Find Pizza Near You in Holiday, Florida

With a name like it has and being in the sunshine state of Florida, it's easy to expect Holiday to be a vacation resort, but it's not and never has been. Holiday is a few miles inland from the coast and not a city or town but a suburb that accommodates the over-spill of the heavier populated cities in the Tampa Bay Area. As the urban area expanded and new neighborhoods sprang up, the community still remained nameless until a bank president decided to campaign in favor of its current name in the 1960s. It’s been known as Holiday ever since. Holiday is a slice of suburbia with little industry but plenty of hungry residents. It's a population who love pizza and who have provided the opportunities for savvy Italian restaurateurs to move to the area, set up shop and have success at doing what they do best.

When the pizzeria chefs moved to Holiday from other cities they didn't take any imaginative pizza recipes with them, but stuck to basic Italian without any Americanizations, and for that reason Holiday is known for its thick crust pizzas. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that, and a thick crust pie is possibly one of the best pizzas ever. Anything that's been popular for centuries has to be good. Pizzerias in Holiday make the dough for their thick crust pizzas in-house and so bases may have slight variations in taste from place to place. It all boils down to the hand of the chef when they're adding salt or doing the final kneading. On occasion, you may find a pizzeria in Holiday veering away from the norm and baking a Sicilian or Neapolitan-style and even a New York-style pizza. Most will be cut in wedges and left with a crusty edge naked of sauce and cheese.

Which pizzeria does the best delivery pizza in Holiday? That's a good question and one that can be easily answered. The best delivery pizza in Holiday comes from Dino's Subs and Pizza on the US 19. See Dino's premises and you could be forgiven in thinking it was a beach bar that had washed up on the shore then been transported to Holiday and converted into a pizza parlor. The coat of bright orange paint covering the building Dino's is housed in certainly adds a sunny note to the surrounding neighborhood and the white signage is so big you can read it from ten miles away. While there's nothing subtle or sophisticated about Dino's, their pizzas are class even if the establishment isn't. Try the American Special or the House Special and you'll soon know why Dino's has the best delivery pizza in Holiday.

The Villa Rome Italian Restaurant and Pizza don't do deliveries but what they do do is make the best take-out pizza in Holiday. The premises of Villa Rome are located on US 19 and easily spotted as they're well signed with six-foot-high lettering stating pizza and pasta. You can pull up easily enough outside too, as there are parking spaces right outside the door. Once inside, if you're of discerning taste, you'll really appreciate the pale purple bench seats that add flair to the otherwise dull interior decorations. Pick up a pizza from Villa Rome and you'll be as flabbergasted by it as you were by the bench seats. They're a total delight of classically combined topping ingredients spread out over a homemade dough base, covered with a liberal helping of cheese baked to melting perfection. If you're a cheese addict, go for their white pie. It's cheese heaven.

Head three miles southwest from Holiday and you'll be on the coast in a city called Tarpon Springs. It’s a beach resort with exceptional stretches of sand, a Greek influence, and a long history of sponge farming. You can learn all about sponges and how they're harvested at the Tarpon Springs Sponge Docks before taking a stroll around the Tarpon Springs Greektown Historic District and eating pizza at Greek Town Pizza on Athens Street.

Take a six-mile drive along the Florida coast from Holiday and you'll come to a small city called Port Richey. While its only claim to fame is that the country singer Johnny Cash once lived there, it is also the gateway to the Werner-Boyce Salt Springs State Park and the Robert Crown Wilderness Area. Once you've had look at those, try a pizza while enjoying the views from Whiskey River on the Water on Limestone Drive.

If you don't know how to snorkel or dive you can still see the underwater world firsthand by driving twenty miles south of Holiday to Clearwater. In Clearwater, you can visit the Clearwater Marine Aquarium where they rehabilitate injured dolphins and turtles before releasing them to the wild. Follow that with a stroll along St Pete's Pier and a pizza at Cristino's Coal Oven Pizza.