Review: Taste of Italy Pizza

I should have checked my horoscope, tweaked my Feng Shui, dusted off my lucky rabbit’s foot, left the horse shoe in the back of the car, picked up that penny from the sidewalk and channeled the lucky number seven. But, I didn’t.

I visited  hoping to score another neighborhood winner. The menu offers a large selection of Italian dishes including the classics—antipasto, fried calamari, Insalate and pizzas, New York style both round and thin. They offer strombolis and calzones as well as hot subs (grinders) and cold subs. The chef’s specialties included much-loved dishes like ravioli, gnocchi, Alfredo, tortellini, lasagna, baked ziti, manicotti, eggplant parmigiana (chicken and veal) and stuffed shells.

The choices were all so tempting, and I selected the Caesar salad ($3.50) and one of the Chef’s specialties—the Spaghetti with Clam Sauce ($9.95).

The entrée was described as sautéed clams over spaghetti. Fair enough. Done right, it could be a simple, yet elegant meal.

I was served a heaping bowl of spaghetti atop a watery, tasteless reservoir of clam juice with near microscopic mollusks. One bite confirmed that chilly inkling that I made the wrong choice. I asked the nice, young man behind the counter for some marina sauce, you know, to “doctor up” this dish going bad quickly. He obliged me, and as I returned to my booth for another stab at the bowl of pasta, I reached for the shaker of grated cheese and pepper flakes. A couple of shakes of cheese—good. One shake of the pepper flakes and PLOP the top of the shaker, and the contents spilled onto my pasta, over the table, onto the floor and some up my nose.

I had to ask the staff twice to be rescued from the disaster before they caught the significance of what happened. Between gasps of breaths, and burning eyes, the mess was eventually cleaned up. Now, it wasn’t their fault that some prankster unscrewed the top of the pepper flakes. They didn’t lose any points there, but wait, there’s more.

New York Style Pizza Redux

Slightly more composed, I continued my Taste of Italy Pizza experience by ordering a slice ($2.50) of the “this better be good” New York Style sausage pizza.

When will I learn to quit while I’m ahead? Could it be that I’m an eternal optimist?

The crust was thin and crispy and nicely bubbled along the edges, but there was an imperceptible quantity of red sauce on the dough, and it was topped with a cheese that was uncharacteristically chalky and bland. The gray circles of Italian sausage dotting the slice tasted like one-part meat, three-parts filler with a few fennel seeds thrown in for authenticity.

New York and Georgia are in the same time zone, so there’s no excuse for not getting it right. Even a random call to a stranger in the “Big Apple” could text back a decent recipe for pizza.

Maybe the stars did not line up for the Taste of Italy Pizza that day. Sometimes things go terribly wrong. No, I will return to check out the pizza once again, but this time I’m making sure it’s not on a night with a full moon, and I’ll be sure to check the pepper-shaker.

Editor's Note (Monday, Aug. 29): The restaurant name was originally mislabeled. The restaurant that was reviewed for Saturday, Aug. 27 was Taste of Italy Pizza at 6234 Old Hwy. 5.