Russo's New York Pizzeria & Italian Kitchen | Kingwood — Restaurant in Houston

Extremely disappointed - Russo's came recommended from an acquaintance and now I'm questioning them in addition to this restaurant.

I came here with my wife and two kids for a family dinner. We ordered one chicken alfredo pasta, a small 12 inch pizza, and one kids pasta, along with four drinks. The total (including tip) came out to over $80. Ok, a bit high but not unusual for a family dinner at a nicer restaurant. Granted, I also added shrimp to my pasta which added another $6. The price of the pasta doesn't include meat, so the chicken and shrimp combined added $10 to the $15 noodle/sauce bowl.

Price aside - this is a pay first/tip first establishment. The only service they provide is bringing food to your table. Otherwise you don't interact with the staff at all. You're on your own for drinks and other service needs. Hardly worth tipping for, but this was the least of the issues. Had I known this, I probably would have left a cash tip for just bringing the food out.

The food itself was not very good. Russo's seems to have an identity crisis. It feels like it wants to be Italian fine dining with its menu and prices, but the service and food quality are on par with Dominos/Pizza Hut. I'll start with the Alfredo. The sauce was butter and parmesan - which is authentic Alfredo, however it seemed to be made very poorly. It was gritty and separating from the butter. Not creamy at all. The chicken was dry and the "jumbo gulf shrimp" that I paid a dollar per, were each barely the size of my thumb. Oh - and they were mixed in the pasta with the tails still on! Had a fun time digging through my meal to remove them! The overall portion was small and the $25 for this one plate was not worth what I got. The quality was on par with those tv-tray pastas you get from Dominos.

The pizza didn't get any complaints, but it was just a simple pepperoni. The dough was crisp, but otherwise it was just sauce, cheese, and pepperoni. The kids pasta used their red meat sauce and my son (who usually loves red sauce pasta) wouldn't eat it. I ended up giving him the rest of my Alfredo after trying it. Not only was the kids pasta cold, but it had an odd after-taste that was hard to describe, almost metallic? We just ended up throwing it away. Nobody wanted to eat it.

Lastly were the drinks. Russo's bought into one of the fountain dispensers that has every type of flavoring you could add. You want a mango peach cherry Coke? The sky is the limit. Odd choice for a restaurant trying to appear as fine-dining (and charging like it too..). The problem with these, is if you just want a plain Coke or plain Dr. Pepper, you're out of luck. It will always have the syrup aftertaste of the last 10 drinks that ran through it. So in addition to a sub-par dinner, I get sub-par drinks along with it... along with the near non-existent service that you tip ahead of time for, I couldn't recommend Russo's to anyone. Maybe their other Pizzas are good, perhaps that's what people go for.. but for me, there were enough red flags to keep me from coming back.

I'll give 2 stars because the atmosphere was kinda cool. Otherwise the food and service weren't worth half of what I paid. If I had paid $45 total, I would have walked away thinking "Yeah, that's about right" and gone about my day. The fact that I paid over $80 for this experience is entirely different. I'm not saying you shouldn't go here and try them out - just don't go into it with high expectations like I did. The menu and prices will make you believe this is a higher quality establishment, however the food and drink quality hardly live up to what is being charged. With the exception of the kids pasta that nobody wanted, it wasn't BAD food, just not $80 food. Not by a long shot.

tl;dr - A fast food restaurant disguised as a fine dining restaurant with food quality and service that doesn't...

I normally don't write reviews but I feel there are some things y'all should know before eating at this place. I have eaten here in the past and normally the food is pretty good. However, my visit on 4/26/2019 was quite terrible. My family and I order a large pizza and wings, which we have order in the past.

The first red flag we should have noticed was when the wings arrived rather quickly to our table. The wings normally take a while but we didn't think much of it. However, it turned out that several of the wings were not cooked all the way and were still a bit bloody. While this was quite unpleasant the worst was yet to come.

I was sitting across from the pizza counter and oven and noticed a couple of pizzas that had been sitting there since a little after our wings arrived. I was quite surprised that none of the staff had gone to pick them up, especially since the restaurant was well staffed with 3 pizza runners, 2 or 3 pizza cooks, and several people working in the back. It was well past 10 minutes before the staff started attending to the pizzas. But instead of taking them to the tables the 3 severs starting chatting with the cooks RIGHT OVER THE PIZZAS!!! And to make it worse one of the guys, the blonde hair one I think, started touching one of the cooked pizzas with his bare hand! I am quite serious and wonder; if they treat food like this in the open what do they do in the kitchen? Once they were done chatting they brought us our pizza and took another two to a table outside. I'd say our pizza was out for a total of 15-17 minutes. Needless to say our pizza was quite lukewarm with some part a bit cold.

Overall receiving lukewarm pizza and a couple of undercooked wings for $32.74 was a terrible deal. I could have easily gone to Domino for half that price. I will have a very hard time justifing eating here again even though I do like their pizza when it's not cold. Unless they train their staff better I wouldn't recommend eating here.

To the people If you do eat here try to keep an eye on the pizza counter for your pizza. If you see yours and it's just sitting there you should let the worker know that you know that it's just sitting there. Also if the wings are quick check for doneness before you pass them to your family

To the manager or owner.

You have lots of workers but somehow they really dropped the ball. I would understand if you were understaffed but this was not the case. Please Please Please tell them not to chat over the FOOD and Especially not to fiddle with the cooked pizza. Also serving pizza when it's hot from the oven is a must as no one like fresh cold...

The food is good for the most part, if not decent is taste, to me.This review is based the WONDERFUL AWESOME Customer Service provided by Ms. Brianna A and timely delivery by Mr. Jaden for an order that I made on 9/19/20. Ms. Bri (as she introduced herslef) was quite friendly, pleasant, patient and polite throughout the process of taking my order, knowledgeable about what to suggest and an overall pleasure to speak to. She didn't try to rush me off of the phone when I couldn't make up my mind about what to order and when I asked about making an unusual addition to an entreé she didn't make me feel odd for doing so. She made such an impression, that I'd wished to have ordered my food in person because the experience was so refreshing to speak with someone who doesn't act as if 'you stole their life and smile in their face'.

Also when I realized that one of the entreés, that I ordered for delivery wasn't how I wanted it, Ms. Bri was again more than helpful, pleasant, and kind in not only listening to my disappointment but also amending the case by getting another (corrected one) re-delivered to me. She is pure AWESOMENESS and in my humble opinion should be told so everyday, given a raise and treated like gold by any and everyone she encounters.

As for the delivery guy Mr. Jaden, he was quite pleasant and respectful, even after he had a lil difficulty finding my address, while it took me a lil while to get out to meet him. Even with this my food was still delivered within the exact time of 15 minutes, as told to me by Ms. Bri. This was late at night.

If nothing else, I would order again from this establishment because of the reinforced and lasting positive impression made on me by Ms. Bri and Mr. Jaden. It is obvious that the owners realize the value of customer service and have two of the most wonderful people in positions that make a great difference...