Vito's Pizza — Restaurant in Santa Monica

Look, if there is one thing that is hard to mess up it's pizza. I did a reddit search for pizza in Venice Beach area and a number of names came up as recommended for good pizza. This is how I found Vito's. With high expectations I dismissed the people who said that there is no good pizza in LA, as I scrolled through Vito's menu I saw pictures of a meat pizza with meatballs, pepperoni and salami. This is exactly what I love about pizza. They also had cannoli which is my favorite dessert. Quick press of the button and door dash was on the way. The pizza. Was just not great. First off there were no meatballs instead it was like a meat crumble saucey weird mess. The "meatballs" was like someone and strained out the meat from spaghetti sauce and slapped it on a pizza. The flavor was ok, but it definitely was not meatballs. The other ingredients were ok, but not anything special. Next issue was the crust.. This crust ran a gambit from being so soggy in the middle it couldn't hold the slice up, to being rock hard at the edges and nearly impossible to chew. A good crust should hold up under the pizza but not be so hard at the edges that you're afraid of breaking a tooth. Next came the cannoli, first the good, they didn't try and gussy it up with a bunch of extra stuff, on the other hand the filling tasted a little sour like it was about to go bad, and the shell was over cooked and somehow both crispy, and stale. Overall it was fine for a one time dinner but I would not order from them again maybe it's fine for LA but I promise you guys pizza gets so much...

The first and likely my last visit to this place. My wife and had our nieces and nephews with us. We had heard the pizza was some of the best thin crust in the area. So we decided to give it a try.

All plates, utensils and water is self service, which totally makes sense at this place. It’s casual and makes it easier for everyone. But in this evening they seemed to have an issue refilling forks.

Spaghetti was delivered for the kids and a salad for us. But we had nothing to eat our food with. Several of the staff said they were washing them. But 10 mins later there were still no forks. It’s strange enough not to have clean utensils for your customers. But the reaction was one staff member was more off putting. She acted like it was no big deal and that we should wait while they were washing them. Meanwhile she could’ve washed a handful of them herself as she washing glasses. This is the type of attitude that can really destroy an evening for customers.

Some of the other reviews talked about the poor service and I understand what they meant. For the cost of the food, service can’t be this bad. It’s too bad, the pizza...

The pizza looks like NJ pie but falls well short on the taste. If you are from the NJ, NY, or CT you will probably be disappointed. We had a pepperoni pizza that looked beautiful but after we both took our first excited bite we could tell by the look on each others faces we were both majorly disappointed. I would rate this as the worst pizza I have ever tasted. We even "dissected" the pizza, tasting the cheese first (it was flat and nearly tasteless), then the sauce (tasted like salted tomato juice), next the crust (good texture and crispiness to doughiness ratio but it just didn't taste good, it was an odd flavor), and finally the pepperoni (it had good flavor, the only redeeming quality). We both ate two slices because it wasn't cheap and we were hoping it would grow on us. Ultimately, we left half the pizza behind, declining to box it and take home. Even 30 minutes later we could still taste the odd flavor from the crust lingering. Normally we travel to La Monica's in Westwood or Village Pizza in Larchmont but figured we would try something closer but unfortunately this was not worth the time...