CIBO Rustico Pizzeria — Restaurant in Santa Rosa

We happened on Cibo Rustico Pizzeria purely by accident but believe me, we were happy we did. We were celebrating my brother's birthday and running into long waits and inadequate seating for our large group, when we noticed this sweet little place. We went in and right there, front and center, we saw a large trestle table that would accomodate our crowd of crazies.

We sat down and were immediately made to feel at home with the proprieter greeting us and making recommendations. The menu here is simple - rustic - as it says in the name. You won't find a "stack everything and it's brother on a sauce soaked lump of dough" pizza here. (Thank HEAVEN!!)

The pizzas are deliciously and deceptively simple - beautiful fresh ingredients. We several ordered varieties and then just kept ordering more as our hungry crowd kept finishing off what we had. They kept them coming out, hot and delicious and we all ate more than our fill!

The service was excellent, the owner made us feel welcome and comfortable. The restaurant was clean and modern but it felt homey and informal - perfect for our group! Truly one of the most enjoyable 'large party' meals I have ever had in a restaurant.

You might have gathered from my comments above that I am not a big fan of corporate factory produced pizza - but this was so vastly different - it made me love Pizza again! This place is (unfortunately) about an hour's drive from our house but I can't wait to go back. I can't believe I would consider driving that far for a pizza - but I am not only considering it - I am...

Food was good but not great, 4/5. Pizza took longer than expected (compared to other non-chain Italian restaurants who served a bit better pizza). Our server was polite but we regularly felt like we were being rushed, and this was odd since less than half of the tables were occupied. If she was worried about reservations that would come later, there would be seats available. 1st instance of being asked if we were done, my kids and husband were still obviously eating. 2nd instance I understand as my daughter, who was not yet done, needed to take a restroom break and was not at her seat at that point. My daughter comes back from the restroom, said she wanted to pack her food, so we started to add her leftover meatballs to one box and in the process, our server again asks for the 3rd time if we were done. My daughter had several pieces of ravioli on her plate that she wanted to pack for home too, but before we could respond, our server took the plate already. I did not say anything anymore at this point since the server seemed pretty determined to move us along. Decor and ambience was nice, but that sense of being rushed was just overpowering, considering we had not bugged her for the pizza prep taking longer than expected, and no, I am not comparing the pizza prep time to pizza fastfood chains but to Italian restaurants...

I didn't have a good experience here. Really exspensive for the quality and quantity that was given. Mushroom raviolis were underwater. Sausage mushroom pizza, I found to be flavorless. The Margarita pizza's cheese wasn't very good pizza cheese -I really like cheese but I stopped eating this margarita after a while -this is not normal for me -like, it wasn't gooey, it didn't stay on the crust well, I think it quickly got cold and hard? Bathroom: stuff falling of the wall, one toilet clogged, one urinal with a trashbag around it (I want to say the second urinal had a sign saying it didn't work). Service: (With food reviews, I care more about the food than being waited on -but it seemed note worthy), no one checked on us the whole time, after we had been done for a while I tried to get the attention of one employee looking at me, no luck. Eventually I get the attention on a different employee who acknowledges me but then went back to doing something else. This has been my worst experience at a restaurant for a long while. Our table was going to ask to take the ravioli off our bill (since it was barely touched) but no one came by so we just left cash on the table and left. What also feels lame, is our group went to another restaurant to eat -so we ended up spending more money than we would have liked...