1889 Pizza Napoletana — Restaurant in Kansas City

1889 Pizza Napoletana is a mixed bag.

The wood fired pizza is incredible! Great ingredients, delicious taste, impeccable cook on the crust. I will come back time and time again just for the food! However....

The service and atmosphere are where things are lacking, unfortunately. You order and pay at the counter before sitting down. They do bring your pizza to the table, but there is no other table-side service provided. I would hope that the price would reflect this, but it does not. You will pay a similar amount for the pizza as you would at a full-service pizzeria like Il Lazzaroni. The employees at the counter do not greet you or explain the ordering process. They just work until you interrupt them. Something along the lines of "Hello, what can I get started for you today?" would be helpful. There is also no "order here" sign visible from the front door, so you're left feeling a little confused on the process when you first walk in, especially since the menu on the wall is hidden from view as well. The last time I visited, one of the ingredients I ordered on my pizza was missed. Not a huge deal, but I flagged down an employee and they brought me that ingredient in a cup. This employee was very frazzled throughout our dining experience. She kept apologizing loudly to tables because she couldn't find who she was delivering pizzas to. She was also talking loudly with employees behind the counter, having non-work related conversations and joking. There was also a male employee that had holes in his work uniform and he kept coming out to the dining room to talk with another employee on her break. There are chandeliers and trendy seating options, but it feels more like a Chipotle in the area of service. It's a strange juxtaposition. If the employees had some service training, I could easily give a 5 star rating. I am hoping a general manager will step in and tighten up this ship. I'd hate to see their business suffer from things that are definitely fixable with the employees. The food here...

This restaurant had the potential to be 5 stars, but I am giving a 2 because of the poor service that my friend and I received.

Overall, the restaurant week menu was a great deal. My friend and I tried the pasta trio entree. I asked a worker if they were doing the plate refills of your favorite choice of pasta and he confirmed that they were. Since we were full, we asked if we could get our pasta refills to go.

The woman who went to refill our pastas took an insanely long time and we eventually went to the front to check on it. We were given a sad tub filled about a quarter of the way. We were extremely disappointed to be skimped out (my friend didn't even get a serving). If they didn't want to give us additional food, then why bother offering it on the restaurant week menu? It literally states, "(refill your plate with the pasta you enjoyed most!)".

Aside from that, my friend and I noticed that the woman who was serving had checked in with everyone around us EXCEPT for us. She went above and beyond with our surrounding tables, checking in with them, asking how the food was, if they needed anything, etc. and we received nothing. Nobody checked in on us. Anytime we needed something, we had to go out of our way to grab someone at the front of the restaurant.

Additionally, I noticed that a pair of customers that arrived after my friend and I, sat down next to us and ordered the restaurant week special as well. After setting down their salad, their server said, "I'll get you guys your silverware and plates!" My friend and I had to go grab it ourselves. I understand if grabbing your own plates and silverware is the norm here, but it was the fact that we were treated differently.

You pay for your food and tip before you sit down and eat and my friend and I honestly regretted tipping the standard amount after experiencing all of this. Just beware! You might want to hold off on tipping and bring some cash in case you receive no/poor service...

Not the quality we were expecting... especially for a first timer using a Facebook ad for a free Margherita Pizza. I always call in pizza orders because we have two gluten free orders (so nothing gets lost in translation) and when I asked to read it back to me they had it correct, but when I arrived the receipt only had 4 of the pizzas listed. They kindly charged me the pizza that wasn’t listed and gave me my 5 pies. Unfortunately, they mixed up one of gluten free pizzas with a non-gluten free pizza in our order so they had to remake 2 of the pizzas. I was surprised but happy when the employee asked if I wanted my correct pizzas to be under a warmer while the corrections were being made, and I gladly accepted. It only took about 12 minutes to get the orders corrected but when we got home, none of the pizzas were remotely hot or warm (mind you, the drive home was only 10 minutes max). On top of that, the pizzas were floppy. Myself and a friend had pesto as our sauce and it’s hardly pesto, it definitely lacked flavor and so did the pizzas with marinara. The chicken on my pizza was dry. The gluten free pizza crusts were obviously pre-made from a 3rd party company and were sub-par compared to other GF crusts my friends have had. And lastly, one employee, who was probably the manager (because he wasn’t in the same uniform as the rest), was wearing an unappealing trucker hat and quarter zip sweater with no shirt underneath and unzipped all the way. I didn’t go to a pizza restaurant to see this mans chest. His look was very dingy. I’m gonna venture to guess the free pizza was a ploy to get a little extra business because it wasn’t very busy for being 6PM on a Saturday evening near Westport, which should have been my first warning that this place was going to leave something...