Bella Pizza & Pasta — Restaurant in Mesa

5/31/25: Short version - solid eatery. Food, service, & atmosphere were all good. Nothing really stood out that I would say "wow!" about. More people popped in for take out than for dine-in.

Long version - Bella is a cute little place with a pretty hefty menu. We arrived this particular Saturday for a late lunch; we were the only two dine-in customers so the sole server, Brayden, we had all to ourselves. He was exceptional: friendly & attentive.

Appetizer platter: fried, fried and more fried! :-) It had a nice variety of items (the fried ravioli mozzarella were my two favs). I will say the chicken strips seemed a bit tough & thin.

Garlic knots: delicious. Small bite-size knots w/ enough garlic to keep the vampires away. Ha! Just the way I like them.

Shrimp carbonara: the shrimp was huge & my sister enjoyed it.

Bella trio (choose 3 entrees): the eggplant parm w/ spaghetti needed another slice of eggplant & less spaghetti, and the cheese ravioli was a decent portion. For both of these, I will say the sauce was a bit of a let down, in that there did not seem to be a whole lot of flavor / spices to it. All I tasted was tomato. It definitely could use a bit more pizazz to it. The chicken picata was my fav of the 3. You could def taste the lemon. My only critique with it would be the white wine butter sauce was a bit runny.

Desserts: I know the lemon mascarpone cake is not made in-house (we saw the box), I'm not sure about the chocolate lasagna. Of the two, the cake was the best because it had the most flavor. The choc lasagna was an Oreo cookie crust, ice cream, & what tasted like normal choc pudding (nothing fancy about it).

The two or three other customers that came in for pick up were getting a pizza. Seeing that, if we back to Bella (it's 35 miles away; yes! we drive all over the valley trying new restaurants every week), we will def have to try one of their pizzas next time; perhaps a...

Me and my father ordered 70$ worth in food from this place. We ordered a pizza with extra cheese and pepperoni, (along with some Stromboli specifically for my father.) but instead, a miscommunication happened on both ends, and our pizza was put in as the "Bellas speciality" pizza, which contains green peppers, mushrooms, ham and onions, and is more expensive. We heavily dislike all of these toppings, and when we got the pizza, we weren't happy.

We called Bellas to help us replace or partially refund our order, but instead, they offered us a 20% discount on our next order. We were left 70$ down the drain, without dinner, and a refusal from Bellas to help us with our problem. We probably aren't ordering again, though.

To be fair, the food is good as I've learnt on separate occasions, (though expensive,) but there are other pizza places that do just as good of a job, are cheaper, and don't cheat customers out of their dinner when a mistake is made.

Post review note: I wasn't in the best mood when writing this and partly regret it. I was a bit bitter and hungry from not having dinner. This place has great food, like I mentioned, and mistakes like these happen.

I understand store credit policies are put in place to prevent people from abusing service systems, (even if it does leave people in not ideal situations like ours very dissatisfied.) The one thing wrong with the order was the pizza, which was only a part of the order, albeit It was the only thing we got that I would've eaten.

My Dad didn't look at the menu before ordering and is prone to misunderstandings and miscommunications. I wasn't present for the phone call, so I am unsure of all the details, and we could've gone about it in a much better way. We didn't have the money to order something else for dinner, though, so it got to us.

You all seem like super nice people, and I apologize for my and my father's hostility in...

Being from Jersey, where everyone and everything's Italian, I don't expect much in the way of authentic food in Mesa, Arizona. That's ok and we've long ago accepted that, having relocated here four years ago.

I do, however, expect edible pizza, even at those $5 places. My family ordered a cheese pizza. Simple. We received 4 slices that had cheese and 4 slices that had no or next to no cheese due to being overcooked and not properly rotated. So half a pizza of just burnt dough with streaks of equally burnt sauce.

How the hell they wouldn't see this let alone serve that to a customer is beyond me. There was one other couple in there at 6:30 on a Saturday night so being rushed was not the excuse. When we brought it to the attention of the waitress, she explained that 'sometimes bubbles in the dough burst and it looks like that.' Without going into depth, I replied that I've eaten a pizza or two in my 39 years and whereas that certainly does happen, there is zero chance of a pizza looking like that (with literally half of its cheese missing) ever being served to a patron. She stuttered a little and eventually apologized AND THAT WAS IT.

We saw a cook or owner or someone checking on the other party's satisfaction with their food when we first arrived. Where was this person just 20 minutes later? Aside from the waitress, we saw no one else. Although she was our sole point of contact and perhaps should've known not to argue with a customer, I still tipped her 20%, paid the bill and left.

Never an offer to have someone speak with us or rectify the pizza situation. They got their money and they'll never see me again. Hope that 20 bucks was well worth it. And, by the way, the pizza was about the size and quality of a Geno's. Guess the painting of the Statue of Liberty on their wall warranted charging three times...