Apollo Pizza & Beer Emporium — Restaurant in Richmond

I've enjoyed the second street location every time I'm in Richmond for years now. I've never experienced anything but exceptional food and sincerely kind service, but today they went above and beyond. I'd had a few adult beverages at a lovely beer garden in Lexington. My wife was driving us back to Richmond and we both felt the pizza itch coming on. She suggested I call ahead. I googled, but it my excited state, I fingered my phone too quickly, passing the number for the second street location and called their second location in Richmond. The girl on the phone was personable and professional; she even affirmed my bias that pineapple on pizza is perfectly civilized. I felt confident that dinner would be an event for myself, my wife and my parents.

When we arrived, I inquired about our order, giving my full name. The employees were extremely polite. They seemed uncertain when I inquired about an order for pick up; still they asked the details of our order before assuming the fault lay with me. When that fact became obvious, they included the solution to our problem in the same sentence in which the problem was stated. I had called the wrong location, I was intoxicated and still they took on the loss and spared my pride. To me this indicates good policy established by management and made clear to front line employees. No confusion, no wasted time.

A fresh pizza to our exact specifications took 8 minutes at most, half the time it took me to finish one of their excellent drafts and tap out this review. I tipped through the nose, and so should you if you are ever lucky enough to enjoy an evening at this excellent...

I don’t know if this was a one time deal of terrible customer service, but we definitely felt uncomfortable. My husband and I just moved to Richmond. Our family was helping us move and we all decided to eat at Apollo pizza on S second street. From the moment we walked in until we left, the service was terrible! We walked around trying to find seating, and right before we was about to leave because we didn’t see anything available, a guy pointed us to the back outside patio area where they had outside heaters. After 20 minutes, my husband had to go find a waitress to take our order. (It was not crowded) We got our drinks and food ordered, finally; received 2 out of 5 drinks; waited another 15 minutes outside before they told us the drink dispensers was broken. 10 or so minutes later we received the other 3 drinks. Then again, we waited another 15 minutes before my husband then asked for us to be seated inside if a table was available because it was so cold outside (45°) Thankfully there was. We walk to our table that our waitress pointed us to, then the table next to ours made a fuss because we was apparently “too close” to them. Another waitress started complaining as well to our waitress that we moved seating... The outdoor heaters was okay but we was still freezing. We all got up and left as the staff wasn’t very inviting and the one waitress who noticeably made it a point that we heard her complain about us switching tables, that our waitress said was okay. We will never go back to...

First off, let me preface this by letting you know that we are from Chicago. We are insane about our pizza. Not that deep-dish, tourist pizza, but REAL Chicago Pizza. The thin crust, party cut, tavern style pizza. When we moved to Kentucky a year ago and my neighbor recommended Pizza Hut, I knew we were in serious trouble. We had tried just about everything and none of it was good. I started begging friends and family to bring pizza with them when they visited, just to get a fix. But that all changed the day we walked into Apollo Pizza. The pizza gods were shining down on me that day. We just moved to Richmond and had no food in the house and thought "why not?" I certainly wasn't expecting much. But when we walked in, it LOOKED like a Chicago pizza place and it smelled wonderful. We had ordered two thin-crust pizzas to go. When we got them home and opened the boxes ... THEY WERE PARTY CUT (little squares)!! Ok, ok...but how does it taste? IT IS AMAZING. I almost cried. I. Almost. Cried. It reminded me of a Barraco's or Vito & Nick's pizza from back home - arguably the best pizza in Chicago (don't @ me). Apollo, please don't ever close. We've already been to your establishment four times, twice in the last seven days. You have single-handedly saved pizza in Kentucky. And our little family will be your biggest...