Pete's Pizza & Tap House — Restaurant in Grass Valley

Terrible service and deceptive tipping practices (SCAM). We visited Pete's Pizza with a friend and was not impressed with the food, customer service and tipping SCAM. I ordered a pizza, a sub and two beers at the counter from a kid who kept calling me "buddy". I don't know you and we are definitely not on that level. No professionalism. While paying, I noticed a "service fee" of around $7.50 ish but thought it might be something associated to when COVID rules/practices existed. The cashier who kept calling me buddy, then flipped the screen and said there was some questions to answer. It was the tip which I gave 18%. Needless to say, it was all downhill from there. No one checks on you at all. A server brought our sub sandwich in a reasonable amount of time and expected our pizza and our friends pizza to follow shortly. Just kidding. After seeing several other tables who came in after us get their food, we had to track down our pizza. And, while they were trying to figure it out, another server came to the table with the sandwich we had already received and finished. She looked confused and mad. We finally received our pizza and it was less than impressive, just like their service. The kid with the white had that kept calling "buddy" only paid attention to his friends sitting at the counter -- the very same friends he said "just the mother f... I wanted to see..." in a restaurant full of families/customers. Again, highly unprofessional. Unfortunately, it is the theme at Pete's -- no service, rude, unprofessional and customers always last. After we finished, I happened to read the tip jar sitting by the register (which is covered when they flip the payment screen toward you) and it said a 15% gratuity is automatically charged to you but if you like the service then feel free to drop more in the jar. And here is the SCAM...the servers/cashier know a 15% gratuity is automatically added and then spin the screen without saying anything for customers to drop another 15-25% on top of the automatic 15%. Given that most restaurants don't add an automatic gratuity until your party is 8 or more people, it is normal for people to add their tip when paying and not assume the "service fee" that shows up is an automatic 15% gratuity. The staff doesn't say anything at all knowing customers will reflexively give a "standard" 10-25% tip pushing them up to a 30% plus tip and most customers probably not even noticing. Pete's practice's are intentional deceitful and a SCAM. It would take nothing for them to be honest with customers during the payment process about the automatic gratuity. And, the automatic gratuity now explains the complete lack of service/effort by any employee. Why would they try since they have an automatic gratuity? It explains a lot about their service, food and ethics. Do not...

The first part was the menu was like a cryptic message blending numbers and words. Figuring out what something costs was the hardest part of the process. Went to register and asked "what are the options ?" I was shown a slice and the full pizza sizes. The follow up question was "how much? What's the cost?" He had to go through the register to figure out the cost. 3 slice orders of pepperoni (the slice is really 2 slices) was $28.09 - they automatically add in 15% gratuity, you have to ask to remove it.

The pizza was a total let down. The crust was sub par. A little crunchy a little chewy and no flavor. They would do good to add in some salt or garlic to give it a bit more interesting flavor. Crust is the hardest part of a pizza... They show that by missing the mark.

The sauce. A pizza has tomato based sauce, a good pizza makes it tasty, a great pizza has you writing stories about it. They get a story for the sauce but not great worthy. I immediately tasted canned tomatoe paste, no flavor other than that. Garlic would have helped here, or oregano or anything to make it interesting. It was just blah (grade school cafeteria level).

Since it was so bland, I started loading it with parmesan cheese and red pepper flakes. That should help...it didn't really both on our table had lost all flavor, nothing from the pepper and i barely noticed the parm... Probably time to have those replaced.

The only thing that might have changed this experience would have been a good brew. Makes me think the reason for the store name was inspired by Pizza Port Brewing... The difference being that pizza port makes really good beer their's could be as good...

Recently went to try this place for the first time. I had seen that they were running a deal on slices on Mondays so decided that would be a good day to walk into town and try.

We ordered our slices after a brief wait and went to sit outside. We noticed then that they had charged us full price instead of the promotional deal. When we went inside to address this issue their waitress mentioned she hadn’t heard of any such deal, “I’ve only been here a week.”

The man she grabbed was really helpful and rectified the problem, mentioning that they in fact did have a deal on Monday and then re-rung us up with a correct bill. The previous bill charge will take six days to come back to my account.

This was all fine and good, we understand this happens especially with staffing issues. What I don’t understand is how, on a night you specify that you a running a deal on slices, can two slices of pepperoni pizza take 45 minutes to prepare. It’s a pizza place and it takes 45 minutes for a slice on a Monday night. I just don’t understand how that happens. The pizza itself was just alright, I liked the sauce but the cheese was kinda lackluster compared to a more standard NY slice.

Kinda a bummer considering they’re two blocks walk from my house but considering the lackluster service I’ll probably try other options and give them a shot once things...