The Red Elephant Pizza and Grill

Came here for dessert. Had the 1001 chocolate chip cake. Melts in your mouth! Amazing! And also try the elephant ears with ice cream.

Pizza. Wings. Beer. Pretty standard. Nothing blew me away but it wasn’t bad either.

I came here just two days ago for dinner with a friend. I ordered the Siesta Key Salad. It was tasty and not too expensive. It was happy hour, which is 2 for 1 draft. I ordered a beer and had to option of getting it in two short glasses or a tall 22 oz. I opted for the tall. It was a good deal, and the food is pretty good. I would say that people should not expect a spectacular meal, but it is definitely not bad for the price.

Fair at best, decent value lunch specials but the soup tasted like it came from a can. The individual pizza is pretty good. Tried it twice and the same experience both times. Service is good, waitress was pleasant and provided great service.

Cute location and our server and greeter could not have been more nice. We had a very nice Greek salad with flavorful dressing. Unfortunately, the flavor stopped there. We each had a small pizza, one pepperoni and the other Little Italy. I would have bet money they either came from the walk-​in pre-​made or frozen and rewarmed. The crust was hard and dense. I am afraid I could do about the same at home, by sliding a Red Baron pie out of a box and giving it some radar love.

I LOVE THEIR HUMMUS AND TOASTED PITA!!!
I’m a big fan of their Santa Fe pizza, the mixture of the ingredients in this pizza is amazing, i mean sour cream on a pizza? hell yeah!
their prices are reasonable and I’ve always had good servers.

Individual pizzas is the only good thing on the menu. Everything is mediocre.

Always looking for good pizza! Red Elephant is on my top 5 list. I had to expand my list from 3 to 5 when I tried this place. We don’t eat pizza only a couple times a few times a month but we like variety. Red Elephant offers variety with their twisted crust and unique seasonings. My husband is pretty picky and he thinks it’s a winner as well.
Enjoy!

Great food at reasonable prices. My wife found the gluten free pizza a real treat. My hamburger was delicious. We will include this one on our favorite dining spots while in Sarasota.

Nothing exceptional but good inexpensive bar food. they have a lunch deal for $ 7.99. I got a salmon cake grilled sandwich, just OK, but the fries were really good and they had two for one wine. My friend had the pizza which didn’t look that great too me, but she seemed to enjoy it.

Pizza was good IMO, but my companion thought it was too much sauce — not enough cheese. Waitress had no idea about the beer menu, but she knew the food. House salad dressing was good, too. We told her it was our first time (true) and got a free Elephant Ear dessert, which she wrapped up for us because we said we didn’t have enough time to stay for dessert.

Ok so we tried this place again for lunch. What a mistake. Placed our order at 1:45 for a burger and a chicken breast lunch. Place was very slow. Very few tables. At 2:18 I asked the waitress about the order and told her that we had to go back to work and she said with air quotes «The wait could be due to the fact that there is only one person back there» (You would think 10 –15 minutes max for lunch)
Then she left and we did not see her again. After 5 — 6 minutes more we just got up and left. No manager in site, young employees everywhere with no knowledge of what to do. On the way out the front girl who had passed our table at least 15 times said «How was your meal» we told her we had not gotten our meal and could not waste anymore time and left.
We will never return to Red Elephant and would not recommend this place to anyone.

After reading some of the reviews, I didn’t have high expectations. But, we were pleasantly surprised.
We had a very friendly and helpful server. Even though she was also bartending, we didn’t feel neglected. The place is family friendly with spacious booth seating. A few TV’s line the walls.
We had the loaded fries, BBQ chicken pizza, greek salads, and elephant ears. The kids had cheese pizza and pigs in a blanket. The pizza, while tasty, was not our favorite style. Being from Cincinnati, we’re not used to all these thin crust, New York style pizzas yet! That being said, it was probably my favorite pizza so far in the area. Everything else was tasty. We were too stuffed to have dessert, but had to try the elephant ears. Next time, we’ll save more room for dessert.
We will be back to the Red Elephant in the future!

I actually really enjoyed my experience here.
Our server was exuberant and enthusiastically took our orders. I thought everything took a bit longer than it should have given the type of food and the size of the place (definitely not understaffed at the time).
When the food did arrive, it was nice. I enjoyed my personal BBQ chicken pizza and the flavors were on par with other pizzas that I’ve had. The small salad is nice. Definitely do the lunch deal as it is a good value for what you get.

The Sarasota, FL area has a thing for thin crust /​New York style pizza. (I’m guessing its from all the NYC transplants.)
I was down in Sarasota for a few days and wanted pizza. I saw Red Elephant from the road and decided to take a chance (I’d never heard of them.)
The pizza is okay. The dough of the crust leans more towards that of a cracker. The toppings were generous and tasty. The crust not too thin and brittle. The place had decent atmosphere. It was located in a main-​drag mall that you’ll find in almost every suburban shopping district in America and it fits into that mold well (like, you could see this franchised at any one of those shopping drags.)
They have a small entertainment room for the kids (a few video games and a basketball hoops game.)
The artwork on the walls I did like. Sorry there’s no photos. Prices were about par for the course.
Would I go there again? Probably not, and because I’d want to try and find a place that serves thin crust neopolitan-​style or a thicker crust that I’m accustomed to, being from the Chicago region.

We wanted to give this place a try because we heard the business is from Tallahassee. We lived in Tallahassee for a few years and absolutely loved Barnaby’s. Red’s seemed to have a similar concept, which was appealing. After being seated and sitting there for 15 minutes while servers walked past us not interested in taking our order, we walked out with nothing.
Once we were outside, the manager approached us an offered us a free meal if we would come back inside. I was so angry at that point that I did not feel like going back in and waiting longer for dinner. I was starving from working late that night and was just not in the mood to play around anymore. We went next door to Kumo and had an excellent meal with fast service. I may come back again one day, once I get around to it.

Here is why I’m a fan: Elephant Ears with Ice Cream! I’ve been back twice this week since it opened just for dessert. The fried dough is perfectly soft, crispy on the outside, but buttery and sugary cinnamon sweet.
The rest of the food is 3 stars. The pizza diners I was with liked their pizza, but weren’t blown away. I had the salmon with Asian glaze (ginger/​garlic/​pineapple), which was pretty good; I would order it again. My husband had the sirloin with Asian glaze and he loved his, but didn’t think it was worth $ 16. They do give you a salad and a side with every entrée though. The salad portion is a little on the small side. Balsamic vinaigrette was probably the worst I’ve had. Their ceasar dressing is great and so it their CJs dressing, spicy and tangy! I also tried the chicken with roasted cream sauce (sundried tomato) and again, pretty good, no complaints but nothing to write home about. You can choose sirloin, salmon, chicken or mahi mahi (?) all marked at different prices and then choose a sauce, balsamic wine sauce, Asian glaze, roasted cream, and one more that I can’t recall. There are salads, pizzas and sandwiches too, but I didn’t pay attention to them.
I think the University Park area needed a restaurant like this though. It’s good for families, groups and they offer enough of a variety to please everyone. The staff is unbelievably nice. I don’t know where they found these people; everyone from the hostesses, servers, bussers and owner who comes around to greet everyone, is unusually friendly.
The restaurant is loud though, so this is not for diners wanting a quiet meal. There’s good energy with people buzzing everywhere. The décor is on the contemporary side with warm colors. Booths don’t have partitions, so be careful not to throw your headback in laughter or you’ll headbutt the person behind you. I almost had a ponytail fight with the woman behind me. Kidding, just a couple whips.