Osteria Peppino Pizzeria — Restaurant in Topsfield

Update July 7, 2019:

They used to close just on Monday. I wanted a slice and drove by today, Sunday, to see that now they’re also closed Sundays. How successful can business be if you’re down to five days a week?

In short:

Good, NOT great, pizza. Terrible and inconvenient hours. Located out in nowhere.

I hope that when they close they leave the oven so someone else can do better.

End of Update

This place has real potential but it's not there yet. The pizza is very good, at least the plain slice I had was. Haven't tasted any with toppings, so I can't comment about ingredient quality. But I can definitely, positively and loudly advise this:

SKIP THE SUBS HERE!

After they told me that all the subscwere cold, I ordered the prosciutto and mozzarella sub, hoping that maybe it would at least be warmed up. No it wasn't. But more disappointing, it was nothing but slices of prosciutto and mozzarella on a very cheap-tasting sub roll. Yes, I know what I ordered. But by nothing more I mean zero. No mayo, no tomato, no nothing. This made it as dry and enjoyable to eat as parchment paper.

And this pleasurable dining experience cost $10. At most, it should be priced at $6.50. But $10 is grossly overpriced, especially for such an awful sandwich that cost them $2.50 to make. I told the old gentleman who is the restaurant's namesake that it was bone dry and he said "Why didn't you tell me?"

How could I have known his idea of a sub was modeled after the Mojave Desert? And isn't it his job to know how to prepare food that tastes good? The worst thing a restaurant can do is to make a dish that I could have done better at home. Here was a classic example.

Like I said, lots of potential here. But there are growing pains. Maybe the steak tips taste sensational. I hear the ziti is very good. But I'm placing my bets...

I was very excited that this place finally opened - It's high time for a real, quality, italian brick-oven pizzeria here in Topsfield

Unfortunately, I was very disappointed in the two pizzas I received. The dough and crust were both good, but the toppings were not; they seemed very cheap and were sparsely distributed on each pizza (including the cheese, which was surprising). Frankly, the toppings and sauce were low quality and the cheese could easily have been straight out of a $1.99 bag of mozzarella from Market Basket. Plainly put, I could have made a better pizza in my own home, without a brick oven. In fact, and I shudder as I say this, I've had much better DiGiorno pizzas from the frozen food aisle.

Food aside, I hope they're working on finding a more efficient workflow to handle volume - it seems they didn't have a plan in place before/during launch. When I arrived and ordered two pizzas I was told there would be a 45 minute wait, which was shocking. The food simply isn't good enough to wait that long.

I certainly don't want to continue buying pizza from THOP and Alex's, both of which have become so complacent and comfortable in their sub-shop duopoly that they're no longer palatable, but it's almost as if Osteria Peppino didn't check the competition in order to know where the bar was set for food quality; You can easily get a much better pizza at the 466 or even the Riverview in Ipswich

I hope they take this feedback to heart and work on the quality of their product; the menu is too small and the price is too high for the pizza to not be amazing. There are some great people working here and I'd love to see them succeed, but they need to work out their operational challenges and deliver a quality product in...

My experience yesterday: A Plus! A friend and I were on an all-day bike ride of 60-plus miles, and at about mile 26 his crank cracked, broke off completely, meaning NO pedaling possible. We had noticed Osteria Peppino Pizzeria on our right as we cycled a back road. So we walked back, came into their lot, and immediately Mike came out. "You guys OK?" he asked. My cycling buddy showed Mike the mechanical failure, and Mike said, "I have a pickup truck. You can put your bikes into my truck and I'll drive you both to where you need to be. But why don't you have lunch first." Well, we were amazed at Mike's generosity! We split a yummy and fresh Italian sub served by their delightful waitress who has a lovely Polish accent. We came up with a very do-able "battle plan" regarding our biking "issue," and while eating our sub we saw the most amazing-looking pizza go by. My buddy immediately said with a smile, "I'm taking my wife here for dinner soon!" Mike then drove us 3 miles down the road to the rail trail, my buddy waited by the river while I cycled back to my car in Peabody at the start of the trail, and within an hour I was back to pick him up - with his broken bike. This was a day full of adventure, and we thank Mike and all at Osteria Peppino Pizzeria for these happy memories. Such kindness, generosity, and...