Paesano Pizza

50 Top Pizza named Paesano the best pizzeria in Scotland in its 2026 Europa awards, eighteen months after founder Paul Stevenson sold the Glasgow sites to the group that owns Di Maggio's.

Why go

Paul Stevenson opened Miller Street in 2015 with a spec rather than a concept: ovens designed and built in Naples, Caputo "00" flour, a slow fermentation using sourdough alongside hybrid yeast, and a bake at 500C that puffs the rim and leaves the leopard spotting (The Glasgow Bell). Gaby Soutar clocked the method on Miller Street in 2016: bases built on "hybrid yeast and sourdough that had been proofed for 48 hours," fed into an oven whose heat she called a "brooding presence" (The Scotsman). The menu has stayed at ten pizzas plus specials, topped with San Marzano tomatoes and fior di latte (Bite Magazine). DRG bought the three restaurants in June 2024, at which point they were turning over £15m a year and serving more than 22,000 people a week (STV News). Glasgow has argued about the standard ever since, and the 2026 award is the strongest counter-evidence on record.

Order this / avoid

• Order: the margherita first. With three toppings and a 90-second bake there is nowhere for the dough to hide, and the dough is what 50 Top Pizza's anonymous judges singled out when they commended "the quality of its dough, restaurant atmosphere and value for money" ref. Then take whatever is on the specials board, which rotates against the fixed ten.
• Avoid: turning up at 7pm on a Saturday expecting to sit down. There are no reservations and The Skinny records "a queue crawling out the door onto the street" as normal service ref. Go at opening or late.

What locals & experts say

• 50 Top Pizza Europa 2026, Best Pizzeria in Scotland: awarded after multiple anonymous visits, with the judges citing "the quality of its dough, restaurant atmosphere and value for money" and the "smoky flavour and signature leopard-spotted crust" off the custom wood and gas-fired oven. ref
• The Skinny: "Priding itself on the quality of its authentic woodfired pizzas, the stylish restaurant was a lesson in no bullshit service," serving "some of the best slices in Scotland." ref
• The Scotsman (Gaby Soutar, 2016), 8.5/10 for food: the pizzas are "utter Ninja Turtle or Garfield bait," and "all the ingredients were there for a reason." ref
• The Glasgow Bell (Robbie Armstrong, 2025): the dissent, quoting comedian Christopher Macarthur-Boyd writing in The Skinny that "The Di Maggio'sification of the brand has been sudden, jarring, and unwelcome." ref
• Local rec: Jeff's save, his note below. REAL.

Good to know

• Timing: open from midday every day, lunch through dinner. Check the Maps pin for exact hours.
• Booking: walk-in only, no reservations at any site. Queue moves fast because the kitchen is built for it.
• Groups: the format suits a group, since everyone orders one thing and it lands in minutes. Miller Street is the city centre site; Great Western Road, Pollokshaws Road and Edinburgh's George Street are separate rooms.

Jeff's take (his words)

• Note: "One of the best Neapolitan style pizza places, ranked one of the best in Europe. Cheap and good for groups."

Verdict (Chef Jeff ladder)

must-visit — Plan around it, and it costs almost nothing. Jeff (first-hand, 2026-07-30) says the ruling underrated it: proper Neapolitan dough from a wood oven at pocket-money prices, which is Bib Gourmand logic in its purest form. This IS the original: Miller Street opened in 2015 and Great Western Road followed in 2017. An earlier version of this line had it backwards and called the West End room the original, which Gaby Soutar's 2016 Scotsman review disproves on its own, since it is headed 'the original Paesano' at 94 Miller Street and predates the West End site by a year. Corrected 2026-08-02.