Best Italian Restaurants in Austin
Austin, Texas — updated August 22, 2026
From a downtown steakhouse serving a nightly prix fixe to a food truck parked on Brazos Street, five Austin kitchens making Italian food worth planning around.
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Austin's Italian cooking splits between downtown dining rooms that take reservations weeks out and counter-service kitchens off the interstate frontage roads. The list below runs from a 2nd Street steakhouse with nearly 2,900 reviews to a food truck with fewer than 200, and the ratings are noted so it is clear which reputations are settled and which are still forming.
1. Dean's Italian Steakhouse
The highest-rated Italian room downtown, and the volume behind it makes the number credible: 4.9 across 2,875 reviews. Dean's sits at 110 E 2nd St and runs a prix fixe menu at $85 per person, served nightly starting at 5 PM with extended hours on Fridays and Saturdays. Reservations are bookable in half-hour slots from mid-afternoon through late evening, which matters on a block that fills with convention and event traffic. If you are booking for a weekend, the later seatings are the ones that tend to survive on the calendar.
2. Sapori Italian Roots
A 4.8 rating over 719 reviews puts Sapori just behind Dean's on the strength of its numbers, and it does it in a very different setting: suite 215 at 800 Brazos St, inside the downtown grid rather than on a restaurant row. That address is a working lunch location as much as a dinner one, so the midday stretch draws office traffic from the surrounding blocks. With more than 700 reviews behind the score, this is a rating that has held up rather than one built on a first busy month.
3. ARTIPASTA Italian Food (Austin Highland)
The best-reviewed Italian option in the Highland area, at 4.6 from 578 reviews. It sits at 6406 N Interstate 35 Frontage Rd, suite 2510, which puts it within easy reach of the north-central neighborhoods that otherwise have to drive downtown for this kind of food. The review count is substantial enough to trust: a mid-4s score across nearly 600 diners is a more reliable signal than a near-perfect one across a few dozen. Convenient for a weeknight when a downtown reservation is not worth the parking.
4. Mandola's Italian Kitchen
The most-reviewed Italian restaurant on this list by a wide margin, with 3,265 reviews and a 4.5 rating. That combination is the definition of proven rather than promising: thousands of visits and the score has not slipped. The Guadalupe Street location, at 4700 W Guadalupe St #12, is a counter-order operation in practice for many diners, which makes it a straightforward choice with a group or with kids. Expect the dinner rush to build early on weekends given how much traffic the place handles.
5. IL Saporis Italian Food Truck
A 4.5 rating from 170 reviews, the thinnest evidence base here, so treat it as promising rather than established. The truck operates at 800 Brazos St, unit 215, the same downtown address as Sapori Italian Roots, which makes it a useful lunch stop for anyone working in the state buildings and offices nearby. Food trucks keep tighter and more variable hours than dining rooms, so check before making a trip specifically for it. For a quick downtown plate of Italian food without a reservation, it is the low-effort option on this list.