Mama Santa's — Restaurant in Cleveland

From the moment you step foot into the Mama Santa's, the delicious smell of fresh ingredients and warm Italian seasonings flowing through the air will take your nose on a euphoric journey before you are even seated. The hostess is among one of the friendliest people I have ever met, and she treats everyone who walks through their doors as if they've been best friends forever! She is prompt to ask how everything is going and if she can help you carry anything on the way to being seated. This is only the beginning of the Mama Santa's experience, as we haven't even begun to discuss the food yet.

Once your seated, the pleasant soft rustic Italian music plays in the background for your enjoyment, and the waitress immediately brings everyone waters and strikes up wonderful conversation with the table. The waitress makes you feel like you are family, and is extremely kind and patient, especially with large parties. After taking everyones order, she runs to bring fresh garlic roles straight from the oven to the table. Soft and buttery, the rolls are delicious and make my mouth water just thinking about them now!

To move onto the appetizers, the salads are as fresh as humanly possible and are prepared to perfection! It has the perfect amount of peppers, onion, cucumber, olives, and boiled egg! All their dressing is made in house, and the exceptional taste reflects that.

Now, for the part we've all been waiting for..... THE PIZZA!!!

I like to consider myself very knowledgable in pizza. Pizza has been my favorite food since as long as I can remember. And Mama Santo's, by far, is the greatest pizza I have ever tastes!!! Their pies are made thin and well done, with a little more sauce and a little less cheese. The smell of the pizza alone is to die for, and the taste is so remarkable that I can't even put it into words!

I HIGHLY RECOMMEND that if you have the opportunity to eat here that you take it, because it will change your look on pizza and restaurant...

First time here and we ordered a pepper with onions chicken mushroom was supposed to have a white wine sauce and the side was supposed to be homemade pasta with red sauce and we also ordered chicken Parm. The peppers with onions, chicken mushroom with a white wine sauce was so salty that that was all you could taste. You couldn’t taste any flavor from the peppers or onions or chicken. When telling the waitress she had apologized and took it back to the kitchen, came back out with it, and said that the chef which is the owner’s wife has a heavy hand with salt and she tried the food that was on my original plate and said that it was not salty that it needed more salt than the waitress, took it to the owner and he tried it on the same original plate that was mine and started saying really loud as we walked by to pay that there was no salt and wanted other employees to try it. The chicken Parm was extremely tough, and when the waitress asked how the chicken Parm was I said it was so so then the waitress asked me if it was tough and I said yes, it was tough. As we were walking to go pay at the front, the owner is still talking about it and never came and apologized. Didn’t say anything to us and when we went to go pay for our check, the young lady had asked how was everything and we just said it was OK and the owner kept talking a lot enough so that way we could hear And that’s when I had said that is extremely unprofessional for an owner to be talking like that and passing a plate around that your customer ate off of for other people to try when your customer explains to you that it is extremely salt. We will...

I looked through all the Italian restaurant reviews on google maps to find a place that had stellar reviews for their pizza and stumbled upon this restaurant. I’m not local and great pizza in my area is hard to come by, so I’m always on the hunt for some amazing pizza.

I ordered a large pepperoni pizza by phone and had about a 30 minute wait, which was fine as we were in transit ordering food to try at another restaurant. The parking at this location was pretty limited and the street parking was filled as well as their back parking lot (it only had about 4-5 parking spaces). Our pizza was ready around the time they said it would be so we were able to get in and out quickly.

The pizza was hot and met my expectations for freshness. The sauce was flavorful with seasoning and tasted homemade. The ratio of toppings to dough was good, but extra cheese on the pizza would have been more my style. The crust was thin and had a nice crunch to it, but not an over cooked crunch. I can’t really explain the crust crunch, but I liked it. Overall the pizza was good and I enjoyed it. It wasn’t the best pizza I’ve experienced but by far exceeds other establishments.

If I was in the area again, I might not stop here again and only for the sheer fact that my goal in life is to try all the different pizzas I can. I would recommend others to try the pizza here. We didn’t order anything else so I can’t comment on the food options, but I did like the price point of their large pizza, just a bit over $12 for...