Mama Mia's — Restaurant in Town of Geneseo

I had two experiences with Mama Mia's this past week, once in-store meeting with friends from high school for lunch, and once ordering delivery for dinner.

This is a locally-owned pizza place on a college town's Main Street. It's been an institution here for a number of years. Set your expectations accordingly and don't expect gourmet-quality pizza. College students have to afford their food too, after all.

The pizza is pretty good for what it is, though. It's thin crust, but not overly crunchy - whatever regional "style" that kind of pizza happens to be classified as. For dine-in, single slices of pizza are pretty large, so you do get your money's worth of pizza. For dine-in, you also get to enjoy music from the best decade - the '80's, naturally.

Delivery is reasonably prompt, but if you get a dial tone when calling, just keep trying. They don't have a modern multi-line phone system so phone orders are taken one at at a time. My only complaint with the delivery order is that they brought the wrong size of soda. The fries have that overly crispy batter on the outside too, but I've come to expect that from most any pizza place that offers fryer food.

An added bonus? They haven't partnered with Slice, or one of the major gig-delivery services that force you to use a card to order and tack on delivery fees. You can order over the phone and pay with cash when the driver arrives with your pizza - and there's something refreshingly nostalgic about that.

For reasonably good and reasonably affordable pizza, it helps to go where the college students go - and Mama Mia's has been that place in...

I've had a couple bad experiences with Mama Mia's, but this last one tops it.

Ordered a pizza and 2 liter, was told 40 minutes for delivery. Came 1 hour and 10 minutes later. The delivery kid couldn't find the apartment. He called and I told him the address. He then rang my doorbell. I opened the door, waiting for him to ascend the stairs with my pizza.

Nothing. 5 minutes go by and he calls again. "So it's apartment 9?" Me: "Yes." "Uh do you want me to bring it up?" Me: "Yes."

I guess it's a lot these days to ask the delivery boy to actually deliver the pizza. He did bring it up eventually but dropped the 2 liter, essentially ruining it. I tipped him when I ordered over the phone (big mistake). This young college student who can't carry a medium pizza and 2 liter simultaneously will probably end up doing some poor soul's taxes.

The pizza itself was poor bordering on inedible (Mia's is very inconsistent) and there was some hard/crunchy gristle in it (this has also happened once before). This cost me $24.00.

For 1/3rd of the price you could get a Little Caesar's pizza, which is similar if not better. If however, you are trapped in Geneseo, you will have to make due with the substandard restaurants and incompetent college kids that run them if you want a pizza. Save your money,...

I went to Mama Mia's for a large pie the other night only to open the box to add toppings and lay eyes upon an eight legged creature of some sort casually crawling alongside my pizza crust. Out of shock I improperly exclaim to the employee behind the counter that the spider (when it really fell out of the box) flew out of the box only to get the smart-mouthed response that "Well, spiders don't fly."

In my mind: "Why excuse me sir! Whether or not the creature flew, it was still creeping around my food (and who knows if the thing laid eggs...the nerve" .

The smart-mouthed employee's outward response: "We could heat the pizza in a 600 degree oven or give you a new pie"

And so, I waltzed out of Mama Mia's the other night with an extra large pie for my distemper and a renewed sense of judgment of where really to go to get my appetite's worth in pizza.

P.S. The pie was considerably burnt on the bottom. Oh, NYC pizza how I...