Via 313 Pizza — Restaurant in Cedar Park

Personality Plus here at VIA 313. Loud music and lots of it. The wait staff overall…. Meh. We all know how I am about Customer Service and sadly one thing I didn’t see here was any camaraderie. I guess maybe that doesn’t matter to most people but it does to me. Our specific wait person was Victoria and she was great. After 3 different team members passed by me with my mouth opening to make a request she came from somewhere up front …to my rescue …and took care of my request for salt & pepper -immediately. I was trying to eat the beautiful garden salad they brought. It had adequate dressing but zero flavor. Not sure if there wasn’t enough vinegar but there definitely was no salt or pepper or any other kind of seasoning. I really love a simple vinaigrette but salt and pepper is a must! Otherwise the salad was very crisp and clean and chopped perfectly into bite-size pieces. The garden salad had crisp Romaine lettuce, sliced carrot, some red onion, sliced cucumbers and cherry tomatoes We ordered the large which was $9 and shared it. We ordered a $15 Detroit style (thick crust) Hawaiian pizza. VIA puts their sauce on top of the Detroit style pizza. I guess that’s kind of their signature. It reminded me very much of Buddy’s Pizza that still exists in the Detroit area in terms of the buttery-but crisp golden brown square small (4-squares) or large (8 squares) pizzas. VIA’s sauce is a little on the sweet side but not overly sweet. The pineapple rings- one whole ring per square-were great. The ham was very tasty- but it was scarce. Overall the pizza was great. Hubby had a coke $3 -although VIA has exceptional soda flavors including “Faygo” and “Vernor’s Ginger Ale” (again big memories for me as I used to walk by the Vernor’s Bottling Plant at 7-mile and Shaefer). Now then - I really splurged and ordered a “Boston Cooler” $6 another Detroit-centric beverage- it’s composed of Vernor’s Ginger Ale and Vanilla Ice Cream mixed together- not as thick as a milkshake but definitely as rich! It was like having dessert with dinner. YUM!

Anyway we definitely recommend VIA 313. We will return.

Update-Takeout Review 3.5 *

Tried take out tonight. Not the best experience. I have to take half the blame. I made an online order, and once I finalized it, I realized. I had not only ordered the meatballs, the cheese bread and the small pizza, but I had accidentally put a large pizza in there as well. I had some difficulty with their ordering system because I needed a half-and-half pizza and it took me a while to figure out how it works, however, I really wanted my better half to have his half of the pizza with the toppings he prefers so that’s how I scrambled up the order! I can’t believe I didn’t review the order thoroughly and didn’t realize my mistake until the order had gone in, but I did call them immediately. A very nice gentleman assisted me on the phone -told me it was not a problem and removed the large pizza from the order. I think him again, and apologized for the mistake. I asked if it changed the pick up time and he said that the pick up time was showing to be 5:55 PM central daylight time I didn’t say anything about the tip nor did I reduce the tip. When my husband arrives to pick up the order, they discovered that somehow the meatballs and the cheesy bread had gotten messed and had nothing made so it was going to be a 10 to 15 minute wait which was not unacceptable. However, I didn’t realize that would mean that our small pizza that was already hot and made, and waiting to go would sit there getting moist and limp. So, after waiting a bit for the rest of the order, and the five minute trip home, the pizza was less then good. It was pretty soggy, and I was pretty disappointed on the bright side. The cheesy bread and the meatballs were delicious. So there you have it. I really like via 313 especially since I am originally a Detroit girl, but I think we will need to avoid take out...

Edit: Online ordering back so raising this from one star to teo. Food still good, original review below. Takeout staff was rude and disinterested. Handed me 4 pizzas and 4 salads (for big family meal). As I struggled to figure out how to take all this, without saying a word the takeout person bends down and then pops up with a togo bag. I then had to balance pizza boxes and salads on small counter in front of register while I opened bag and got salads in. All while holding up people behind me and 3 takeout people stood there talking as if nothing on the customer side of the counter exists. Most of the negatives for this location are self inflicted and going to harm customer turnover. That screams bad management and makes every experience here bad until things improve. Original review: Via313 is one of the best pizza places in Austin. Definitely the best gluten free pizza dough you can get without making your own homemade. This location has some growing pains to go through before it gets to the level the other locations around town. Food was good as always but they did not have their online ordering going to the kitchen (very surprising on opening day. So we had to wait an extra 45 minutes to get food. The reason the review is low right now is because their online ordering is unavailable at 4:00pm on Saturday. We could drive down to Central Austin location though because they have online ordering. But not up here. You’re a pizza place that takes a minimum of 20-30 minutes to bake a pizza. AKA your priority should be takeout, not dine in. Once this location is a bit better I’ll update my review, until then it’s just like every new place in Austin: too busy, too small for population, and underestimating just how many people need good places to eat and just how little there actually is out here. Between Cedar Park and Leander there are 127k folks. One small Via313 next to a major freeway ain’t gonna cut it. They should have planned better or put off opening until they could have gotten the location, size, and staff they really need to be successful up here. Oh well, another disappointment in the ‘burbs of Austin. Too bad it’s too expensive to live...

Visited Via 313 in Cedar Park, TX on opening night, 3/28/22. This review will consider atmosphere, food quality, food presentation, and staff engagement. The review will not consider the wait time, given that it was opening night and half of the north Austin suburbs were trying to order pizza from Via 313. I have never seen a pizza joint slammed so hard on a week night.

My family dined-in and we were seated outside (our choice). For the size of the restaurant, plenty of staff were working and there was a large presence of staffers in the open kitchen. It took awhile for our server to join us but it was everyone's first real day and the gal that did come over was very nice and apologized over and over for the delay (which we were expecting).

We placed our food order right away and got some cocktails. My wife and I were impressed with the cocktails when they came out; my margarita had a burnt lime which made my marg have a smokey flavor which I liked. Kids got lemonade and they had some interesting soda choices we didn't order.

The menu is the same as the other Via 313 restaurants and we ordered two pizzas. A large pizza runs in the $25 range which is on the more expensive side but the pizzas have so many toppings that you get your money's worth. Via 313 has some of the best pizza sauce in Austin and many of the pizzas put sauce on top so I'm a big fan of that. The restaurant has two restrooms which are both unisex, they were well maintained/renovated.

There's a full bar and a separate takeout area for people to line up near the front. The open kitchen is really cool and you can watch the kitchen staff make the pizzas. I didn't get to eat inside this time but when I went in there it was fun to watch them. The pizza was perfectly cooked and it was worth the wait. We probably saw them serve 120 people with take-out orders while we waited for our food, it was nuts. I will be a frequent customer, especially during football season. They gave my kids little cups of ice cream for free when we paid and they...