The Italian Grill - Sarasota

Absolutely love this place!! Fantastic Italian cuisine! Great service the manager even comes by your table to be sure your experience was everything you wanted! Definitely recommend this as a local sweet spot for a good meal, atmosphere, and drink!

Excellent dining experience from the bread to the lasagna to the amazing lemon sorbet. Terrific sangria as well. Attentive server, manager and additional wait staff. Highly recommend.Parking: Free parking right outside the front door to the restaurant.

After reading the reviews, we decided to check it out for ourselves. The bad reviews were so minimal that I thought, they have to be good .We walked in and immediately seated at whichever table we wanted. BTW this was today, Sunday, 7/9. When we were seated, our waiter came over, Wes, and immediately asked if we wanted a drink. I ordered a smoked old fashion. We ordered a bottle of red wine for dinner and had bottled water. Wes came within minutes with my drink and wine for the table.Soon the appetizer of buarrata cheese salad came and it was delish! In the meantime, a basket of homemade focaccia bread was presented along with a small carafe of seasoned oil to dip in.Our entrees were served, I had Veal Picotta and my husband had the special, spaghetti bolognese with sausage.I noticed the pizza oven and mentioned to my husband he needed to go see. He did and then the owner came over and struck up a conversation with my husband. They talked about pizzas and having a home oven. We were eating our dinner when all of a sudden a cheese pizza shows up courtesy of Rob, the owner. We let it cool down, still hot from the fire roasted oven. So at that time we decided to save half of our dinner so we made room for the pizza. Glad we did, that was incredible.Dinner was done and dessert time. Apparently they offer a complementary zepolies for dessert. We got that and I got an espresso.All I can say is that from the beginning of walking into the restaurant, we had nothing but a great experience. Rob was very cordial and interested in our input.Great time and food. We will definitely go back whenever we are in town. This is definitely THE ITALIAN RESTAURANT OF SARASOTA.

Waitress was great. Food was horrible. Spoke to owner, who was nasty, but did say would give$25 back. This did not even cover the price of the dinner I couldn't eat and manager took away. She never came back. Gave gift cert away as I will NEVER go back there again!All can see, the owner came back and made fun of my name. Going to a place where the owner makes fun of a customers name? I hope you all agree this is very immature and do not patronize this establishment.

They claim to be the “Best Italian Food in Sarasota”, so we thought we’d try it. Wow. What a disappointment. Entering the restaurant there was an extremely loud person at the bar, that turned out to be the owner. Major turn off. The waitress was abrupt and unpleasant. The Lasagna was all cheese and pasta, with a weak canned sauce. Horrible. The Broccoli Rabe looked like they scooped it out of the trash can. My fiancée’s meal of Eggplant Parmigiana was equally disappointing, plastered onto a pile of bad spaghetti. Here’s a pic of the broccoli rabe… I heard good things but won’t ever waste my money or time there again. And we live a few blocks away. We were hoping it was good, because of the convenience. Cafeteria food at best. Yuck.