MidiCi The Neapolitan Pizza Company — Restaurant in Monterey

Quite late in writing this review but finally got around to it and had to write this review as we had a wonderful experience.

We visited here in June 2023 when we were driving the Pacific Coast Highway from San Fran to San Diego and since PCH was closed after a certain point (due to Winter/Spring storms impacting roads in CA), we had to drive back to Monterey. We got to Monterey pretty late (around 10 pm) and the only decent place open with a decent choice of vegetarian food was MidiCi

Food - We were pretty hungry and prior to ordering had to make sure he could make vegetarians items suitable for some that had specific dietary restrictions (e.g. no cheese) and also ensure that soup was made with vegetarian stock. The waitress, Julia W, was very helpful and then the manager / owner also came to help as he knew we had some specific dietary restrictions. He was very accommodating and willing to make changes where he could. Finally we settled on 4 items - Garlic bread w/o cheese, minestrone soup made with vegetarian stock, 2 pizzas (Truffle & vegetable and La Maragrita Fiesta without any meat) and 1 greek Salad. All the food was amazing; I know sometimes when you are hungry, food tastes better but this was really good well flavored food. Soup was really flavorfull and had little spicy zing and portions were more than expected. Pizza was really good with a nice crust and fantastic taste . Salad was very fresh and wonderfully flavored. Surprising we finished all of the food! We even ordered coffee and desserts (Tiramisu and Baklava). Baklava was the only item that not that good

Service - very friendly staff especially Julia W. plus the other staff and the owner/manager. Julia was very patient and not only listening to our dietary restrictions but also making suggestions as we were ordering. We had good conversations with all teh staff and also found out later that Julia was from the East Coast (NY) and we were from NJ so from similar areas.

Ambiance - nice place with regular tables and some hi-top tables. Very "chill" casual place but clean and with a nice vibe. Decent size place and at 11 pm there were still some people in the restaurant plus some coming to pick up.

Overall Highly recommend this place if you are...

I have been to this restaurant about 3 times in the past 5 months. 2 out of those 3 times I have been rather inconvenienced. My first experience was pleasant, no problems. The 2nd time, we waited about 30 minutes before we got our food. The waitress we had seemed a little overwhelmed and she appeared to be the only one running food, which I wouldn't consider to be very efficient. I don't place any blame on her performance, and on that count she had brought us food that we did not order so we had to wait to have our food remade. This past time, I had to wait almost 40 minutes to get my food. I placed my order at about 6:15 and while waiting I got caught up in conversation. I checked the clock later on and about 25 minutes had passed and I realized I was the only person who hadn't received their food. So I got up and asked where the cooks were in the process with my food, and the response I got was "oh, we'll get started on that right away". 25 minutes....and my food hadn't even been started. I think I'm correct in assuming they had completely forgotten about my order. To note, from the amount of customers inside this entire time, they were not busy at all. It was another 10-15 minutes before I got my food. Also both of these instances that I had eaten there, my wife was with me. She's vegan and she gets her pizza made with the vegan cheese and vegan sausage. Both times she's ended up being really sick. I don't know what kind of vegan cheese is used, but I don't believe it's of high quality. She's been vegan for 4 years and she's never encountered this issue when eating any kind of vegan cheese. I will definitely say that the food here tastes really good. That is definitely some credit I will give. But unfortunately, due to the service here and how the food makes my wife feel, we will not be returning to eat here again. I hope whoever reads this has more pleasant experiences than...

Ate there Tonite and it was interesting, but not in a good way. I picked the place at random because it looked nice and smelled ok. The food was fine. The stuff tasted fresh and the meat balls were quite tasty. The salad was good too. No complaints there except that the chef must be allergic to garlic. That's ok though. Garlic is not for everyone. The not fine part was the whole service model. Maybe I'm old and old fashioned but when I eat out I prefer to eat out with people. It took about a minute for anyone on staff to even look at me and realize that I wanted to eat. The guy taking the trash out was nice enough to point out the QR code and clue me in that the place was self serve. Ok. Interesting schtick but not what I was expecting. Ordering was easy since I'm not some old tech limited cooter who can't handle ordering from Amazon. My first thought was, hey this place is great for autistic people and misanthropes. There's absolutely no need to deal with other people. Then my daughter straightened me out by pointing out that there were also no people you could talk to if you wanted your meal prepared a particular way. Yeah. I know. There was a text box at the bottom of the page for notes but do I really want to send you a text message when I'm already clicking boxes all over the place. Nope. The saddest thing about the experience was looking at the staff. Everyone of them but one poor obviously new guy looked on the brink of tears and in need of an emotional support puppy It was like they'd given up hope and come to accept that there was no off ramp for them to use for at least another 100 miles. I'm almost hesitant to post this review because I can just imagine some manager sending an angry but impersonal email telling staff to be cheery or else be assimilated. To be blunt, I've gotten more personal and human service in a...