Scarpino's Classic Italian Expands to Lutz With Authentic Piedmont Roots

A 30-year Bradenton institution brought its handmade pasta tradition north on April 2, when Scarpino's Classic Italian opened its second Florida location at 6062 Van Dyke Rd. in Lutz. The new outpost arrives with a credential most Tampa Bay restaurants cannot match: a pizzaiolo recruited from Italy's Piedmont region with more than 25 years of pizza-making experience, now hand-forming fresh dough, garlic knots, and bread every morning in a Lutz kitchen.

The brand's roots run deeper than most. Brothers Frank and Rocco Scarpino founded Scarpino's Classic Italian in Bradenton more than 30 years ago, and the family's Italian lineage predates the restaurant by centuries. The Scarpino Family Crest, deposited in the museum in Florence, dates to 1500 A.D., a genealogical detail that gives the restaurant's authenticity claims real historical weight. In 2023, founder Frank Scarpino decided to return to Italy and spent a year vetting successors before settling on Rob Arias in November 2023. Arias formally took over on January 1, 2024, adding Scarpino's as his fifth restaurant at the time.

Arias is not a newcomer to the craft. He started as a dishwasher in fine Italian dining and worked his way through every role across more than 12 locations before becoming a multi-restaurant owner; Scarpino's is now one of seven in his portfolio. After the acquisition, Arias brought in co-owner Tom Anderson along with managing partners Daniel and Laura Sanchez, longtime restaurateurs, and hired executive chef Martin Wilson. The 4,500-square-foot Bradenton flagship, which seats 185 inside and 50 on a covered patio, received a full renovation: new exterior colors, reupholstered booths, and Italian Travertine tile floors in a black-and-white checkerboard pattern. The results show in the numbers. Bradenton holds a 4.5 out of 5 rating on Google with nearly 2,000 reviews and was named Best Italian Restaurant in Bradenton in the Best of 2025 awards, a recognition driven by guest votes rather than critic selection.

The Lutz menu carries that same depth. More than 15 pasta dishes span from Fettuccine Alfredo and Carbonara to gnocchi, ravioli, and spaghetti prepared three ways, with sauces and pasta made from scratch in-house using ingredients sourced from local farmers' markets. Forty-one pizza selections and a wine list of 40-plus regional labels round out the program. The flagship theatrical item is the $46 tableside Cacio e Pepe, prepared inside an aged whole-parmesan wheel and served for two. The dish traces its origins to Roman and Lazio shepherding culture, where cacio (sheep's milk cheese), black pepper, and dried pasta were the portable staples of long pastoral migrations. Scarpino's uses a parmesan wheel rather than the traditional Pecorino Romano, an American-Italian interpretation of a preparation now found in restaurants from New York to Tokyo. The Bradenton version of a similar tableside Alfredo has drawn consistent praise; one OpenTable reviewer called it "to die for."

The Piedmontese credential carries broader culinary weight than pizza alone might suggest. Piedmont is the birthplace of the Slow Food Movement, founded in the town of Bra by Carlo Petrini in 1989, and its cooking heritage traces to the House of Savoy, a royal dynasty dating to 1003 A.D. whose court chefs shaped the region's refined traditions. Piedmontese pastas are predominantly fresh and egg-based, a direct reflection of the region's agricultural wealth. That lineage now informs every hand-shaped dough in the Lutz kitchen.

The expansion arrives as the U.S. Italian restaurant industry approaches a projected $112.4 billion market size in 2025, having grown at an annualized rate of 5.8% over the prior five years, according to IBISWorld. Scarpino's is open daily from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. at 6062 Van Dyke Rd.; reservations are recommended on weekends. The original Bradenton location remains open at 6152 14th St. W. in Bayshore Gardens Shopping Center.