The Farrow Parkway bakery is the only South Carolina pizzeria on the delivery platform’s 2026 national list
Oct 13, 2026 · @x.com/myrtlebeachnews
For more than three decades, Toffino’s has been where Grand Strand residents with Northeast roots go when they want a cannoli, a lobster tail or a hoagie that tastes like home. Now one of the country’s biggest delivery platforms says its pizza belongs in the same conversation as Chicago deep dish and Bay Area sourdough.
DoorDash on Tuesday released its 2026 “Top Pizza Spots” list to mark National Pizza Month, and Toffino’s Italian Bakery & Deli at 550 Farrow Parkway in The Market Common is the only South Carolina restaurant among the 40 pizzerias it named nationwide [DoorDash, 2026]. It is one of just two Carolinas spots on the list; the other is Times Square Pizzeria in Lexington, North Carolina [DoorDash, 2026].
That is a genuine win for a locally owned business in a market crowded with national chains. It is also worth understanding exactly what DoorDash measured, what it left out, and why a shop that started as an Italian bakery ended up on a pizza list. Here is the full picture.
The 2026 list splits the country into four regions (Midwest, Northeast, South and West) and names 10 pizzerias in each [DoorDash, 2026]. To qualify, a restaurant needed fewer than 10 locations, at least 1,000 customer reviews on DoorDash, and one of the highest average customer ratings on the platform between September 2025 and September 2026 [DoorDash, 2026].
The nationwide format is new. When DoorDash launched its “Battle of the Slices” feature last October, it limited the field to 50 independent pizzerias in five states with deep pizza reputations: California, Connecticut, Illinois, Michigan and New York [DoorDash, 2025; Time Out, 2025]. A South Carolina restaurant simply could not have made that list. DoorDash says it expanded the competition across the country this year [DoorDash, 2026], and that change opened the door for a Market Common bakery.
One point readers should keep in mind: this is not a critic’s ranking or a blind taste test. It is a customer-satisfaction scoreboard built from the platform’s own ratings, and coverage of last year’s edition noted that DoorDash did not put the honorees in any order [KRON4, 2025]. Toffino’s did not win a judges’ panel. It earned its place one order and one review at a time, from people who kept coming back.
So who are those customers ordering from, and what are they getting?
Toffino’s calls itself a Myrtle Beach institution since 1992 and describes itself as the city’s original award-winning Italian bakery [Toffino’s, 2026]. According to the restaurant, its food is made from scratch using family recipes that trace back to a baking tradition begun in 1890 [Toffino’s, 2026].
Pizza is one piece of a much larger menu. The bakery case holds sfogliatella-style lobster tails (which Toffino’s calls its most famous pastry), cannoli filled with house-made ricotta cream, tiramisu and rainbow cookies, while the deli side builds hoagies and cheesesteaks on rolls baked in-house [Toffino’s, 2026]. The pizza lineup runs from a plain cheese pie to specialty options such as the Broad Street White, made with an olive oil and garlic base, soppressata, Italian sausage and ricotta, and Gio’s White, an Alfredo-based pie with artichoke hearts, spinach and roasted red peppers [Toffino’s, 2026].
The restaurant’s DoorDash storefront shows what delivery customers actually buy. The Legendary Italian Hoagie is labeled its top seller, followed on the most-ordered list by a cheesesteak with the works and 16-inch and 12-inch cheese pizzas made with whole-milk mozzarella and house red sauce [DoorDash store listing, 2026].
There is a logic to a bakery landing on a pizza list. Pizza is, at bottom, a bread product, and a kitchen that bakes its own rolls and pastry every day is already practicing the skill that separates a memorable crust from a forgettable one. Toffino’s success on DoorDash suggests customers taste that difference even after a ride across town in a delivery bag.
That said, Toffino’s was not just competing against its neighbors. It was competing against an entire region.
The South region on DoorDash’s list stretches from Washington, D.C., to the Texas border with Mexico. Texas alone claims four of the 10 spots, with honorees in Houston, Austin, Granbury and Pharr; the rest are in Tulsa, Oklahoma; Mechanicsville, Virginia; Mobile, Alabama; Washington; Lexington, North Carolina; and Myrtle Beach [DoorDash, 2026].
No restaurant from Charleston, Columbia or Greenville made the cut. That is notable because the state’s own tourism roundup of top local pizza places spotlights a different set of names, including Columbia’s Village Idiot Pizza, Charleston’s EVO Pizza and Myrtle Beach’s Capriccio [Discover South Carolina, n.d.]. The contrast is not a knock on anyone; it shows that different yardsticks reward different things. A tourism guide weighs reputation and atmosphere. DoorDash weighs how consistently a restaurant satisfies people who order through its app.
For Horry County, the result carries extra weight. DoorDash’s own Myrtle Beach pizza page mixes independents with national and regional chains such as Donatos and Pizza Chef [DoorDash Myrtle Beach pizza page, 2026]. In a tourist market where franchises can outspend local shops on visibility, a family bakery outscoring the field on customer ratings says something about what residents value.
And local residents, it turns out, had been saying it for a while.
