Fresta's Italian American Cuisine — Restaurant in Sarasota

In case you missed my review of the previous restaurant in this location, Gianni's, I'll leave it for you here at the end as both Gianni's and Fresta's are part and parcel for pizza in Sarasota. Unfortunately, we won't be back to Fresta's since the food here skips the middle-man and 'reprasents Sarasota, FL right on target.

They forgot the sausage on our pizza. Let's just pretend that it was on the pizza, imported from Chicago and say, absolutely terrific!

Pizza has too much sweet marinara rather than pizza sauce. There's a difference and either too much sauce or too many toppings cause soggy pizza, esp. in the center of the pie.

Pizza. No zazz and what I would give for a cornmeal layer on the bottom of the crust. All of the flavor arrived from the sweet marinara.

Cinnabon style garlic knots. Too much butter garlic. Crust was good, though. To be fair, my homemade garlic bread has fresh, home-grown herbs and things like that, but still.

Wait staff, owner and everyone else was awesome!

The food is not terrible. Little pricey. It's. Just. Sarasota.

! Previous Location: Gianni's !

Newest update. That'll do it. How can a place that was so excellent get so bad so fast? It's crazy! And that's the last time we're eating at Gianni's. Soggy, uncooked pizza complimented by burnt, overcooked Chicken Parmigiana. And I didn't include pics of the eggplant that crept out of it's breading like the monster from Aliens. Is there an Italian restaurant on the planet the doesn't have soup?!? Yeah. Gianni's.

I feel I must update my review. The pizza crust at Gianni's has always been close to soggy-crust, but always tasty. They were our favorite for the past year. These days, there's no crisping the crust up when getting take out. It's just soggy and now the sausage is clearly re-used from, let's say, earlier in the day.

We miss Filippo's circa 1999.

This is Florida food burn-out. Snow birds leave and the quality suffers; patrons in the area just can't tell the difference among all the bad, chain-restaurant food in this area.

The only place with consistently excellent bar food is Brewster's on Main Street. I figured they'd burn out, but...

We came in from out of town and stopped here for dinner. The food was pretty good, atmosphere was nice and quiet, and the service was great. I had a personal pizza, my husband had gluten free pasta. There are some things though that sat wrong with us.

No where in the restaurant that we could see was it advertised that we'd have to pay a fee for using a card. We don't mind footing the bill for such things for smaller restaurants, but some warning would have been nice. It's basically a 2% fee, so it's not terrible...

What feels shady, though, is that there was a secondary 2% charge on top of that called a "transaction fee". We're already being charged for using a card, so why charge 2% twice? Why not just roll it into 4% and warn people that they'll have to pay that fee if they use a card?

Not only that, but there was a $3 upcharge on the gluten free pasta. Now, we're used to this, but this has to be the ONLY restaurant I've seen charge $3 for gluten free pasta. It was already a $22 dish with almost no meat in it. So that was $25 total for a dish that shouldn't really cost $22.

We were also not asked if the request for gluten free pasta was an allergy or a preference. For the record... it's an allergy. And the dish, regardless of whether it's got gluten free pasta or not, is served with grilled bread. I don't blame the waitress for this; this is strictly a management issue. Management should be responsible for ensuring that their staff know to ask if the request for something gluten free is due to an allergy or preference.

Despite the good food and pleasant atmosphere, I wouldn't recommend this place due to the lack of care shown for potentially serious allergies and feeling like we were hornswoggled by deliberately poor communication in...

heard good things on their steak and cheese, so decided to try. first thing we noticed was the atmosphere of the place, it seemed very dated and not the cleanest of places. we seen a dirty work station near the coffee machine, like it wasnt cleaned in days and the bathrooms were disgusting. even if the food was good, i dont think we would return. the service was very good and friendly and the food came out in a timely manor and was very hot. the steak sandwich just wasnt our cup of tea in terms of steak and cheese, the steak and onions were so fine minced, that along with the cheese, made it a glob , almost like a paste of ingredients . this might just be a common way its done in philly, i dont know, but when all the ingredients are one smooth glob , its not good in my book . we did like the bread however, it was soft and seeded and seemed to be a good bread for this sandwich. we also ordered the fries and they were hot and crispy, but had a mealy taste to them, so wasnt impressed with that either....all in all very disappointed trip and...