Pizza 51 South — Restaurant in Olathe

I cannot express how STOKED I was to see a Pizza 51 location opening up in downtown Olathe, an area completely devoid of dining options. I had been to the UMKC location several times (over a decade ago), loved it, and had been meaning to revisit for years.

I stopped by at 7pm the Saturday of opening week, and was relieved there wasn't a line out the door. The location is on brand — either an old service station tastefully refurbished in a modern style, or a good facsimile of one. There is plenty of parking, indoor, and covered outdoor seating.

I would say by virtue of the atmosphere alone, aided by the age old adage "there's no such thing as bad s** or pizza", this place (or the original) is definitely worth a visit, but unfortunately my pizza slice was...disappointing.

The slices are HUGE and reasonably priced (5 topping is 7.99), but I think mine was very under baked. The entire crust was a pale white color, floppy (more like a thin pita texture), & doughey in the middle of the crust. The slices were also cut into tiny squares, and even the smallest ones were too floppy to pick up, and the toppings just slid off. It just tasted like a cheap, pre-made slice shaped dough — on areas where the toppings fell off, even with the tomato sauce, there was 0 flavor whatsoever.

Hopefully this was just this new location working out the opening week kinks and getting a feel for their equipment, but at this point I would HIGHLY recommend going to either Buffalo State location for a much better slice of pizza at a similar price point. Their speciality slices are much more interesting and have a beautifully toasted crust.

Again, great atmosphere, a delicious White sangria, and the right prices, but the quality of the pizza is not what I remember. I'll have to revisit the...

The girl working the front was wonderful. She enthusiastically greeted us when we entered, explained the menu, made recommendations, etc. My husband and I ordered the garlic cheese bread sticks, a calzone, and an italian sub. The bread sticks were very mediocre. The bread itself was bland and flavorless. The garlic and cheese were spread on the top of the sticks before baking, but the flavor wasn’t consistent throughout each bite. We didn’t finish eating them and honestly wouldn’t waste money on them again. His calzone was tasty and we would absolutely get this again. However, the sub was also very mediocre. They diced the vegetables instead of slicing them, so each bite I took, the tomatoes and onion were falling out. It was also supposed to come with a pickle spear but I never got one. As I was waiting for the food and eating, I was observing the staff. There was a gentleman interacting with customers and helping clear tables. He was the only one not wearing a uniform so I wondered if he was maybe an owner or manager of some sort? He interacted with every table, offered to clear some of their trays, and seemed pleasant. Despite walking by us many times, he never once said anything to us, nor did the girl who brought us our food. It’s unfortunate that it immediately made me wonder if it was racially motivated, considering we were the only non-white people in the room. I felt highly uncomfortable and left feeling extremely disappointed with the entire visit. We decided we would give them one more chance, and order pizza next time, but overall it didn’t give a good...

We love pizza 51 by UMKC so we were really excited to have one right down the street from us but I wouldn’t come to this location for a long time after our experience today. We waited over an hour for our food and had to ask them about it. They treated us like we were annoying them when they are the ones that messed up. This was the worst experience and pizza we have had at pizza 51. I’ll update my review if we decide to go back to this location and if we have a better experience.

Updating my review because of the businesses response: no one came to our table and rectified the situation. Our order was either put in as to go or put in a to go box by the cooks. When we got the pizza it was barely warm and had been sitting for some time. They did offer to heat it up but with two very hungry kids at this point we wanted to just eat and leave. I’m not sure how you can say our concerns were addressed more than once when we had to ask the girl for our order and no one came to talk to us after that. The manager certainly did not get involved. We were perfectly fine with waiting and it’s why we didn’t ask sooner but once we realized people were getting their orders who came in way after us we knew we had to ask. The problem is we waited way longer than we should have, it was mediocre at that point because it had been sitting, we wouldn’t have even gotten our order if we did not ask about it (because it was put in a to go box instead of dine in), and they definitely acted annoyed that we were asking...