Cargo Bar Pizza Lounge — Restaurant in Hobart

Enticed by proclamation of half price pizzas I donned my most festive button up shirt, suede underwear and turkey-skin leather sandals and waddled into Cargo on a Wednesday night. After a good few tooth gratingly awkward minutes standing at the bar debating whether this is a place you sit down and claim a table or get delegated one by the staff, I do what any modern man does in such situations - pulled out my phone. I felt immediate relief and a certain tangible comfort as I flicked the screen one way and the other, mumbled uncommittedly and shrugged when people turned and wave their arms at me.

Finally I was forced to talk to a person as I had gradually, inexplicably made my way to the bar. Myself and the bar staff had a few moments of absurdist laughter and heartfelt tears as I order a pizza with more Italian words in it then the Good Book itself, and we found ourselves hugging each other and patting one anothers backs and wiping the tears off each others cheeks. A real human experience. I slapped down the credit card on the table and gripped two glasses of different IPAs that tasted remarkably just like every other IPA in existence. Somewhere in all this they had told me that there was a 70 minute expected wait on the pizza. In retrospect this has broken me. The very fact that they call times above one hour in the minute range not only tickles my sensibilities but does lead to thoughts of how often this may occur. I said "no worries cobba" and smiled even though somewhere in me my stomach quivered and I felt the barstaff's smile falter as my eyes unconsciously slid towards the kitchen where the one small pizza oven looked lonely and neglected and just ready for a pizza right then and there.

Well I don't want you to get caught up and miss key geological timeframes with my interview but rest assured the time it has taken me to write this could well have equated to the cooking of 1% of my pizza. I would argue that the human species as a whole was different when I received my pizza compared to when I ordered and I am not sure the social and technological advancements we have come through are a good thing. When I walked outside my eyes squinted at the noise and people roared past in some sort of motorised vehicle that was only whispered about in dungeon and dragons game rooms and sci-fi conferences before I entered Cargo. In this new world I find myself in I can only recall with a sorrowful feeling of having missed out on something vital the times and experiences, and people that I have missed and never had part of my life because of my journey to Cargo. But the one thing I do have is the knowledge that the pizza with the Italian words for a name is quite nice, and at least they lived up to the wait times...

The pizzas are like 0.2mm thick, hard and leathery. They are the worst pizzas we've ever had in Hobart. You'd need to be pretty drunk to find them "acceptable". Trying to yank and bite thru the leathery thin base is pretty off putting. The toppings are sparse. Half a chopped cherry tomato here.... A piece of shredded cheese there. You don't get much of anything for 22 bucks. We were still hungry afterwards so walked to another restaurant and ordered a real dinner, so total spend was really up there. And don't order the number 15 pizza. It says it has "chilli flakes". I've eaten some very spicy things in my time, including a Ghost Pepper and a Carolina Reaper chilli. The number 15 pizza has so much chilli flake dusted or dumped on it, the thing was inedible and just tasted purely like eating a bottle of chilli flakes on a base of cardboard. Very disappointed. If this is the quality of "pizza" they're going to serve (which looks nothing like the photos) they won't be there...

I was really disappointed with my experience here. We waited for 45 minutes for our order, only to be told when we asked for an update that they were having issues with their dough and had no estimated wait time. Rather than offering an apology for the inconvenience, the staff suggested we just get a refund. We were also told there were many orders ahead of ours, yet there were only two other tables occupied at the time (1 of which had already received their order).

The lack of communication from the staff was another issue. They did not inform other customers about the delay, and we were only made aware of it when we inquired ourselves. The service was poor, and it felt like they were not handling the situation properly.

We were refunded for the pizzas we didn't receive, but they didn’t offer to refund our soft drinks, which would have been a more considerate gesture. Given how few people were in the restaurant, the entire situation...