Italian Fiesta Pizzeria — Restaurant in Lake Township

Some places don’t even try.

Recently I’ve restarted my search for a good pizza place since my current favorite one has diminished in quality. Italian Fiesta popped up on my radar. At first glance it looks like your typical hood pizzeria except some reviewers noted it might be black owned so I decided to take a closer look.

I ordered twice from Italian Fiesta. The first time I ordered my standard test of a sausage & pepperoni pizza (if you can’t get this right… you should not be making pizzas.) I also ran the gambit, ordering a meatball sandwich & catfish dinner. The second time I ordered I kept it small due to issues with the first by only ordering 2 canned drinks & a small pizza. Each order took almost 3 HOURS for my order to be delivered & the orders still arrived screwed up.

Here are my thoughts:

Overall Price - Standard prices. Scary cheap on some menu items. Limited menu.

Pepperoni & Sausage Pizza:

Presentation - This is definitely one of the misses. Some of the slices don't even have sauce or cheese or toppings on them. The pepperoni is not even on some parts of the pizza. It's baffling how on some parts of the pizza has six pepperoni stacked on top of one another as if they did not bother separating the pepperoni from the packaging. The aluminum foil is also halfway on. Terrible job. 1/5

Taste - It definitely is not the best pizza in Chicago as some of the previous reviewers have stated. Not even top 20. The sauce is salty, the pepperoni has a strange tinge to its taste, its greasy beyond belief & the cheese is of average quality (definitely not fresh mozzarella or any Italian brand I've ever tasted.) Some slices tasted like motor oil. For them to take about two hours to shove this out the door is beyond ridiculous. 2/5

Meatball Sandwich:

Presentation - A meatball sandwich with no sauce? what planet is this restaurant from? French bread looks nice & soft. The mozzarella is nicely browned & they piled it on. I paid for sweet peppers & they just went overboard with the peppers. Less peppers more sauce. 3/5

Taste - The meatballs are dry which is one of the reasons why people put marinara sauce on the meatball sandwich. The meat mixture isn't that good as it's not seasoned very well if at all. There's nothing like a meatball sandwich that is dry as well as not very tasty which is a shame because the bread is good & the overall combination of everything would have made a great sandwich had it had some actual sauce. 2/5

Catfish Dinner:

Presentation - Breading is very thin & lackluster. Unexpectedly dry. 2/5

Taste - The breading has a little spice to it which is most likely the black pepper. The fish is alright, nothing special. It's perfectly fried where the meat itself is neither fatty nor dry.

Customer Service:

My second time around it was nearly the EXACT same experience as the first. The order arrived over 2.5 hours late with no drinks & they took it upon themselves to substitute Italian Beef for the Ground beef I requested for the pizza. No call, no nothing. 1/5

Conclusion:

Overall, listen to the reviews. This place is unable to get a simple order out in under 2.5 hours. For them to have such a limited menu & offer this level of quality is unacceptable. I don't know how this place calls itself Italian fiesta when they can't even get the basics of Italian food right. Both of my orders had the exact same issues down to the foil only partially covering the pizzas. There are plenty of restaurants throughout Chicago that get 10x-20x the business this place gets & can get out orders on time, have great customer service, etc. so there is no excuse. I wish I would've cancelled my order when after the one hour mark. Luckily Italian Fiesta doesn't leave that much of a hole in your wallet.

1...

My three favorite places to get pizza are Italian Fiesta, Beggars, and Home Run Inn pizzerias.

Italian Fiesta Pizzeria, on a good day, serves the best pizza that makes you smile at its decadence. Luscious is a word that also comes to mind. It costs a little more, but the sensation that comes with chomping on good food makes it worth it.

However, on the day I visited, I called and ordered ahead. Thank God my pie was ready when I got there. Another woman who was standing on line ahead of me who had also ordered ahead was told that she'd have to wait an additional 20 mins. She was livid and stormed out of the place. In the back of my mind I thought about eating a piece of pizza right then and there so if by chance she returned and went postal the nightly news would report me as a loyal customer who was "shot with a mouthful of pizza." That way they wouldn't try and shame the victim and the cashier behind the plate glass window and the management would be so grateful that they'd provide free pizza for my surviving family members. Yeah, that's how I roll: always thinking of others. I digress.

I didn't open the box because I was headed home some 45 mins. away and I wanted to conserve the heat. It was an unusually long trip because all I could think of was gulping down delicious pizza chased by a swig of ice cold soda pop. I was too disappointed when I opened the box to find that the crust--or should I say cracker--was cooked to a dark brown crisp. It literally crumbled in my hand. That meant, of course, that everything else was overcooked as well.

Since it was late I only ate a few pieces with the hopes of a better day of pizza tomorrow. I froze the rest. On the third day I reheated a portion of the uneaten pizza in a brown paper bag with a couple of drops of water sprinkled on top in a convection oven. This usually works, but, sadly, not in this case. There was no saving it. Talking about dreams deflated.

I then remembered that I had a same experience before when I ordered a pizza from one of their other south suburban locations.

I will definitely give them another opportunity. I love this stuff. I hope that they can come through with flying colors this time. The diary doesn't always agree with me so I don't eat pizza often. But, when I chance the discomfort after eating it and paying extra for it, it should be worth it all.

'Til...

I would have gave this location 0 stars simply for my interaction yesterday. I called to place an order for and large pizza to this location on 81st Halsted around 10pm. The lady took the order and told me it would be a hour wait which was fine. I expect it would be ready by the time I got to the location.

I got to the location around 11pm thinking okay it should be ready. There was a packed lobby where the cashier expressed she could help the next customer and then proceeded to look at something else and told them give her a minute.

There were approximately 15-20pizzas just sitting on the counter and in the warmer. People who had the ticket numbers were waiting and the cashier was moving very slowly and constantly asking for a full phone number versus the last 3 numbers of the customers tickets.

My order was not ready. Even after being told an hour wait. I had to wait behind 4 people to even say I called in the order. When I got to the window, I was told I needed to give the last 4 numbers for my phone number, then told to give the full number WITH A LOBBY FULL OF PEOPLE LISTENING!! How inappropriate.

At first the cashier could not find the number but then looked and told me it would still be a wait. I finally got my order about 11:30pm. So technically 1.5hours to wait for a large pizza.

The cashier was so unprofessional. As she moved slowly, she also would stop and talk to other workers and laughing like it was not a full lobby. She also had on sunglasses and a headscarf and giving people attitude for asking for their food. The police even left their food because of the long wait.

A man with his child had been sitting and waiting for over an hour before the cashier found their pizza order which had been waiting in the warmer and the customer had to point out that it was there order.

Oh and there was a man that seemed like the manager that came from the back but only helped one customer. He acted like he did not want to be there either.

Besides that my order was long, it was warm versus hot when taking home and I just would not return here for myself. I would warn customers to go directly in versus calling on the phone but it they see it being a long wait to just not order. Its gonna...