Friday, May 27, 2005

John's "Family" Pizzeria

Some friends and I went to a new Italian restaurant last night in search of better pizza. I had stumbled upon John's while driving down Davison Road for an appointment and decided it might be worth a try. It was.

One might question whether the "Family" in quotes in the name was for the mob or more a family-style restaurant. It's definitely the latter. This restaurant is well-lit, has very homey decorations, including lighted plastic grapes (a nice touch) and odd, painted portraits. We were sure it wasn't a mob front when we saw they didn't have a liquor license and they carried chocolate milk. I hoped to see a mob boss or cappo, but all I saw were locals who walked to the restaurant from the neighborhood. I also noticed none of them ordered pizza, what we had gone to the restaurant for, and was a bit disconcerted. But the menu had many items I'd like to try, including "Baked Italian Favorites" like ravioli and vegetable lasagna. I really like baked pasta.

We sat in a large booth and often waited longer than I would have liked for service, but the server was nice. We ordered two large pizza and a appetizer combo plate. It came with the usual assortment of frozen snacks like onion rings, zucchini, mushrooms, and cheese. It was adequate; how can you screw up fried food? The pizzas, one with pepperoni, mushrooms, onions, and yellow peppers and the other with pineapple, green peppers, and ham, were decent. Nothing stood out as great except the crust, which was thin and very crisp. We loved that but collectively decided we preferred Luigi's toppings better.

We considered dessert but opted to go back to our friends' house and have ice cream and conversation.

I would be happy to go there again and try some of the other things on the menu, but I don't know if I will seek the place out.

Recommendation: Maybe, but it didn't set my heart aflutter.

1 comment:

Steven D. Krause said...

You need to get yourself back down to Ann Arbor for the New York Pizza Depot, my friend....

BTW, let me know when you want to play golf!