Vendetta's Pizzeria — Restaurant in Stellenbosch Local Municipality

One thing right away, we had two good reasons to stop at Vendetta's Pizzeria after an already first, somewhat unsuccessful visit. Firstly, we were in the mood for a good pizza, and secondly, Gino's on Dorp Street was unfortunately closed.

On my first visit, the consistently ambitious claim of wanting to serve a Neapolitan pizza was only partially achieved. They want to score points here with a sourdough that has matured for up to 48 hours, but they don't really want to succeed. The tomato sauce is unmotivatedly unfruity, and the fior di latte is used only very sparingly, making it barely noticeable even visually. The professionally unqualified waitress finally capitulated when asked whether the pizza was topped with proscioutto cotto or prosciutto crudo. It might be ham, was her succinct guess, but she was wrong; it was prosciutto crudo, after all. But I want to focus on the essentials. After all, the pizza dough base is perhaps the most important thing about an authentic Neapolitan pizza—and this one didn't turn out well. I already guessed that the wrong flour was used. The texture of the dough seemed too smooth. I also don't think the dough had anywhere near 24 hours to mature. Six to twelve hours seems more plausible to me. But the cruellest thing about pizza preparation is still to come. Unfortunately, they don't heat up the pizza oven to at least 400°C. Not only were the typical burnt bubbles missing on the edge of the pizza dough, but the dough itself was still raw and not fully baked! Looking at the not at all crispy pizza base reveals that the thing didn't get much heat.

By the way, you shouldn't expect too much from the entire location. There is practically no covered seating, which is not necessarily a disadvantage. But the whole embarrassingly cheap equipment is. I also don't believe that any hygiene standards are adhered to. When the pizza is served on an aluminium tray, you would rather expect to find it in a prison canteen than in a pizzeria. The fact that the knives are not sharp enough to separate a pizza also speaks more of a prison visit than a day out in freedom.

However, the last visit to a half-empty shed can only be described as an outrageous impertinence, as the service had reached an all-time low. Needless to say, they had forgotten to present us with the menu card. The beer was only served about 15 minutes after ordering. The body-temperature red wine was only served another 10 minutes later. The bottled wine served had no indication of producer or variety and smelled strongly of rotgut. The first two of three pizzas were only on the table another 15 minutes later. We had to wait another 5 minutes for the cutlery, but only because we complained. The third pizza was only announced with a piece of very vague time information. We only received it when we had already finished our first two pizzas. The fact that the waitress is not a professional can in no way serve as an excuse; after all, no one with professional training is at work there.

The apology of the manager, who only appeared after the third request, was ultimately only an embarrassing lip service in view of this all-encompassing failure of South African...

It's not often you come across a restaurant with as many positive reviews as Vendetta, so we decided to try it out for an early dinner. We went at around 4 PM so there was almost no one (there was one other table) and two waitresses working.

We ordered drinks and the bruschetta and aubergine (which they didn't have) to start, along with one pizza to share. The waitress cautioned us that the pizzas were quite big so that should be enough food (turns out they are just normal size pizza so not sure why as we probably would have ordered more). She promptly brought out the drinks, which to my surprise she brought me a warm corona bottle with ice in a glass. I am not from South Africa, but i've never in my life seen beer served with a glass of ice. I asked if she had a cold beer instead which she seemed surprised by the request. The bartender instead gave her a small bucket with ice water, and she passed that along to me which was hard not to chuckle at the thought of waiting 45 minutes for my beer to cool down before I could drink it.

Despite no one else being there, it took about 30 minutes to get the bruschetta, which to our surprise was 2 pieces of toast with melted cheese on it and 4 cherry tomatoes sliced in half on top. In what world is this bruschetta? Then we waited another 30 minutes to get our pizza, which was surprising since there were other tables that sat down 30 minutes after us and received their pizzas before us. The pizza was meant to have bacon and camembert on it, however there was no camembert in sight and the bacon was sort of crumbled up like sausage. The pizza lacked sauce, it was quite dry to eat and the crust was also burnt around the edges.

Anyways, perhaps we had a one-off experience but I am shocked at how this place can have such good reviews. Have these people ever had a decent pizza before? Because this is not it... A lot of reviews talked about the service, which yes, our waitress was very nice but the service was incredibly bad given there was no one else at the restaurant. Wouldn't...

Vendetta's is one of our favourite places to chill and have a few drinks, and usually the experience is great. Today was different though, after being there for about half an hour to an hour max (still with our drinks about half way), the server asked if we wanted the bill. It was 12:45? They'd only been open for just over an hour. That I could look past, perhaps they were new to the job and didn't quite understand how things work. After I finished my first drink, it took half an hour for them to come back, only after we finally managed to get their attention. They seemed to take our order reluctantly, only waiting for one of us to say what we wanted. We had to stop them so my partner could also order. They also didn't clear old glasses from the table. I heard the server loudly complain to a colleague about not sleeping well last night, which, as someone who spent 8 years in the service industry, I completely understand, but their general demeanor was a bit blegh. There were empty glasses on pretty much everyone's table, and there weren't many people there. Overall the food is always fantastic and the location and atmosphere is great, it was just a bit of a weird vibe and we didn't feel very welcome. I noticed the owner wasn't around like he usually is, so perhaps that played a role. We'll obviously be back, was just a bit...