Thursday, December 26, 2013

Italian Gourmet Deli Food Review III

Italian Gourmet Deli Chorizo Pizza

I'm a patient man; but I draw the line at waiting 30 minutes for a one-topping pizza. That was the end result of my third visit in a month to Italian Gourmet Deli. Making matters worse, I arrived 30 minutes before noon on the day after Christmas... as quiet a time, as you're going to find in downtown DC. If it takes this long to feed somebody when it's slow... I shudder to think what it's like when the place is hoppin'.

It doesn't bode well to focus on poor service to begin a review; but how do you overlook (1) the obvious mistake of forgetting my order (with so few customers in the restaurant) and (2) the inexcusable absence of an apology, after checking the "status" after 20+ minutes? Instead of "I'm sorry," I got, "A few minutes." That's it. When it was finally ready, 10 minutes later, I asked, "Is this (waiting so long) normal? The guy mumbled, "chorizo" and a couple of indiscernible words. Gee, thanks.


With lousy service behind us, let's focus on the pizza which would have been worth half the wait. The crust is nice, with a char on the bottom and a relatively crispy texture throughout. The sausage (plenty of it) appears to be prepared in-house, and the cheese is sufficiently gooey and well-cooked. Unfortunately, the whole pizza lacks any saltiness or zest: That's probably due to a noticeable lack of tomato sauce, which could best be described as a trickle: Talk about stingy. It's a shame too, since the bright orange color (of what little there was) looked downright appetizing. 10" is a good size, and could easily feed two.

I ate in, for 15 minutes; and would have liked for someone to come over and at least apologize for the unusually long wait. Unfortunately, nobody did. It's still early; but Italian Gourmet Deli needs to develop better consistency if they want me to come back for more than just breakfast.

Atmosphere: C+ (Clean and tidy; but not much to look at, while waiting 30 minutes for a pizza.)
Service: F (Not good.)
Crust: B (Great char. Nice texture.)
Toppings: C (Good cheese & sausage can't offset a lack of sauce. No zest.)
Value: F ($12, including tax is OK; but I should have received a half/full refund for waiting so long.)
Overall: D- (On the heels of a great breakfast, I was expecting a lot more. This wasn't it.)