Waldo Pizza — Restaurant in Kansas City

Waldo Pizza is still my favorite pizza place in KC, but even considering Restaurant Week, this Friday evening visit was some of the most pathetic service and staff disorganization I have seen in my life.

Sounds harsh, but management needs to do something. We had 5 people and waited over an hour for a table. The dining room was NEVER at capacity, and several large enough tables sat empty and uncleaned for extended periods of time.

Once seated, we find the hostess mistook our initial party of 7, which we updated shortly after arrival to be 5, as a party of 9. At no point did we say 9, and I'm not sure how 2 fewer chairs correlated to a higher number.

When we finally got seated, we all did the Restaurant Week special - nothing complicated, just usual drinks, apps, pizzas, and desserts. Server was pretty dismissive when I asked about Mocktails for Dry January, and it took like 25-30 minutes just to get drinks to the table. Subsequent apps, pizzas, and desserts took absolutely forever. We were almost at Waldo Pizza 3 hours from asking for a table to leaving. I have been on Friday nights without reservations with larger parties MANY times - the restaurant had always been MORE crowded and never took this long.

I understand the server (bald cat shirt dude) was the only one working his section and can only do so much. I understand it was restaurant week and he couldn't control when food came out of the kitchen, nor drinks from the bar. None of this changes that he was frankly rude and made ZERO effort the communicate the status of anything, no apologies for the delays, nothing. That dude was a jerk.

The only highlight of this entire night out was the very nice girl who was able to box up our pizzas before we could blink, and she wasn't...

Was there on 5-21 to pick up a pizza that they said would be ready in 30 to 40 minutes when i ordered it. I arrived 35 minutes after i ordered it and was ushered to the back bar area to pick my order up.

Of the 6 employees that i counted working only one helped me or even acknowledged me. Tall brunette woman who was hustling around. I stood there for over 15 minutes while my pizza sat there getting cold because there were three people filling up pepper and parm containers for tables and on african american woman that just wandered around the entire time i was there. She stood right in front of me three times so i said hi twice and flat out asked her to help me the third time and each time she said nothing and walked away. The hostess, a 7th employee, just stood up front flirting with some guy in a neon green t-shirt while the people just stood and waited.

Is there no manager? Who trained this people to have such a separation of duties? I always thought that if there was work to be done when it’s busy that everyone pitches in on every station to keep things flowing efficiently.

The worst part is that the pizza was boxed up before I even arrived, then it sat there for 15 minutes while I waited for the only person that was actually working to get it for me and that when i got it home the dough was raw! Are you kidding me? It was a St Louis style thin crust. How does that happen?

So I paid $35 for an undercooked pizza that I had to stand around and wait on because everyone else, other than the tall brunette, was too busy flirting and filling condiments.

Such a let down on a place I...

We are longtime fans of Waldo Pizza and are proud to have the BEST pizza place in Kansas City right around the corner from our house! Last week, however, we had a truly wonderful time and I just want to thank everyone for a perfectly marvelous evening.

It was a Thursday evening, the first game of the season for the Chiefs, and the bars on either side of the restaurant were crammed with people and extremely loud. We were so relieved to walk in to Waldo Pizza and find that, although the game was on TV and there were fellow diners there, it was quiet enough to hold a conversation and enjoy our meal.

One of our friends is vegetarian, so we opted for a 10" build-your-own pizza for each of us. I tried a slice of our friend's pizza (he built it on a honey-wheat crust), and it was delicious! And of course my pizza was fantastic, as was everyone else's at the table. I paired my pizza with Boulevard Wheat Beer, which was very tasty, as always.

Many thanks to Cassie for taking such good care of our group! It took us a while to decide on what to put on our pizzas, and she patiently checked back until we were ready to order. She also checked on us multiple times throughout the night to ensure we had everything we needed and were enjoying our meals.

We stayed for a couple of hours to watch the game and to play Trivial Pursuit with the cards handily stacked at every table. Many thanks to Cassie and everyone at Waldo Pizza for such a great evening--and for the many great dinners they've given us in the past! Y'all...