accident of geography, not a food boundary. Three places just over the line come up constantly when locals argue about Italian, and all three are inside twenty minutes.

• Davio’s Northern Italian Steakhouse, 5762 Grandscape Boulevard in The Colony. The most formal option in the area and the one that reads as a proper occasion restaurant. Northern Italian cooking crossed with a steakhouse, house-made pasta, ravioli worth ordering, dinner only from late afternoon. Combine it with an evening at Grandscape and you have a whole night sorted.
• Ciccio Trattoria, 7901 Eldorado Parkway, Suite 155, in McKinney. Small, comfortable, and the gnocchi is the reason to go. Lunch service on Fridays through Sundays, dinner the rest of the week. Service can be uneven, which is the trade for a kitchen this small.
• Italian Garden, 500 N Custer Road, Suite 100, McKinney. Old-school and cheerful, with complimentary garlic rolls, a good soup list and a BYOB policy that quietly makes it the best-value Italian dinner in the area. Bring a Chianti.

There is also a second Salute up in Prosper at 1450 N Preston Road, useful if you are staying on the north side of town.

How to Choose, Depending on the Night

Date night

Lombardi if you want the room to do the work, with live music on a Friday or Saturday and a table booked well ahead. Palato if the weather is good and you want the patio and the park view. Baonecci if the person you are with actually cares about food more than about the setting.

Afterward, the drinks are close by. Our guides to Frisco’s cocktail lounges and the best bars in Frisco TX cover where to land for a nightcap, and the broader roundup of things to do in Frisco at night is worth a look if dinner is only the first act.

With kids

Pizza solves this. Testa and Cane Rosso are both loud enough that a restless four-year-old disappears into the noise, and a shared Metro pizza at Testa turns dinner into an event kids remember. Eddie’s Napolis is the low-stress weeknight option, with a chicken parmesan that has never once been rejected by a nine-year-old.

What I would not do is take small children to Lombardi or Palato on a Saturday night. They will be fine; you will spend the meal managing rather than eating. The Frisco TX family vacation guide has more on which rooms around town actually welcome a stroller.

Big groups and private dining

Dua does private parties and catering and has the space for it. Palato runs all-inclusive private event packages with an indoor private room, the central bar for a wine reception, and that large patio for something bigger. Lombardi handles groups but book far ahead. For a table of eight on a Friday with no notice, a meter-long pizza at Testa is the answer that will not fail you.

Lunch, takeout and the cheap end

The express lunch at Palato is the best-value upscale meal in Frisco Italian, around $20 with a course included and turned around fast enough for a work break. Gallo Nero and Dua both serve lunch from late morning. Testa and Cane Rosso both do takeout, and Neapolitan pizza travels better than most people expect if you drive straight back. If you are staying at one of the hotels in Frisco TX and cannot face another wait, that is the play.

Practical Notes Before You Book

Reservations

Lombardi, Palato and Dua all take bookings through the usual online platforms. For a Friday or Saturday evening at Lombardi, aim for about a week out. For Palato’s patio in good weather, the same. Baonecci and Salute are smaller and it is worth phoning rather than relying on an app. The pizzerias are mostly walk-in, though a large party on a weekend should call ahead.

The blunt rule for Frisco generally: book Saturday dinner by Wednesday. Everything downstream of that gets easier.

What it actually costs

A two-person dinner with a shared starter, two pastas and a glass of wine each lands somewhere around $90 to $130 at the mid-tier places and comfortably north of $180 at the upscale rooms. Pizza dinner for two with a beer each is more like $50 to $65. A family of four sharing pizzas at Testa, with a dessert, generally comes in under $110. All 2026 figures, all subject to menu changes.

Patios, parking and timing

The patio question matters more here than in most cities, because North Texas gives you roughly two glorious patio seasons and one brutal summer. Palato, Testa, Dua and Gallo Nero all have outdoor seating worth using in spring and fall. From late June through early September, eat inside and stop pretending otherwise.

Parking is free surface lots and garages nearly everywhere, which is one of the real conveniences of dining in a suburb this new. The Star and HALL Park both use garages; the Rail District is street and lot parking that fills on weekend evenings.

Where Italian sits in the wider Frisco food scene

Honestly? Italian is not the strongest category in this city. Frisco’s deepest benches are elsewhere: the barbecue joints, the sprawl of Mexican and Tex-Mex restaurants, and the remarkable concentration of Asian kitchens covered in our Frisco Asia Town food guide. If you are here for three nights, give Italian one of them and spend the others on what North Texas does better than almost anywhere.

That said, the pizza genuinely competes. Testa and Cane Rosso are not consolation prizes.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the best Italian restaurant in Frisco TX?

It depends what you want. For the best room and the biggest occasion, Lombardi Cucina Italiana at The Star. For the most authentic cooking, Caffe Baonecci, run by a family from Lucca who spent years doing this in San Francisco. For the best single plate of food, a Neapolitan pizza at Pizzeria Testa.

Where is the best pizza in Frisco?

Pizzeria Testa on Church Street, by most measures. It uses imported Naples tipo 00 flour, San Marzano tomatoes and buffalo-milk mozzarella, and it has collected D Magazine and Dallas Morning News pizza honors. Cane Rosso at The Star is the close rival and the more convenient one if you have event tickets that evening.

Do Frisco Italian restaurants take reservations?

The upscale ones do and you should use them. Lombardi, Palato and Dua all book online, and weekend evenings at Lombardi go roughly a week out. Baonecci and Salute are small enough that a phone call works better than an app. The pizzerias run mostly walk-in, but call ahead for a party of six or more.

Which Italian restaurants in Frisco are good with kids?

Pizzeria Testa and Cane Rosso, easily. Both are wood-fired pizzerias, both are loud enough to absorb a restless toddler, and Testa’s meter-long Metro pizza is a genuine crowd-pleaser for a family table. Eddie’s Napolis on Teel Parkway is the low-key weeknight choice, with reasonable prices and a well-executed chicken parmesan.

Is there authentic regional Italian food in Frisco, or only Italian-American?

Both exist. Most of the market is Italian-American red sauce, which is fine on its own terms. But Caffe Baonecci cooks specifically from Lucca in Tuscany, including dishes like carpaccio di bresaola that rarely appear on American menus, and its stone-baked thin crust is closer to Roman than Neapolitan. Start there if authenticity is the priority.

Which Frisco Italian restaurants have good patios?

Palato has the best one, overlooking Kaleidoscope Park from the HALL Park Hotel. Pizzeria Testa’s patio has made local best-outdoor-patio lists. Dua Trattoria and Gallo Nero both have pleasant outdoor seating too. All four are excellent in spring and fall and largely unusable in the peak of a North Texas summer.

Final Thoughts

Frisco will not out-cook Dallas on Italian, and anyone claiming otherwise is selling something. What it has is a handful of genuinely good rooms and two pizzerias that would be a big deal anywhere.

If you get one meal: Pizzeria Testa, a Margherita S.T.G., a glass of Chianti Classico, and the tiramisu. If you get one nice night out: Lombardi on a Friday, booked the week before, with the live music running. And if you actually care about Italian food rather than Italian atmosphere, drive to a strip center on Preston Road and let Stefania Gambaccini cook for you.