L'Antica Pizzeria — Restaurant in Santa Barbara

My husband is a chef originally from New York so we were super excited to try this place out. The menu looked great and the location DT is perfect since we live just a few blocks away. While the food was alright, similar in style and flavor to Bettina and Olio but not quite as good. A little under cooked (yes I know that it is Naples style but it was still too underdone) and under seasoned. The pizza dough would be great if it was cooked just a little more. The ingredients are clearly high quality and fresh. The Caesar salad was my favorite. The part that will probably keep us from going again was the hospitality. The real sense that we were a bother being there. We order a salad, 2 pizzas, a pasta AND a burger so it’s not like we were taking up a table splitting an appetizer. Any small request we made (more cheese, water refill etc) was met with a huff and an eye roll. We asked if there could possibly not be basil on one of the pizzas and were told no. Without even asking the chef. I can understand if we were completely creating our own pizza, or it was super busy night, but this was a slow lunch and we were simply asking to not put some thing on, not change the entire integrity of the pizza. I can’t imagine going there with any type of allergy and having them be so inflexible. It ended up being $150 lunch that I would be willing to pay for again if we...

My wife and I stopped here hoping to find some better pizza on this side of the country. Prices are a bit steep for the portions and quality on offer (even considering this is Santa Barbara.) Service was friendly and atmosphere was nice. Loved the Shirley Temple!

We had a Margherita pizza and Cacio e Pepe. The pizza was undercooked even for Neopolitan style, and Basil was extremely sparse. I’ve lived in New Haven and have had some of the best Neopolitan pizza in our great country, so I do think that the temps of the oven or cook time needs adjusted. The size of the pies are also inconsistent, as we noticed ours was a decent bit smaller than our neighbors (our waiter even commented on it.) The pizza is served on these plastic trays that are an accident waiting to happen. They slide around and seem cheap compared the rest of the utensils and plates/bowls. The pasta tasted excellent, but the portion was disappointing for the price for something that consists of four ingredients. I hope the pasta was made in house at least. It has a great al dente bite and authentic flavor.

We probably won’t stop by again this year, there’s better pizza and pasta to be found nearby. Hope it’s a little better next...

My partner and I visited on a Saturday night at 7pm, and had an interesting experience. The restaurant wasn’t super busy, and the reservation process on open table was easy. We got the diavola pizza and the bolognese -- the flavor of the pizza was great, and the bolognese was okay, I felt like the flavors could’ve been bolder. The strangest part of our experience was the service. The staff didn’t have a very welcoming attitude, it felt very mechanical. The host asked for the name, sat us, and left. Our server took awhile to drop waters, even walking back and forth past our table a couple times without acknowledgement. He then took our order, two other staff members dropped our food, and by the time we were over halfway done, was the first time he checked on us. After we finished eating, we had to ask for the check three separate times. At this point the restaurant was slow, and our server would walk past our table looking for things to do, while we just sat there awkwardly, waiting for our check. Hospitality is a big factor in what makes or break a restaurant and this place just...