Pizzaville — Restaurant in Aurora

I would love to give them 5 stars cause the pizza was great and lots of toppings and they have great specials BUT...I don't understand that during covid the employee was not wearing a mask or gloves and after handling the register went straight to get the dough without washing his hands and proceeded to make the pizza. Gloves are not really the issue, because gloves can give employees a false sense of cleanliness BUT washing your hands is VERY necessary when dealing with food and masks are mandatory right now. By law I have to wear one coming indoors and I am not handling anything that you are going to ingest. Then a sticker was placed over the box to seal it saying "Seal of Approval", what's the point if you are not even following normal food handling guidelines- never mind during covid when things should be on an even higher standard. I am a frontline worker so I am not freaked out in general by germs but because of covid I notice hygiene things a bit more now and due to having family members that are seniors I am also cautious. And there are people that are extremely freaked out over covid so you should take them into consideration. Your website says "our number 1 priority is to provide our customers with the highest quality food and service while ensuring food safety, customer protection and peace of mind." This experience did not give me peace of mind and made me think that if the standards of proper food handling are low during a pandemic then what standards did you have before covid. UPDATE JAN 2021: The staff are finally in masks but however the cleanliness is still lacking. It's a very heavily trafficked location and I have yet to see the register cleaned and its the same people using it that make the food and don't wash their hands in-between. Last time I was in the same employee cashed me out, made my pizza, then another customer handed him something to throw out in the garbage and then proceeded to take my pizza out the oven, cut it and place the seal of approval on it. This seal of approval is a joke lol. Not once were hands or register...

I've ordered quite a few pizzas from here. The first one I ever ordered was very good, but it just kept going downhill from there. Pizza is just doughy and lifeless, tomato sauce is completely nondescript. The problem I find with these places that have those big Blodgett type pizza ovens is that they only cook the bottom and usually not even that, most times you can see the cross section of the dough and you get cooked bottom then all raw and slimy on the top layer. So to get the toppings (especially pepperoni) properly crisped and the cheese browned they then have to overcook the pizza and the bottom gets burned and the crust mummifies. The bigger chain places use a conveyor, which although not as 'authentic' of a cooking process, they use it for a reason... the pizza cooks and isn't subject to people opening the oven door all the time, and those conveyors no doubt have a top cooking element... that's why they always come out cooked properly on the top and bottom. Pizzaville, give some thought to finishing your pizzas under a broiler.

The other thing that is really puzzling is (at least on the square pizzas they serve), it's like they took a pizza cutter and went around the perimeter and indented a line 1cm in, so when you get a piece with crust the crust just kind of separates from the body of the slice as soon as you pick it up. I have no idea why they do this, it compromises the way the crust cooks; makes no sense.

Adding some photos. Check out that raw pepperoni, the lack of cheese, and the strange surgically...

Terrible service. I placed an order for pick-up, and the order was 50 minutes late and so I was told that I had to sit in my car waiting, no offer for delivery or anything to compensate for the inconvenience.

When I came back to pick-up my order (50 minutes later than the expected pick-up time), one of the workers dropped the bucket of shredded cheese on to the floor. It sat on the floor for between 5-10 minutes before eventually being PUT BACK IN THE BUCKET. Not thrown out. As the employee was putting the cheese back, he checked to see if I noticed or not.

Our eyes met, and I asked him to throw it out and he said that he would, but then put the bucket of cheese back in the shelf that it was originally found in. I can't guarantee that the cheese was thrown out or kept, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was used on someone's pizza. This will certainly be the last time I order from this location, I'm not sure why the cheese was put back into the bucket but it should have went straight into...