On Nextdoor, Toffino’s has collected 561 “Faves” from Myrtle Beach-area users and is listed as a Neighborhood Favorite in 32 neighborhoods, including The Lakes, Green Springs, Palmetto Pointe, Berkshire Forest and Avalon at Carolina Forest [Nextdoor, 2025]. One neighbor review there praises the Market Common location along with its pastries and bread [Nextdoor, 2025].
On Yelp, the restaurant holds a 4.5-star average across more than 600 reviews as of September 2026 [Yelp, 2026]. Even on DoorDash’s own local pages, a customer reviewing a different Myrtle Beach restaurant went out of their way to say Toffino’s makes better calamari [DoorDash Myrtle Beach Greek page, 2025].
This is the part of the story that should matter most to readers. Any single rating system can be skewed by a small, motivated group. But three platforms with different audiences (DoorDash delivery customers, Nextdoor neighbors and Yelp reviewers) all point in the same direction. Consistency across independent sources is far harder to manufacture than a high score on any one of them.
Still, a list released by a delivery company deserves the same scrutiny we would give any press release.
DoorDash frames the list as a celebration of small merchants and says its mission includes growing local economies [DoorDash, 2025]. The announcement also links directly to each honoree’s DoorDash storefront and closes by encouraging customers to find local pizza on the app [DoorDash, 2026]. In other words, this is marketing as well as recognition. Trade publication PMQ Pizza, covering last year’s list, explicitly told pizzeria owners that nudging happy customers to post reviews could boost their odds of being featured [PMQ, 2025].
The methodology also has built-in limits. It counts only ratings from people who order through DoorDash, so a regular who eats at the counter every Friday has no say. And the 1,000-review threshold favors restaurants with heavy delivery volume, which can leave out excellent small shops that do most of their business in person.
DoorDash’s national ordering data, released alongside the list, adds useful context. Customers placed nearly 30 million pizza orders on the platform in 2025, pepperoni was the most-ordered topping, white pizza was the most-ordered style with more than 3 million orders, and New York-style orders grew more than 80% year over year [DoorDash, 2026]. Toffino’s menu already leans into those trends with two white specialty pies and a classic Northeast-style cheese pie, which may help explain why its customers keep rating it highly.
For a small business, none of these caveats erase the payoff. National recognition during National Pizza Month is free publicity that independent restaurants rarely get. Last year’s honorees, such as Long Island’s The Pizzeria, publicly embraced the honor as a point of pride for their communities [Greater Long Island, 2025].
Toffino’s spot on DoorDash’s 2026 list is, first and foremost, a customer-driven endorsement. It comes not from out-of-town critics but from the thousands of people who ordered, ate and took the time to rate their meals. Those people are, for the most part, our neighbors.
It is also a reminder that the Grand Strand’s food scene is more than beachfront chains and seasonal crowds. A family recipe tradition that, by the restaurant’s account, dates to 1890 has found a home on Farrow Parkway and now sits alongside pizzerias in Chicago, Philadelphia and San Francisco [Toffino’s, 2026; DoorDash, 2026].
If you want to see what the fuss is about, Toffino’s is open Tuesday through Saturday from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. and is closed Sundays and Mondays [Toffino’s, 2026]. Delivery is available through DoorDash, and the restaurant also takes orders for in-store pickup through its own website [Toffino’s, 2026]. Either way, save room for a lobster tail.
DoorDash, “Battle of the Slices 2026: DoorDash Names Top Local Pizza Spots Across America” (Oct. 13, 2026): https://about.doordash.com/en-us/news/national-pizza-month-2026
DoorDash, National Pizza Month 2025 list: https://about.doordash.com/en-us/news/doordash-celebrates-national-pizza-month-2025
Toffino’s Italian Bakery & Deli, official website and menu: https://www.toffinositalian.com/
Toffino’s on DoorDash: https://www.doordash.com/store/416341
Time Out, “These are the most popular pizzerias in the U.S., according to DoorDash data” (2025): https://www.timeout.com/usa/news/these-are-the-most-popular-pizzerias-in-the-u-s-according-to-doordash-data-101525
PMQ Pizza, “DoorDash Celebrates Its 50 Most Popular Independent Pizzerias in Five States” (2025): https://www.pmq.com/doordash-celebrates-50-most-popular-independent-pizzerias-in-five-states/
KRON4, Bay Area pizzerias on DoorDash’s 2025 list: https://digital-release.kron4.com/?p=2311947
Greater Long Island, “This Long Island pizzeria named among top 50 in U.S. by DoorDash” (2025): https://greaterlongisland.com/this-long-island-pizzeria-named-among-top-50-in-u-s-by-doordash/
Nextdoor, Toffinos business page: https://nextdoor.com/pages/toffinos-myrtle-beach-sc/
Yelp, Toffino’s Italian Bakery & Deli: https://www.yelp.com/biz/toffinos-italian-bakery-and-deli-myrtle-beach
Discover South Carolina, “Pie in the Sky: SC’s Best Local Pizza Places”: https://discoversouthcarolina.com/articles/pie-in-the-sky-scs-best-local-pizza-places
DoorDash, Myrtle Beach pizza delivery page: https://www.doordash.com/food-delivery/myrtle-beach-sc-restaurants/pizza/
