V Pizza + Flask & Cannon — Restaurant in Florida

The pizza here was, to me at least, the best I've had in the state. I was impressed with every bit of it. Looked appetizing, sufficient toppings, great taste. The size was great also.

My wife felt hers was overly salty. We had different pizzas, so I can only say that she mentioned it a lot.

The overall place though, was just odd.

It's a big ugly pole barn, in an industrial complex of pole barns. You sit and look at more ugly pole barns. A nice privacy fence around the patio would work wonders for this.

The outside area was interesting. Lots of physical activities for the kids while the parents drink. The kids had a blast!

The building is separated into basically 2 restaurants. One is is full service, the other half service. You order at the counter, get your own drinks, and find a table. Everything else is brought out to you. This was just absolutely stupid.

From the moment you walk in the door with this scenario, you just don't know what's happening. We stood there a couple minutes trying to figure it out, reading signs and flyers and I still didn't get that it was the same place on both ends. It wasn't until a cashier finally arrived that she was able to explain the place.

Her explanation basically came down to preferred customers (money) or lesser than customers, who eat in the self service side. After showing disdain and basically degrading the self service customers, we were told we had to dine on that side anyway, as full service was actually full.

Because it's essentially a fast food place on this side, we ordered both dinner and dessert, to keep from walking back and forth during our visit. Cashier gives us a number, and we go find a table. About 2 minutes later, someone brings out the dessert. Another 20 minutes or so, dinner finally comes. By the time we're up for dessert, it's already been sitting on the table for more than 30 minutes.

And now in self serve, we just don't know. Waitresses and presumably a manager keep walking by and asking if it's good, but we can tell they're not there to help us at all. Where do I have to go to find a go box? Will someone actually bring me one, even though I'm sitting on the 'poor' side? Refills were obviously on us, but from where we were sitting to the machine, this just wasn't really an option. Wading through the whole packed place to fill a small cup with no straws just isn't worth the hassle.

One thing that really bothered me was the dog sign hanging on the patio. It said 'No Pooping' and 'No Peeing', with pictures of a dog doing both. This is 2 feet from my table. How about just no dogs on the patio, instead of showing us a sign of a dog pooping? Even better, no dogs at all, since it's a restaurant. They have to walk through the building to get into the patio. But nah, it's cool, hang the poop sign.

A co-worker has been telling me about V Pizza for a long time. When this one was being built, he was almost giddy over it. I had to go and see what the hype was all about. And food wise, I was so happy. It was very much like eating in Naples.

One big difference though was price. Naples is cheap, this place was not at all. Each personal pizza ran us around $18. I can get an Xtra large traditional American pizza and feed the whole family for that price at many other places in town. This was not a traditional American pizza though, it was much better, just not $18 better.

The people in Italy also wouldn't separate their customers into have and have nots. They would treat all customers equal, and that's where V Pizza really failed for me.

I will go back, because the food was really good. I'll probably order to-go though, because the whole dining there...

My family and I have been going to the V Pizza in San Marco for years and love the pizza, so when I learned of this new location on US 1, we decided to try it.

Location and Appearance: Located directly on US 1 just south of Palencia, this new location is in a large building that looks reminiscent of a fancy horse stable. It has a large parking lot, was easy to find and easy to park. Great curb appeal. Inside, the restaurant has an upscale layout with wood ovens in the middle. Apparently the left side is more of a sit down restaurant with a waiter while the right side is the typical order at the counter style (like the San Marco location). We unfortunately, were not made aware of this until after we had stood at the counter behind the disorganized dad and two toddlers that was trying to order gelato for 20 minutes.

Service: As mentioned above, this was our first time to this location (first impression). We walked in the door and waited behind an aloof parent trying to give toddlers that could barely stand still or use their hands, full bowls of ice cream, while they then repeatedly dropped their spoons and predictably dripped sticky ice cream all over the floor. We were there to order a $50 meal and we're waiting behind the ice cream line for 20 minutes... Meanwhile, another employee behind the counter was fiddling with the cooler behind her instead of simply turning around and helping us. Poor service example, #1.

Once we were finally able to order we were only then told about the sit down option (which we missed). Poor service example #2. We ordered our food, got our drinks and headed into the dining area. This part was a huge turn off, as there were chunks of food, crumbs, basically parts of other people's food all over the floor, which stood out against the dark floor color. It was literally a minefield. Looking for a booth, almost all of them were dirty and hadn't been cleaned. Overall, it was bad. Poor service example #3.

Food: Regardless of the issues above, V Pizza does make excellent pizza with the Margarita Signature being my favorite while my wife prefers the Vegetariana with added pepperoni. Mine was excellent. She thought hers should have been cooked longer.

Overall: The biggest problems with this location are service and cleanliness. Most of the staff appeared to be high school and just waiting to leave, but whoever the manager is should not let it ever look or function as it did when we visited. They should be bussing tables immediately after someone leaves. They should be repeatadly sweeping up food crumbs all throughout the night. How they let it all pile up is beyond me. Then they ignored us for 20 minutes and never informed us of the sit down option ahead of time. Utlimately, they should also realize that spending $50 for two pizzas and water should at the least come with a clean environment and good customer service. We likely will not return to...

We have been wanting to eat at V pizza since they opened but could never find parking due to the large crowds. We stopped in today at an off time and finally found a parking spot!

The building itself is huge and is separated into two different settings. The left side of the building is a full service restaurant and bar, (Flask and Cannon). The right side of the building is a serve yourself type of restaurant, (this is the side we chose). I believe the decor is supposed to reflect our town and it reminded me of the Excalibur decor of the early 1980's with high ceilings, dark wood beams, etc.. There were also two huge wood fired ovens that were imported from Italy.

We placed out orders at the counter and they gave us a number to place on our table so they could locate us to deliver our food. They also gave us our wine and empty cups for the self service drink station.

Even though we didn't technically have a server like the full service side of the restaurant we didn't really need one. Our food was brought out in the correct order with the salads being served first and the main courses later. A manager also came around several times checking to see if we needed anything.

We started with the Napoletana Salad, (spring mix, grape tomato, cucumber, marinated artichoke, pesto marinated chicken, pepperoni, Parmigiana Reggiano with a balsamic glaze). This salad was amazing. It was packed full of chicken and the pesto contrasted nicely with the tangy balsamic dressing. I will definitely order this one again in the future.

Our main courses were the linguini and meatballs and a Pollo Calabrese Pizza, (calabrian marinated chicken, pancetta, red onion, gorgonzola, calabrian marinade, fresh garlic and basil).

The pizza was spicy and delicious served in V Pizza's Neapolitan style. The linguine and meatball dinner was huge! There was enough pasta on this plate to easily feed two or three people. It was topped with melted cheese and three large and extremely tender meatballs. The only complaint about this dish was the sauce. We loved the sauce but there just wasn't enough to coat all of the linguine.

V Pizza has always been one of my favorite pizza restaurants and we are lucky to finally have one so close to home. We will definitely be regulars at this...