Blackpool pizzeria comes out top in Italian Awards 2024

Stefani’s Pizzeria in Cedar Square, Blackpool, took the award for Best Family Business at the event held at the Queen’s Hotel in Leeds.

Taking to social media, they said: “Our mission has always been to be the BEST, to become award winning, our passion will never go! Our pizza family together we did this and I’m so ridiculously proud of us all.”

They told the Gazette: “We are over the moon to of been able to pick up the award for best family business 2024, we strongly believe that our passion and family values have got us this far. We are very lucky to have a very dedicated team working with us, some which are family members.”

In celebration, the restaurant was closed yesterday, in order to let staff sleep off their celebrations.

14 of the best places to grab a pizza in and around Blackpool - according to readers

In 2022, the business took part in BBC Two’s cooking show, Britain’s Top Takeaway where they took on rivals from across the country to impress judges and host Sara Cox. Stefani’s was among 50 independent takeaways and restaurants shortlisted for the show based on customer reviews on Tripadvisor and other websites.

It currently rates as 5/5 on Tripadvisor and 4.8/5 on Google Reviews from more than 700 customer reviews.

Back story

The business prides itself on making delicious wood-fired pizza with dough made fresh daily and proved for a minimum of 24 hours, with ingredients sourced from Italy. Owner Nico passion for pizza came from his late Grandfather Pepe (Peter Stefani), who also once owned a pizza Takeawayon Blackpool’s busy sea front with his son’s.

After growing up in the family business helping out where he could Nico knew one day he wanted his own pizzeria. Nico decided to travel to Napoli the home land of pizza, he was on a mission to find out what it takes tocreate the most beautiful, fresh and deliciouspizzas. Nico is now bringing the same traditional techniques and methods back to his own pizzeria.

Other winners

La Famiglia in Liverpool was named the Best Restaurant in the North West in the Awards ceremony, and Poynton’s The Social Trattoria was named Best Trattoria.