Santeramo's Pizza & Italian Restaurant — Restaurant in Arvada

I moved here from NJ over a year ago and love most everything about our state. The people are friendly, the scenery is spectacular and the weather is fantastic. I only miss the ocean and great NY style pizza. Over the past year we tried several places recommended by friends and the Denver Post. While good, these places were not great by NY standards. Unless you order a thin crust pizza you should be able to fold the slice in on itself. The pie should have little or no oil running off it ( low quality cheese = lots of oil) and toppings should look like that from which they were cut, chopped or sliced. The American pie was born in NY so that's my standard. I understand that altitude and water have an effect when baking a pie and I know that most of the places here make a good pie by Colorado standards but it had gotten to the point that I stopped trying new places. Then I tried Santeramos and it is now my favorite place. The slice is flexible, high quality mozzarella is used and ( in my case) fresh green pepper and sausage were added. On Tuesday you get a free medium with the purchase of another pie and the coldest bottled beer is available. The is nothing like a slice and a cold beer

Most of the pizza options offered are typical western style pizza. I'd like to see a white and margarita pie offered for additional NY style offerings. So try Santeramos. It's different than Pizza Hut, Dominos or that place that offers a honey dipping sauce. I'm not trying to disparage those places. Rather try Santeramos if you want to try authentic pizza as first...

Updated because turns out the first pizza was the best one I've had here =/: Delivery, so service and atmosphere not rated: Ordered the Santeramo's Special pizza.

Overall: 2/5 - I won't be ordering from here again

Sauce: 4.5/5. I missed East coast sauce so much, and I was glad to taste it again. If you miss the thinner, tomato-ier sauce on the East coast, or want to know what it's all about, this is the place to find it, because they sell jars of it. I wouldn't try it on one of their pizzas though.

Cheese: 1/5. Way too much cheese. So, so much cheese. It's like they read my last review where I said it was slightly too much and then decided to double the amount of cheese.

Toppings: 3/5. In a post shrink-flation world, only one pizza place in the area scores higher than a 3 in my book, so Santeramo's has a lot of company in this 3 ranking. There are too few toppings for the price, particularly the veggies. Quality was good.

Crust: 2/5. The crust is very tough. Too little proofing, too much kneading, or both (maybe too little water, but hopefully after as long as this place has been open they've realized they have to use more water than lower elevations). It's well cooked and has an OK flavor, but is a...

The pizza was tasteless, overpriced, restaurant was filthy, and no customer service. I took my 2 daughters for some pizza and spent $25 for a medium sausage pizza and 3 drinks. I thought, "well, this seems like an authentic pizzeria, it should be good." I was not impressed. The sauce was bland, sausage was bland, and the crust was the only thing that was OK but definitely not authentic NY style. Customer service was non-existent - that's it. I think what bothered me the most was that EVERY SINGLE TABLE WAS DIRTY. It was lunch time and not busy, only one other family of 4 the whole time we were there, which leads me to believe that these tables had been dirty since at least the day before. The other family was also complaining about the condition of the restaurant. The daughter wanted to leave, and I don't blame her. So my daughters each ate one slice - I had two. We boxed up the leftovers, took it home, and it stayed in the fridge for about a day before I threw the rest away. Next time I want to spend that much on pizza I will be taking my family to Old Chicago directly across the street. Their Italian Grinder pizza...