TAGLIO Columbia Tusculum — Restaurant in Cincinnati

Heard about this new pizza restaurant from Cincinnati magazine and decided to give it a try. First impressions were good as we walked into Taglio's and found a hip looking space with an expansive bar and extra seating available on crowded nights. We arrived late afternoon on a Sunday so we were able to be seated immediately.

We told our waitress it was our first trip to Taglio, and she proceeded to excitedly describe the salad, sandwiches and pizza choices. Although the Italian Hero sandwich caught my eye, I came for the pizza.

Our waitress was pushing the "Detroit-style" deep dish, but my heart lies with New York style thinner crust. We ordered a 14" pepperoni, red onion and sausage pizza while my step-daughter and her husband did order the deep dish.

We started out with garden salads and the Housemade Ranch dressing blew us both away. We like it so much we asked our waitress if we could buy some to take home.

We enjoyed our pizzas, although the deep dish came out first and was warm at best. Our pizza came out about 10 minutes later. I thought the pizza was good, but disliked the sausage. I'm picky about sausage so don't fault Taglio if their sausage didn't please my taste buds.

The service seemed a bit slow for a light Sunday crowd, but what really surprised me was the $10.00 glasses of wine that were served. With 3 beers for me and a like number of glasses of wine, our bill quickly totaled $75.97, of which $40.00 was alcohol. Not exactly what I'm used to paying for the two of us to go out for pizza.

Lesson learned. We will probably come back to Taglio again, but will definitely try to keep our alcoholic beverages to a minimum. Miller Lites were $3.50, by the way. I've always thought of a pizza restaurant as a good place for affordable pizza and beers, but Taglio is charging a deer price...

The food was very tasty. Service was ok.

My complaint is this: We ordered the artichoke dip for an appetizer. It is incredibly delicious and there is a lot of it. It comes with little, toasted baguette slices, which are a really good pairing. The problem is that I think there were maybe 8 little pieces of bread given to us initially, which, because of the size of the appetizer, was about half the amount that a normal person would need. Our waitress said, "Just let me know if you need more bread." So, I let her know, and she brought out twice the amount that had initially been with the appetizer. I thought it strange and said to my husband, "That's what we should have had to begin with." Why is this a problem? We got charged $2.00 for the extra bread. We weren't told we would be charged, and they certainly didn't give us enough bread to begin with, so I thought that kind of sneaky.

Then, when our pizzas came out, they asked if we wanted some Parmesan cheese for our pizza. We said, "sure". At other restaurants, they bring out the Parmesan shaker, or they manually add it for you. Instead, they brought out a little container of Parmesan...way more than anyone would need. Yes, again, they ended up charging us for the Parmesan, without telling us there was a charge.

It's not as much about the money as it is about not being told we would be charged extra. The meal was a little pricey to begin with. I didn't appreciate the extra charges on top of it.

I would easily give this place 5 stars if they had been more straightforward with their...

I order here a couple times a month, but sadly I think tonight was the last time I'm going to order from here for a while. At first I really enjoyed the pizza and their breaded chicken caesar salad. Over the past two months, however, I feel that the quality of their product has taken a dive. Their caesar dressing used to be really delicious, but the last several times we have gotten it, it has been watery and just plain disgusting...tastes tike salty, anchovy water. I don't know if they have begun cutting costs or what, but y'all need to go back to the original recipe. Also, they changed the breading on their chicken, which used to be amazing. Now it arrives soggy and the breading doesn't even stick to the chicken...sadness. It's completely different. Again, why mess with a good thing. Finally, their pizza is pretty pricey and you would think that you would get a decent amount of toppings for the price. We always order a cheese pizza with jalapeños (literally don't think you could find a cheaper topping) and our pizza arrived tonight with only 1-2 pieces of jalapeño per slice. It has been this way the last several times we have ordered and I'm just not willing to pay for extra jalapenos when the cost should cover a normal amount of toppings in the first place. I think it's time to find a new pizza place in Cincinnati. I really hate when a place opens and lures you in with their food in the beginning and then starts messing with their recipes to...