Genna Pizza Company — Restaurant in Melbourne

Firstly I'd like to acknowledge my own bias: I worked at Genna around 10 years ago, even before Charlie and his family took over. (I left around 2013)

This is the best pizza in the area. Period. I've been behind the scenes and know the high quality of the ingredients used here. The cheese is top notch. The dough recipe is delicious (and still made in-house, despite many pizzarias following the trend of bringing in pre-made dough) The ingredients are the best in the business.

Charlie, the owner, LOVES pizza, and has a strong drive to improve (even though his product is already top of the line) and learn new things and approaches in the pizza world. I've personally worked in the pizza industry specifically for almost a decade - and no owner I've met has been more customer focused than Charlie. It's a very special thing (and more rare than you'd think).

New York style, Chicago style, deep dishes. It's all here. The garlic knots are out of this world good. (I order mine with lighter oil). Everything I've eaten from here has been good.

Also let's talk the staff: when I worked there we usually ran squads of 3 or 4 (that includes everyone all positions) one thing that has majorly improved since I worked there is customer service. Dining in is a pleasure and there's many people there who check on you and make sure your drinks are refilled. Very friendly and very good food.

Again, bias check for full transparency: I worked there a long time ago and still am friends with the owners and another employee. I've been hesitant to review Genna because of that bias, but I really wanted to shine some more light into what makes this this place so special. It's the best restaurant I've ever worked at and has only improved since. Definitely give Genna...

Went for a first visit early on a Sunday afternoon. Got the last empty table, and they remained at or near capacity throughout the visit. Despite this, servers and cooks did an impressive job of keeping on top of things, and never seemed like they were overwhelmed.

The menu offers quite a few choices for pizza and pizza adjacent items, although it’s definitely a surprise when your “slice” arrives and it’s easily as big as a full pizza from some other restaurants. The table next to ours got a pizza that was nearly as big as the table itself, so yeah, plan on taking home some carry out boxes at the end.

I started with a Greek side salad - good fresh greens, feta, olives, peppers all nice, and a tasty dressing (which I would simply call Greek dressing, apologies if it was any specific brand). Again worth noting that the side salad could easily be a full on salad at some places.

For the main entree, I had the Stuffed Crust Spinach slice (pictured). This is a tricky one to pull off, as you have a crust with some wide variety of thickness and moisture inside that has to be completely cooked through to avoid soft or undercooked dough, without getting too toasty in the thinner spots. Five stars, they hit that balance exactly! Also good job with the flavor, with a garlic top coating complimenting the robust flavor profile of the crust and filling.

Very happy with all food items and servers and kitchen staff....

Well, tonight was the first and last time I order from Genna. So, I order a 24 inch pizza from their website at 6:40 pm. The pick-up time in the email I received was 7:05 pm. I show up at the pick-up time and the young lady at the counter goes to the back to inquire about my order. I can clearly hear her say "it's not in yet?" but she comes back to the register and says "it will be another 15 minutes. Do you want to sit at the bar and I can get you a drink?" This to me was really deceptive...I understand that mistakes happen and would have appreciated the truth more than her implying that the food was just taking a bit longer than expected. I told her that I didn't need a drink and then sat down at the bar to wait. While waiting, I look to the left side of the brick oven and can clearly see a young man in the back prepping food. Not sure if hair nets or hats are a requirement in Florida, but he had long braids clearly dangling over the food he was preparing. This just turned me off even more to this place. I finally received my pizza 25 minutes after the time I was supposed to get it. The lady at the register said "I appreciate your wait" when giving me the pizza (really??). What really angers me is that they never apologized for missing my order, or having to wait an additional 25 minutes. I was even more angry that I left a tip when I signed the receipt before realizing...