Lucios Pizzeria — Restaurant in Gauteng

Our family has been dining at Lucios for close to 30 years, so we have had an association with the restaurant since the very early days. Friday evenings would end off the busy week with a phone call to make a reservation for table 46 – our regular table. Our family of four would then enjoy a full meal of starters, main course, sometimes desert and coffees, together with drinks for a price that was easily affordable on our meagre salaries. In the early days, the delicatessen was an undesirable temptation for our young daughters, since it stocked “Kinder” eggs. No amount of convincing could lure the kids away and Bimba and Claude’s friendliness and love of children made it a fruitless exercise anyway…..

During our visits, the items ordered were always the same. However, for some reason I could never convince them to include my modified Lucio’s special pizza on the menu as “Eddie’s Special”……. That would have saved many a waitron having to write down the detailed instructions to communicate my request accurately to the kitchen! Speaking of waitrons, we saw them come and go, but they always stayed long enough for us to get to know them and their individual stories. Their extended stays as waitrons and their regular get togethers for years thereafter to socially interact around a meal at the very restaurant at which they had waitored, was truly testament of Lucio’s role in forming their young lives and looking after them so well. Even our eldest daughter had the privilege of working there.

We have shared in the good times and the tough times and became good friends with Claude and Bimba. Many enjoyable dining experiences at Lucios culminated in a Cognac and Espresso coffee with them sharing our table. Having shared a birthday and birth year with Claude made our relationship special.

We will forever recall the good times and excellent Mediterranean food served consistently at the restaurant for all the years we have been dining there.

Eddie, Ronel,...

I’ve been coming here for almost 20 years and my visits, commensurate with my experiences, have declined. My review is not for the person wanting to go to the restaurant, but rather for the management. This restaurant has gone down and I won’t be coming again.

The service has been slow in the last few years with waitrons split between the 2 sections of the restaurant. I should not have to wait 30 minutes for drinks to arrive especially when I ordered before I sat down. I had to remind the waitron to open the bottle of wine (she thought that it was a screw top) and then I had to find her elsewhere in the restaurant to open the wine. She said that she would come to my table but at this stage I did not trust her and said that I would wait, she eventually come with the corkscrew so that I could open the wine myself).

One of the hallmarks of Italian cuisine is simplicity and minimalism. A Caprese salad consists of 3 simple, high quality ingredients: tomato, mozzarella, and basil. Don’t over complicate a winning formula by adding to it.

The pizza bases have been undercooked for several years and I’ve found myself ordering my pizza “well done” and then sometimes sending it back to the kitchen for further cooking. One has to eat the pizza with a knife and fork - it’s soggy and loaded with sauce. This is exacerbated when the base is undercooked.

We opted to go to Thundergun and when we couldn’t find parking we settled for Lucio’s and I regret spending the time, calories and money. The service is horrible. There’s a reason I couldn’t find parking at thundergun and that Lucio’s had...

After posting a review about this place two months ago saying that it hasn't disappointed in the past, lo and behold Lucios disappointed us on Sunday last!

Firstly, despite the place being quite empty, our food took almost an hour to arrive. There were only three mains ordered - two pizzas and one salad - but it took an age. One can understand if there is something unusual going on - it can happen to the best of places - but neither the waitresses nor the manager popped along to see how we were doing or to communicate to us that things would take longer than usual. I had to call the waitress to find out what the delay was, whereupon the food suddenly arrived promptly. The salad was delicious, but the pizzas were barely lukewarm! Usually they sizzle and I cannot wait to get my teeth into them. This was disappointing, so I sent them back to be heated through. When they came back, they were overheated, such that the base was too crispy and some of the ingredients had been charred! In the end, they remade the pizzas - another 35 minutes - which finally rendered a satisfactory-enough product to consume.

The overall experience, like the initial pizza order, was lukewarm and I expect this well-known pizzeria to address their lacklustre performance and make sure that the experiences we had before are once...