Famoso Italian Pizzeria - Country Hills — Restaurant in Calgary

Cooking at this restaurant appears to all be done by 16 year old kids with no cooking experience and with minimal training at best. So be warned.

Thought we'd try it because of the new management and ownership sign on the outside. Used to be terrible, but we thought we'd give the new digs a try.

Cauliflower/artichoke dip was actually great! Really well conceived and executed. Flavourful and light. But the chips supplied with them were soaked and dripping in olive oil (gross). The bag-obtained tortilla chips were actually a lot better - though a bit stale.

The meatballs were surprisingly flavourless, green inside (I hope from some spinach or something), overly spicy (like the only spice used was chilli flakes) and sitting inside a reasonably flavourful tomato sauce. But they put "fridge-cold" ricotta cheese on top, which rapidly cooled the meatballs until the whole dish was actually fridge cold when served. The whole thing ended up being totally unappetizing.

The pizzas were both inedible. The crust was paper-thin, totally devoid of flavour and the sauce was also completely devoid of flavour. I think that they used canned tomatoes as their sauce. Just. Canned. Tomatoes. Nothing else. A shame. No love here.

The other items on the pizza are, I suspect, stored in water way ahead of time after prep, which obviously dilutes their individual flavours. This is a common problem seen in restaurants that are built upon a "novel" business model rather than on the concept of "good food" as a priority.

The pizzas were both literally sitting in a greasy pool of olive oil. The middle third of both pizzas was raw and the crusts completely devoid of flavour. We had to send them back.

The manager graciously took the pizzas off the bill, and she explained that the staff was "still new" and "just learning" (seriously?), which can make for pizzas like this. At least she was honest. She also mentioned that she had experienced the same "fridge cold" experience with the meatballs and the almost frozen ricotta cheese on top - so she empathized with our concern (yet she obviously still permitted this terrible oversight in the kitchen!).

Perhaps chef's are hard to come by - but this place really needs one to sort out the food. I would LOVE a restaurant to succeed in our neighbourhood. It is a crying shame that the owners of this restaurant do not seem to realize that good food "sells itself" and that people will simply come back for it time and time again.

But if they keep the food the way it is now, this restaurant will fail terribly like the last one that occupied the same space and the same name. Making good food is not hard - it just requires meticulous effort and careful consideration....ie. "knowing how to make good food".

Good food can only be made by somebody that truly loves food. You can really tell at this restaurant that nobody working there is a "foodie". There is no way that a chef works here, and the kids making the food seem to be interested in little more than the few hours of work time that will give them some gas money at the new minimum wage.

Hopefully things will improve. We may try this place again and I will update my review if we do. The serving staff was excellent, and she seemed to know (when I thought about it in retrospect) that the food here was vastly inferior to the potential. Hopefully our experience was just growing pains.

We'll try again in a couple of months and will see if anything has improved. ...

Shocking experience, today. We finished working at around 6.30pm. We decided to go for a drink. We arrived at the restaurant at around 6.45pm. We had some engagement at 7pm hence we decided to just order one drink each. A girl came in and asked what we would like to have. We told her that we were there just for a drink and if it was okay. She said yes and said the days special was an amber ale and mojito. I asked for a mojito for my wife and amber ale for myself. At that point she said 'they are the same drink'. I was confused and asked if their mojito was made of amber ale. She said 'no'. I asked her again that my wife would like a mojito and I would like the amber ale. She seemed to have understood and left. A minute later another girl came and asked if we would like to order our drinks!! I told her that we already did order our drinks. This girl said she is the manager and she came in as the last server felt uncomfortable to serve us!! It was surprising but we told the manager what drink we wanted and she went away. She came back again to tell us that the last server felt uncomfortable as she thought we were drunk!!! This was shocking and humiliating. I asked the manager on what basis the last server made that assumption?! The manager said it's the servers job to decide that. I told the manager that the server is then not doing her job well and we left. We finished work at around 6.30pm and we were at Famoso at around 6.45pm. We obviously can't drink at work. We certainly didn't have enough time to get drunk between leaving our workplace and arriving at the pizzeria. I wonder why did the server do what she did! May be she is a ‘Trump supporter’ or she is just a vile person or may be both!!

Update on 10th Feb’19- Famoso contacted us offering gift card. I’ve asked them not to send gift card. I’ve informed Famoso that we would like apology from the server and the shift manager for their obnoxious behaviour. We would also like to get assurance that they’ll learn from this situation and not behave with anyone like they did with us so that no one else goes through the harrowing experience we went through!

21st Feb'19 - In their initial mail, Famoso wrote that they've asked location GM and area manager to follow up. It's been 2 weeks and I've not heard from anyone nor have I got reply to the last email I sent them.

I did receive the gift card which I'll give to a homeless person.

I guess Famoso promotes such behaviour, which we had to encounter, amongst...

Came in for takeout on January 18, at 7pm, and what a horrible experience from beginning to end. Placed an order with the front cashier/bartender, and the girl suddenly gave so much attitude when I asked if our order counted towards loyalty stamps. It wasn’t until after I left and read the fine print that I realized that the orders were not valid, but this could have been explained to me instead of repeatedly told “um no?” with no reasoning. She ended up stamping the cards, aggressively, before giving them back to us while looking down at her iPad.

When I returned 30 min later, I stood at the front, and this same girl saw me and completely ignored me. Two other girls passed by and still no acknowledgement - it wasn’t until an older lady came around and she asked me if I had been helped and seemed genuinely surprised when I flatly said “no.” I explained “I’m here to pick up”, and they seemed confused with what I was picking up, and the first girl who took my order clearly knew what I ordered and didn’t even bother looking up and helping. It was after the other girls looked around for a while that she finally piped up - still not looking up from her ipad, and explained what I was picking up.

Honestly surprised about my experience - have never dealt with someone who was so rude and passive aggressive at a...