The Best of St. Louis Pizza: Your #1 source for pizza info: May 2016

Anthonino's: Get it while it's HOT!

Sicilian Pizza, Beef Spiedini, and Toasted Ravioli. Anthonino's offers a variety of Italian and Greek dishes.

Anthonino’s Taverna on the Hill offers the best one-two combination punch of toasted ravioli and pizza in the St. Louis area. They had a stellar 2015, winning the Riverfront Times hotly contested best pizza and best toasted ravioli categories. Anthonino’s has been on my radar since 2012 thanks to Yelp but I never visited until the spring of 2015 because none of my friends had eaten there. Since last Spring, Stlpizzaguy attends this hot, affordable and trendy restaurant almost monthly. Now the secret is out in 2016, so expect to wait and an hour or longer on the weekends unless you have reservations.

Anthonino’s ingredients for success partially lie in their fresh, made in house marinara sauce. It’s a slightly thinner marinara and not overly sweet. I can taste the freshness while spreading the marina sauce on the toasted ravioli. The handmade, jumbo-sized toasted ravioli are my personal favorite in St. Louis. But don't just take my word for this appetizer filled with ground beef, onion, garlic, and topped with ricotta and pecorino-romano cheese.

Their 14-inch pizzas are a mid-level thick hand-tossed crust. Anthonino's crust is more crispy on the edges than doughy and a large amount of marinara sauce is typically found near the crust of their pizzas. The cheese is a provolone/mozzarella mix instead of Provel. I recognize the cheese is not Provel because their pizzas are stringy when cutting slices. Anthonino's includes the Italian meat Capocolla in several of their pizzas such as the Sicilian and four-meat pizzas. Capocolla is taken from either the shoulder or neck of a pig, so it is a type of Italian pork with a salty taste. My personal favorite at Anthoninos is the Sicilian, which has capocolla, pepperoni, roasted red peppers, and red onions. One knowledgeable waitress told me that the Sicilian is also their best-seller.

In June of 2012, Guy Fieri of the Food Network and host Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives visited Anthonino's. Fieri tried the handmade Toasted Ravioli, house marinara, Dolmathes and Greek yogurt tzatziki.

Anthonino’s lives up to all the hype. Stlpizzaguy took his friend Brian Andrew to Anthonino’s before a Blues game, but we ate our food so fast that we didn’t have time for pictures or the “P” of Approval. My parents Tom and Donna went for to Anthonino’s for their 36th wedding anniversary, and gave the “P” of Approval in my absence.