Pietro's Pizzeria — Restaurant in McCandless

I’ve lived about 4 minutes from this building for the last 4 years and finally thought to order today. For the first 5 years of my adult life, I worked in 2 different small, independent pizza places in Westmoreland County, so I’m always on the lookout for hidden gems instead of the national chains.

If you are looking for nostalgia, this place has it. Old fixtures, tiny space, cute counter, real cash register. If you are looking for friendliness, that’s hit or miss. Ok, mostly miss. The guy who answered the phone by screaming “Hello!” at me and asked me what type of hoagies I wanted after I had said I wanted the “pietro’s special hoagie” as named on Google was not friendly or personable. Maybe that’s not really the name of the hoagie? When I arrived to pick up my order, there were 5 people standing on the other side of the counter and one person sitting at the counter. They all stared blankly at me when I walked in. I smiled and said “How you guys doing?” Not a single person answered and every one of them looked away. I stood there a second longer than was comfortable just to see if anyone was going to respond, purely for my own confirmation that this was weird 🤣 I continued over to the opposite counter to pick up my food and the man said he was just finishing it up. Yes! Someone spoke to me!! While I waited, another man came in through a door and asked me if he could help me. He rang me up and asked cash or card. $17.10. Which brings me to another point… if you are ordering based on their Google menu (and prices) take it with a grain of salt. The menu listed says cheese fries are $4.99, hoagie $6.99. $12+tax. Either prices are incorrect or I paid $5 in tax. He gave me my change (I prefer to use cash for small business), which I plunked down in the tip container. He watched me unusually intently and then thanked me for coming in. I think I made a friend.

Now on to the food. The hoagie zipped me back to 1999. The bun was identical to the ones we used at my old shop. It was flat, floppy and just dripping with nostalgia. Everything I hoped for. The taste was ok. However, I’m not going to knock them for it because I’m going through chemo and that has changed my tastebuds for the time being. The fries were seriously overcooked. I ate the edible ones. The fries left in the picture got trashed. The iPhone makes them look better in the pic than they are.

I’m undecided on whether to return. I’m not one to have food delivered when I can drive 2 minutes and pick up myself. And with so many raving about the pizza, I maybe should have tried that first. Atleast I definitely know now to not expect much in the way of conversation...

My brother and I have lunch/dinner from Pietro’s often. The pizza and hoagies are great, everything is made to order with fresh ingredients. Family owned-and-operated restaurant in Ingomar.

The parking store-front may be difficult but plenty of other places to park at surrounding businesses. Staff is friendly but hard at work when not with a customer. Good prices for portions and short wait times. I would recommend calling ahead or ordering through Slice beforehand as in-store order wait times may very. They seem to be super busy on Fridays/Saturdays so I would also recommend calling ahead and scheduling a pick-up/delivery time on those days. I usually order for delivery and my order is usually at least on time, if not, ahead of schedule!

Also, if an order is incorrect/missing items, they replace and even deliver them free of charge! This is a fantastic small business that cares about their customers and I could not recommend...

I want to shout-out Pietro’s for excellent customer service. Pietro’s is our favorite pizza place around us and we normally order through Grubhub. We love their variety of pizza and the Sicilian is a family favorite. There was an unfortunate issue today which was not a fault of their own where someone had stolen our order and when the new driver went to pick it up there was no order there. Grubhub rectified the money portion and gave us a credit, but we got a personal call from the restaurant which told us exactly what had happened, and how they wanted to make sure as regulars we weren’t mad at them. Honestly it meant so much to my wife and I and we will be ordering from them very shortly because one the pizza is great but 2, the service is...