We had been wanting to try this pizzeria for quite a long time as we’d heard good things about the quality of the food and, of course, we are huge fans of Neapolitan pizza. It is so far away and difficult to get to that we hadn’t been able to make the trip for a long time, but the day finally came when we decided to make the 1 hour (each way) commute.
We are sad to report the experience was very uncomfortable and we will not be back again. In all the restaurants we’ve been to, we can list only one service experience we have had that has been as bad as this one. Our experience here involved the staff yelling, insulting us, nearly throwing us out, and refusing to serve us food at various points.
We ordered our usual – marinara and margherita, no oil. At first the waiter insisted that “no oil” would be impossible and that he could not request the kitchen to do that. But after we pointed out that we have ordered our pizzas like that for years, around the world, and that the olive oil is merely added on top, so all the kitchen would have to do is just not add it, he very begrudgingly said ok. Well, sure enough both of our pizzas came with oil added. When we pointed that out, he insisted there was no oil. There was literally oil oozing out of the pizzas. He insisted it was from the cheese. Well, you could make that argument for the margherita, but since there is no cheese on the marinara, it doesn’t really pass muster. He called the manager over and the woman came to our table saying that she was in the kitchen when the pizzas were made and that she watched them put no oil on it. She refused to explain, though, why there was oil all over the pizza, literally pretending like she didn’t see it. She proceeded to yell increasingly loudly, saying we were calling her a liar and then proceeded to remove the pizza.
Another manager came over, presumably her husband, and asked if we’d like to order something else. We said no, explained that we travelled here for an hour because we heard great things about the pizza, and that all we wanted was for the pizza to have no oil. He said ok come let’s go to the kitchen and you can watch them make the pizza. Of course that wasn’t necessary, but he insisted, so we did.
When the woman manager saw us approaching the kitchen, she started yelling that under no circumstances would she allow the kitchen to make us a new pizza, that we had had our chance, but that we didn’t because we didn’t believe her, we were not allowed to eat in her restaurant. We then agreed to just having our old pizzas back, but she wouldn’t allow that either, insisting we could not be served any food. Her husband tried to calm her down and finally got the kitchen to make it without oil. This version was literally night and day from the first one – it obviously had no oil and the first one so obviously did. We thanked him and ate our food, which was great by the way.
Once we were done, we asked for the bill and the woman refused to give us the bill, saying that our money was no good because we called her a liar and threw us out. We tried to insist that we really wanted to pay and we reiterated that the pizza was actually great, but she couldn’t stop yelling and just held the door open until we left.
It’s such a shame of an experience and we wish it had been different.
