Ristorante Guzzi — Restaurant in Leuven

The pizzas are good but we had a bad experience in terms of planning by the kitchen. We were some of the first ones in but were served more or less last.

When I pointed out that they must've made about 12 or more pizzas for people who ordered after us they confirmed they had made 16 pizzas (8 fit in the oven) because we had ordered an entree. I commented they could've done better. Thinking about it, it takes about 20 minutes for a pizza to cook in the oven. It does not take us 20 minutes to eat an entree. So truly our pizzas should've been in the first cooking session. But even if we follow their logic we should've at least been in the second. Instead we were in the third being made to wait for 60+ minutes while the whole restaurant gets served.

We had a child with us and we're often frustrated with how much restaurants make the child wait for food. An adult can wait. But a small child can't. Meanwhile an elderly couple, I have no issue with them, got served before the child even after ordering after us. It makes no sense.

The staff should at least warn people with children what they're about to do. The way it is I feel like every time I order in a restaurant I need to have "the talk" with the staff about common sense.

Namely, small children shouldn't have to wait that long and people who order first should be...

Positiv first: the garden offers a wonderful atmosphere. The restaurant is authentically Italian and the quality of the food is very very good! I was irritated by the pricing of the food and especially the drinks: the pizzas were fair (more expensive than normal but worth every cent).Tea and coffee were also ok at 3.5 euro. And the wine was absolutely reasonable at 44 euros for a bottle from 2021. But: 14 euros for a spritz-of-the-day cocktail? 9 euros for a small limoncello (which wasn't even really cold)? 7.5 euros for a Italien "special" blonde beer, in the land of 3,000 types of beers (and there are very also good Italian beers, with good value for money, e.g. Ichnusa, Morretti, Peroni). My main criticism, however, is the frittura mista . 26 euros (among the most expensive on the menu) and the portion was tiny. The sea is not far away and octopus is not an expensive delicacy. In Italy, this frittura mista would have been returned to the kitchen: Absolutely delicious but far too little and even more so for the price. If I were to come back, I would simply order a pizza and a bottle of wine and enjoy the garden and leave the starter and aperitivo out (or go somewhere...

There are plenty of choices for food in Leuven, though Guzzi caught my attention for its claims to honor authentic Italian cooking, in particular pizza. Success! The sourdough base of the margherita pizza was soft, chewy and crunchy all at once with its own flavors on showcase. (A woman from Naples once advised me to always have the margherita pizza the first time at a restaurant to see how good the dough is and I’m grateful for that lesson.) There’s an interior dining room and a heated and covered terrace in the back. Service was rather slow though I couldn’t have sat further away from the entrance and fortunately had time that night. The staff were apologetic and paid for my coffee afterwards. The experience and, in particular, the food was so good that I’ve booked a table for a group of more than 10 people to go back and try more of their pizzas and...