Lovers Pizzeria — Restaurant in San Antonio

Update: My review, as well as many others under 3 stars that were respectful and truthful had their upvotes removed by Lovers Pizzeria admins.

Let me start off by stating something that might skew this review: I was a native New Yorker (Brooklyn, Long Island, Manhattan, Queens) for over 40 years until moving to San Antonio 3 years ago. I've had DiFara's Pizza in Flushing, Patsy's in Harlem, Grimaldi's by the Brooklyn Bridge, Bleecker Street Pizza by, well, 7th, Bleecker-ish, & Christopher near the 1 Train station, Totonno's on Coney Island, Pepe's in New Haven, CT., and even Lombardi's, which is meh.

Lovers Pizzeria is not as good as any of these. It's great for pizza in San Antonio, but where it fails is that the owners never have enough dough to last more than 1 hour's worth of customers. Also, they don't use what all of the great NYC/New England pizzerias use, which is an imported Italian coal-fired oven, so they take a long time to make the pies. Because they have issues with handling a lot of customers, the pies often have some burnt cheese because they're left in the convection oven too long, and subsequent orders take too long in the queue then have to bake in the oven for 15-30 minutes, which in pizza-terms, is a friggin eternity. The pizza comes out with burnt cheese (fresh mozarella should be creamy white, not like burnt shredded cheese on DiGiorno done wrong, which is what my Lovers pizzas looked like), the crust comes out with too much char (a little char is great, almost the entire crust being charred is not), and the sauce was slightly dried like a gummy paste.

Now, the overall flavor is decent, but if you factor in the low supply, horrible wait times, the fact that it's only open 2-3 days per week (now only 2, I believe), they still don't have nearly enough inventory, the place is smaller than a NYC Halal Guys Food Cart, AND the pizza is considered just "OK" compared to NYC pizza, I can't really say it's worth it. Instead of pitching a tent for hours, which most working people with lives can't do, overall, you would save more time and money booking a trip to NYC, stocking up on amazing pizza over there, finding a way to fit it all in your suitcases, sticking it in your freezer, and, there you go!

Main Street Pizza, which is close to Lovers Pizza, actually has awesome NY-style regular cheesy pizza. Grimaldi's, the pizza chain based off of the original Brooklyn, NY location, is also really good and better than Lovers, considering the wait time is about 700 hours less to get a single pizza.

My take is this: If you have no job, or are a kid on summer vacation and have cash/credit on hand, but, for some weird reason, you specifically do not want to travel to see New York or New England and enjoy better pizza, you could spend a lot of time camping for something that is maybe a quarter as good as an average New York Pizza from a hole-in-the-wall joint in Penn Station. Now, this score I give them will go up if the owners figure out from their "studying" of NY-based pizzerias on how to actually manage their inventory and supplies and customers (If they learn to answer phones or online forms to take orders that they actually can fulfill, that would be a start, though I fear they might be about ten years off from adopting that, but I have faith in them!). If they can get that process going, the burnt cheese, over-charred crust, and overcooked, dried out marinara sauce will also probably go away. But, as things stand, if they opened up this place in NY with the same operations and logistics they currently have, they would have gone out of business within 5 minutes from first opening, especially because of the hard fact that the pizza is JUST OK, but not great.

For Texas, it's aight, but for the logistics issues and equipment limitations, it's really just not that good. I'm sorry, but if you've been outside of San Antonio, you'll understand. If you're from San Antonio and you love it, I'm happy for you. But holy mole-y, if you ever try NY pizza, it would feel like you met God...

Absolutely Not Worth the Hype – A Salty, Greasy, Overpriced Disaster

As someone who’s lived in St. Louis and has tasted pizza greatness in Chicago and New York—the cities that actually know pizza—this San Antonio spot was an utter disappointment. The 2.5 hour wait time? Absurd. That’s not anticipation; that’s punishment.

By the time the pizza finally arrived, I was hoping it would be worth even half the wait. Spoiler: it wasn’t. I ordered the poblano pizza, and if someone hadn’t told me what it was, I would’ve guessed it was just a salty grease slab with maybe a vague memory of vegetables. The flavors everyone raves about? I must’ve missed the memo, because all I got was a mouthful of salt and oil.

To make matters worse, I ordered one pizza. The person who ordered right behind me? They got three pizzas—and somehow received all of theirs before I got mine. So not only is the wait outrageous, but apparently orders aren’t even made in the order they’re placed. Incredible system.

And let’s talk price. I’ve eaten dollar slices on the streets of NYC that put this overhyped mess to shame. Not only was this pizza wildly overpriced, but they had the audacity to charge extra for a tiny side of house-made ranch that was just… meh. Honestly, Hidden Valley would’ve done a better job.

Bottom line: this might be “the best pizza in San Antonio,” but that’s a pretty low bar if this is what’s passing as top-tier. I would literally rather eat Papa John’s. At least they’re not trying to pretend they’re serving you a culinary masterpiece when they hand you a grease-soaked disappointment....

Operationally, this place is a mess! Arrived at 2:45pm and there was a line outside- it was 97 degrees with no shade. I did expect a line because of all the hype surrounding this place, but I did not expect to wait over two hours for one pepperoni pizza. I was told I would receive a text in 45 mins to an hour. I never received a text so headed back inside after 1:10 mins without receiving a text. (There was already a sign that said SOLD OUT) I was told 10 more mins but didn’t receive the pizza until 20 mins went by. Not a great start!

The pizza looked good- saucy and rich with cheese and pepperoni, crust was cooked well. The first bite was extremely salty so I removed the pepperoni to get a respite. The pizza is good but not blow-your-mind, Disney World wait-time great. It is mid at best!

Frankly, we live in a digital world that would alleviate the wait time and operational issues. Selling out in an hour an half while posting 3pm-9pm hours is just unacceptable. Having customers wait outside in extreme heat is outrageous when there are order-ahead capabilities. If supply is an issue then change your hours to 3pm to Sold Out. It is unfair to customers who may show up at 7pm looking for dinner to find out they are closed.

Honestly, in the time that we ordered the pizza, and were supposed to receive it, we went to Barbara down the street. We had a pizza and a bottle of Prosecco while waiting because we wanted to do a side by side review. Comparatively, Barbaro’s pizza edges out Lovers and the customer experience is head and...