Tufino Pizzeria — Restaurant in New York

Classic pizzerias, depending on where you live, they can either be a rarity or a “dime a dozen”, especially in New York City, where there’s thousands of pizzerias that clamor for business and strive to impress their customers. Tufino Pizzeria Napoletana does just that: serve high quality food with impeccable service, and it leaves me yearning for more after my first visit.

Located in a highly concentrated pizza area (there’s a handful of them within a few blocks of here), Tufino makes their mark by going for traditional Neapolitan (or Napoletana / Southern Italian) pizzas, with a custom made Italian wood oven (“Di Maria”), leaving their pizzas cooked as soft & palpable as fresh baked bread. The only MTA Subway Station is Astoria-Ditmars Blvd (N/W), 7 minutes away on foot. When entering in, you’ll see a cozy interior overall: plenty of seating, little free space, might be good for intimate times out or a meeting w/ your friends. Wednesday’s, 50% off for some wine bottles, and Thursday dinners usually have live music to brighten the mood. Not too bad if you plan on coming here one day.

Just about all of their food is made by handmade, and their featured pizzas are all baked within their special imported wood burning oven, leaving them soft, without many blemishes (“burn marks”), and enough to feed 2, or a hungry person, being a 12” pizza, or in some pizzerias, a “small” or pizzette size (not sure if they’re available larger). Appetizers range from cheeses & meats, as well as classic buffalo wings. There’s several pizzas, such as “classic” margherita or marinara pies, to their specialties using soppressata, truffle oil & mushrooms, and more. A handful of pastas & salads are also available, as well as desserts, such as ice cream, s’mores calzones, Nutella pizzas. Even several vegan options can be done, such as vegan pastas, Vegan pizzas, and vegan ice cream, as well as vegan friendly “meats” and “cheeses” as extra toppings, as well as GF crusts. Fortunately for vegetarians (myself) & vegans, you're in luck since there's options such as classic margherita, marinara pie, vegetarian pizzas, even vegan cheeses can be added here, the same goes for pasta and calzones. There's also a good lineup of cocktails & wines, as well as beers for those interested. Pricing is modest in regards to what a classic sit down pizzeria has to offer, and with the high quality ingredients & preparation done, it's a worthwhile trade off. The drinks could be a tad more affordable, such as canned sodas being 2,50$ maybe being less?

My first impression of Tufino was pretty nice, and I was looking forward to coming here initially for brunch on a Sunday, but plans changed, so I’ve went on the fly for dinner, and fortunately for me, waiting for a table was nonexistent, and service did take a small while I’ve got adjusted and prepared my photography gear for what’s to come. Decided to opt for classics that evening, and went with crispy mozzarella fritto as my antipasti. After a small while, it came, two mozzarella discs breaded & fried, topped with oregano & parmesan cheese and paired with homemade dip. It was succulent, the cheese was prepared with texture in mind, not “hard”, but still creamy, and still retained its “juice”. Next up was a Margherita Pizza, steaming hot right out of their oven, the crust was soft & manageable with minimal blemishes, the cheese (unique mozzarella) retained its chewiness and was a good balance with the sauce. Ate almost half since I was already full before coming in here to eat, and I was pensive on ordering dessert, but my tank was "F" for that day, time to go home. Chatted with one of the workers (who had his family over, I mean it's Sunday so why not?) for good remarks and left on a high note, pondering what's next to...

Came here for lunch after a long morning; we are from out of town, wanted a Neapolitan style pizza and this spot was the only one open on a Monday. It was empty, but it was 2pm, so that didn't seem super unusual.

We sat down, and ordered two drinks (Strawberry Fields, Old Fashioned), 2 entrees (Sopresata Picante pizza and Truffle gnocchi), and tried to order meatballs ... but they didn't have those "busy weekend" he said (seems they should be a staple, but ok). So we ordered the Bufala & Prosciutto to start instead.

They brought out the appetizer and it was insanely underwhelming; it looked like it was done in one of the neighbors kitchens (super plain plating). Unceremoniously rolled prosciutto between haphazardly sliced buffalo mozzarella, sitting in a soggy lake of olive oil, with two sad pieces of sourdough bread. Not promising. It tasted ok, but for the price we could have easily done this ourselves, and probably made it much better.

Then, the drinks came. The Old Fashioned was very whatever, it was at least drinkable. The Strawberry Fields was so bad, it was almost undrinkable. But hey, maybe that guy wasn't a bartender?? There was only one person working the room.

It was around this time I noticed that one of the chefs, who had left, walked back in with a bag from the grocery store, at which point we heard and saw them begin prepping our food. Interesting.

When the main entrees arrived, it was the same incredibly underwhelming presentation. As we were ordering, the waiter asked if we would like chicken added (he recommended it), which looked to be frozen and reheated, and was sliced just sitting on top of a bowl of pasta slop. The taste was good, but reminded us of frozen pasta from Trade Joes. The pizza, which clearly listed basil, had none at all. The garlic wasn't noticeable. At the end of the day, it was just an incredibly overpriced pepperoni pizza.

We ate, and quickly left. It ended up being one of our most expensive meals, and by far the most disappointing. For all the food offerings on Ditmars, I think you could do much better elsewhere.

As a response to the owner: We weren’t expecting fine dining, but at the price point just expecting a better food / drink experience. It truly was just a plate with some cheese and meat unceremoniously placed in olive oil. Also kinda would have appreciated the pizza I ordered to have been prepared as advertised. I haven’t ever had an Old Fashioned with that many ice cubes, and I haven’t ever tasted a drink that resembles nail polish remover like that Strawberry Fields did. Might have been an off day for you guys, super disappointed our experience definitely did not resemble the pictures others provided of their meals. And I appreciate your sourcing of...

I have been going to Tufino for years and always spoke highly about it until now. I always dine in with friends and family, recommend it, the food and service is great in the restaurant. I decided to order for delivery since I was working, so I called because to order online you need to spend a min. $25. The girl who answered has to be new because of the way she spoke. I ordered a Caesar salad with chicken and asked for the dressing on the side. The girl kept making me repeat myself and asked if my address was in Astoria and things like that, that I had to confirm with her multiple times and I was being clear.

Anyways, she didn’t tell me the total and I did not ask because I’m thinking she just understood that I only ordered a salad. Until she said it would take over an hour for it to come and hung up on me which I thought was weird. When the delivery guy comes he has a salad and a whole box of chicken parm so I paid over $60 for a $20 order.

I immediately called them and a different girl answers and says that she has to call the manager because he wasn’t there. I took the food inside and left it on the counter, didn’t get a call back so I called again and she said that the rule the manager has is “in order to get a refund, the food has to be untouched and brought back to the restaurant”. The girl on the phone kept asking if the food was eaten or touched, because if it is, I would not get the refund.

Now the fact that they want the food back is disgusting because not only was it their mistake but what are you going to do with it after hours?? At this point 2 hours had passed so I let her know I wanted to speak to the manager. She gave him my number, never got a call. So I called her again and said I had to leave because I was done with work. I decided to just give the food back because I only wanted a refund.

She proceeds to say she’ll send a delivery guy to pick it up which was going to take long and I didn’t have time to wait so she told me to leave the food outside, in front of the house. My jaw dropped because she expected me to let the food sit in the snow. So I had to drop the food off, when I got there, she laughed at my face as if it was a joke.

Now I worked at a restaurant and when the same thing happened, we just told them to keep the food and give them a refund. That’s the thing that really made me write this review and not because I wanted the food but because it is genuinely gross to ask for food back and all I wanted was a refund. I hope that food didn’t go to waste but I’m still waiting...