GEO Italian restaurant & pizzeria — Restaurant in Unguja

We were staying at a nearby hotel and came here for lunch three times in a row. The pizza and pasta were good, so we decided to try the fritto misto. Unfortunately the prawns had not been cleaned, with the digestive tract still inside. As they are to be eaten shell-on, this is not the kind of prawn you can try to clean yourself when eating even if you wanted to. It was not going to be enjoyable to eat like this.

As all of the prawns were like this, I fed-back to waiter and they took the dish away. A colleague, possibly the chef or supervisor, then told me the prawns were too small to clean. That is simply not the case, these are not tiny shrimp for example; even simple local places like Fadhil, which is further down the road and serves excellent food, manage this properly. At first he said I can have something else if I wanted, but strangely changed his mind, so I suggested just having the dish with the prawns replaced with more octopus (no calamari included as per menu today). However was then told I would still need to pay for the original, which was disappointing. In the end I just asked for the original back and ate a couple of pieces of octopus around the prawns.

Afterwards I explained politely to supervisor showing him what you can see in photo that removing digestive tract from prawns before cooking is a basic step in preparation, but was told again that the boss says they are too small for that. Frankly any restaurant serving seafood like this should consider this standard practice. If I were at a small local shack I might accept this, but for a more tourist oriented restaurant it was surprising and disappointing.

I want to stress that this rating only reflects this one experience. Our previous visits have been fine, and I hope the restaurant (“the boss”) takes this feedback on board rather than standing by the poor justification that these prawns are too small to clean. Photo can help judge...

The pizza was the best I've had in Tanzania by far, which is why I came back a few times. Especially the dough is fantastic. Unfortunately some of the waitresses had an unpleasant attitude combined with very little waitressing skills. She/they did not know some very basic things about the food they serve (like that rocket/rucula is not mint), did not understand questions, just didn't understand some very basic things generally (like that sugar does not dissolve in an iced coffee, or to bring cutlery), yet acted arrogantly. The one male waiter, on the other hand, was very good and hospitable, also in offering compensation for some mistakes.

Be careful you don't accidentally order a pizza bianca (pizza without tomato sauce). There was some confusion when it turned out my Pizza Primavera with prosciutto crudo, mozzarella and rucula did not have tomato sauce, as I had never seen a pizza bianca with those ingredients before. When I mentioned it to the waitresses they did not understand, also did not know what a pizza bianca was. I think it would be helpful if the menu had a separate category for that kind of pizza's, as I've seen in most other Italian restaurants.

It's too bad they don't have nice desserts, like tiramisu. They do have some things like pizza with Nutella and prepackaged ice cream. Also I was disappointed their coffee is not good at all, as I would expect at an Italian place. Finally, they have a huge dog (I think a boerboel) which quite aggressively tries to steal food. It also fought another dog violently when we were there. I like dogs, but I think people could easily get intimidated, and the owners should keep it...

I live in Zanzibar so I had the opportunity to have many dinner and lunch at Geo.... And any time it was simply amazing. Definitely the best pizza of Zanzibar but is not only that.... Any kind of food that I had in Daniele and Vincenzo's place was delicious. Beautiful relaxing atmosphere, in any detail you can feel that these guys do their job with true passion.... So my suggestion is, if you will be so lucky to come to Zanzibar, don't wait many days to visit to this place because you will like to come back more an more times......or simply book straight in the Geo Resort so you will have the opportunity of do not loose a lunch or dinner in the best Zanzibar restaurant.... P.S. ask for the dessert,...