Papa Gino's — Restaurant in Plastow

I always go to Papa Gino's at least once when I visit from Los Angeles for my favorite pizza, the rustic, but this wasn't the best visit.

I called to make an order for pickup, a rustic works, a rustic with hamburger/olives/mushrooms, and 3 garden salads with 1 balsamic dressing, 1 Greek, and 1 Caesar dressing, 2 salads with steak and 1 with chicken on the side. It was a 20min 8 mile drive to the restaurant to pickup the order then 20min home. I didn't check the order when I picked it up but when I got home it was wrong. Neither of the pizzas were rustic and one of the salads was a Caesar. Normally I wouldn't care but I paid extra for the rustic pizzas and tipped $20 on the $100 order.

I called about the order being wrong but wasn't really replied with any resolution so I just said I would bring the pizzas in for rustic please. I drove another 20min 8 miles there to get the rustic's and was hoping for some other sort of compensation for the mistake on their part but wasn't offered anything. All in all it was 80min, 32 miles, and $120+ dollars to finally get my order correct. I hate to complain because the worker was nice, but the service was not great. This location also looked very old and dated, I'm 39 and have been going to Papa Gino's since I was a kid and the decor looked the same from the 90's.

Maybe it was just this location, next time I'll try a different location, the pizza was OK when I finally got the correct order, but it was also very soggy and wet in the middle and there weren't that many toppings on it. The garden salads were ok but the Caesar salad was about half spoiled romaine leaves and just got thrown out. The add on steak was very low quality small pieces of shredded beef and the grilled chicken was tiny little dry pieces, neither were worth the add on up charge.

Next time I'm going to try a different location and only order the rustic pizzas, the salads and toppings were very low quality and not worth the...

Same issue and then some as an another person complained about in their recent review. Almost no sauce on the pizza. Dry as can be. Now they’re seriously skimping on the cheese, too. Sometimes the crust is thin, sometimes it’s thick. Have to say well done for it to even be cooked and always have to check the pizza before leaving the store. SAME ISSUES EVERY SINGLE TIME WE ORDER for quite awhile now. Doesn’t matter how many notes you leave on the order, they don’t listen. It shouldn’t be this hard to get a good, traditional Papa Gino’s pizza, especially at these outrageous prices! The only reason we still order from here is because it’s next to impossible to find an authentic Italian style pizza in this area so we just keep hoping it will get better. I’m honestly shocked that this location is still open. It’s been going on for so long and so consistently bad that poor management is the only logical explanation. Done throwing money away here and giving chance after chance. Literally better off with frozen pizza at a fraction of the cost.

**EDIT to add that we gave it one more shot hoping it would be better since there was a response to my previous review. Nope! It was even worse this time despite my notes on the order to please make sure there was an adequate amount of sauce, cheese, with a well done, thin crust. Everything was the opposite of what we asked for. It’s very apparent that reviews are not taken seriously and the responses to them are...

So unless I order extra large pizza’s with extra sauce, the pizza doesn’t have enough sauce and is dry on top. Ruining the traditional Papa Gino’s flavor I’ve always enjoyed when it’s prepared properly. Why are they skimping the sauce and ruining the Pizza? I don’t know but at that price I expect it perfect every time. I shouldn’t have to order extra sauce to make it enjoyable are these inexperienced kids preparing? or were they trained to apply sauce with too small of a measuring cup? I don’t Know but it’s frustrating.. I just bought one of the proposed “Deals” 2 extra large cheese pizza’s that costed $32 and both pizzas were Dry and under sauced in preparation, ruined both cooked until dry on top all because I couldn’t and shouldn’t have to order them with Extra Sauce! What’s going on? Your ruining the pizza by Not preparing it with enough sauce and I’m Not in a hurry to spend $32 on anything I don’t thoroughly enjoy. Get it Together Stop Skimping...