Calusa Pizza & Craft — Restaurant in Florida

I only write reviews immediately after visiting a business for 2 reasons: if the food and / or service is exceptional and secondly, if the service is sub-par. As you can tell with the star distribution, it's the latter reason for this review. In actuality, the service and food were good. It was the management that fell short.

Despite having to wait 10 minutes to have a server greet us, Alexandra was very apologetic and took good care of us afterward. They have a good variety of beers on tap, and their Calusa house is a nice crisp pale aie. The featured soup, a lobster bisque, is mediocre, but I'm glad I ordered it to appease my hunger while waiting an unreasonable amount of time for a pizza. Sadly, once the pizza came out, it was made incorrectly, and I had to wait yet an even longer amount of time. Again, our server expressed her apologies many times. What surprised me was the manager's lack of attention to the mishap. I watched him sit and chat with what seemed to be friends of his at a nearby table for at least a good ten minutes. (Yes, I timed it because I was timing how much longer it was going to take my pizza to come out. ) He finally came over after my pizza came out to apologize. (I venture to assume my glaring stares might have had something to do with it.)

The pizza was delicious. It had an even distribution of toppings, and the crust was crispy on the outside and soft on the inside. Even their complimentary garlic knots were delicious and had the same texture as the pizza crust. I ordered a cannoli to go since I had already seen 4 tables come and go while I was there. It was, in the words of my 7 year old dinner date (my daughter with a sophisticated palate for her age), "meh."

Good pizza. Good beer. But I'll stick to Mama B's in Wesley Chapel, where Mama B herself visits each table to ensure all is well. Calusa obviously doesn't need my patronage if they have time to chat with friends on a busy...

Ciao! Born and raised in southern Italy and now a proud resident of Tampa! My American friends have challenged me to find all the best and worst places that offer Italian foods. So, this place just opened, like a couple weeks ago but I had seen the sign for a while having been to the Walgreens that it's behind. The hard part about doing these now is that a couple of places have raised the bar really high, and that's who you're going to get compared to, and if you're going to put pizza in your name, then I'm judging you primarily on your pizza. Personally, I found your menu to be Mediterranean and not Italian, which to be honest, irks me because pizza is Italian. I can't say that I've ever seen a Gyro available at a pizza place before, but I have seen pizza at a Greek place before that sells itself as Greek. But this is about the pizza, and it just wasn't very good. The sauce was all tomato, with no hint of any spice or herb of any kind. Some would call it clean, but it seemed more like something out of a can, maybe even just tomato puree than anything else. The crust had more than an acceptable amount of bubbles where about a third of the pizza was just cracker crust and nothing more. I also agree with some other reviewers here about the cheese. The taste is definitely that of an inexpensive cheese. Toppings can also be a point of argument in almost any pizza place in the states, and it's no different here with American items like meatballs and black olives that are really Mission olives from California, and pineapple that everyone has a take on, but this place has Cheddar cheese as an option. I don't understand that. It's not Italian or Mediterranean. It's English! The service was way much better than the food, but not enough to...

My family has dined here several times and the food is always excellent. I haven’t written a review before but tonight we had a little snafu that compelled me to share. We ordered a delivery through Uber eats. When we got the food 1/2 our order was missing. I called the restaurant to let them know and they confirmed that the other half of the order was still there. At this point it was only about 20min till closing time. Most places in this situation, if they are decent will refund you, maybe even send you a gift cert or something. But Calusa’s WAY outdid themselves on service tonight. They remade our ENTIRE ORDER. Even the food we had already received. They stayed late at the restaurant and paid another Uber eats driver to rush the food up to us, and included a gift cert for next time on top of everything else. That was far more than I was asking for or expecting, but it speaks volumes to how they treat their customers and run their business. Food is exceptional, service is unparalleled. Highly recommend and they will certainly get enough future business from my family to repay their above and beyond service many times over. Amazing place all around, glad to have them as...