Russo’s Coal Fired Italian Kitchen

Not even close to the Russos at Westheimer. Neither is the one in Pearland. Iced Tea bitter. Lasagna luke warm. Waiter gets on wrong side of booth handing you things instead of sitting it on the table.

Wow. Not the first time I’ve been disappointed, with this location, but my partner loves the pizza– so we keep coming back– but it ain’t working.
Ordered Gluten Free Greek without cheese– and added Pepperoni. they forgot pepperoni. Pizza was dry– not enough olive oil. tomatoes were too scarce, pale and did not look appealing. Wasted $ 17 on food I don’t want to eat. At least 40% of my orders in the past 25 visits have been messed up.
Feeling full on anger…

Two stars because the food and service has gone way down.

Mixed feelings. Pretty good pizza, but on parr with the other national brands. the help is out there somewhere in their own little place.
If you can put up with poor service give it a shot.

This place has pretty good food (4 stars), BUT the service is so unbelievably poor that the food isn’t worth it! My last time there we were literally 1 of 2 tables in the restaurant and our waitress disappeared! I had to go to the front to check out because we never saw her again. Told the manager how poor the service was and he couldn’t have cared less. We won’t return which is disappointing because we really did enjoy the food and proximity to our home.

No holiday hours today. I was trying to eat really fast assuming they would close early. But not the case. As I noticed more staff coming in. Only three customers — two being my husband and I. Yet the restaurant was full of busy bees. Some re filling was was already full. Others with Windex and some cleaning tables just to keep busy. Had I known before hand that obviously the owners and management here don’t care about their staff or families in general. We would not have come.
Well on a good note the staff was above and beyond attentive. The food was delicious. Too bad this establishment only cares about themselves. Were not coming back.

We were greeted nicely then even thought there were only two customers in the restaurant we sat for 5 minutes waiting for a waiter that ignored us so we left. We’ve been a few times before and the service has been very slow. The pizza isn’t good but the specialty items were. They changed the menu so those specialty items are no longer offered. I don’t expect this restaurant to last much longer if the bad service continues. By the way, the hostess should not lay over the counter with her back side hanging out.

Our regular place for pizza. A bit on the higher priced side but worth it based on the lack of good competition. Love the Buffalo Mozzarella Fritti — must be eaten hot and even when ordering takeout, they wait until you get there to make it. Their cakes are awesome — I don’t think they make them in house but they are all to die for.

The pizza is the best thing out of this place. I ordered Veal tonight and the mushrooms came out of the can and the sause was just weird. My son order spaghetti and although the flavor was good the pasta was still full of water. The hostess/​waitress was great tonight. She worked all 7 tables by herself. While some other guy stood off by the kitchen on his phone. Only other person I saw helping her was the busboy who was very polite.

It’s been a while since i’ve eaten here and I really enjoy their pizza. The only thing i’ve noticed is service has gotten REALLY relaxed since I last visited. I know Russo’s Coal Fired Italian Kitchen is supposed to be the nicer of their sister restaurant Russo’s NY Pizzeria which is super casual, but other than the waitstaff dressed up in nicer attire, it really wasn’t much different. In fact, some of the staff were in regular t-​shirts while the others were in uniform. They were still attentive to our needs and friendly, however.
As far as the food, the appetizer and the bread basket seems to have gone down in quality. The bread the gave us was cold and didn’t really taste fresh, and the Calamari we ordered was a little over fried and seemed a little lacking. The Greek salad was decent and the pizza was still delicious so no big deal.
There weren’t a lot of customers so there were staff just standing around looking bored, which I can understand, just don’t make it so obvious. I honestly think they should just turn this location into a regular Russo’s NY Pizzeria since it’s already got that super casual and relaxed atmosphere to it.

I’ve been eyeing this pizza restaurant for a while, especially when I leave the UFC gym! What a temptation!
Today, Juan came by my pharmacy with some menus. What perfect timing! My partner and I were trying to figure out what to eat for the past 2 hours. Juan shared about the lunch specials and their current deals. He offered to deliver it himself since we were half a mile down highway 6.
My partner called and placed in the order. The receptionist over the phone was very pleasant to speak with. In 15 minutes, Juan was back again with our meals. That was the fastest service I’ve ever received from any Russo’s! When I worked up at Memorial City, the wait was at least 1 hour for one of the other branches to deliver.
We ordered off the lunch special — combo slice and salad. I ordered the New York and my partner ordered the Mulberry. We were both impressed by amount of food that came with the order. We had a cesar sald (other choices include house salad or greek salad) and our HUGE slice of pizza and generous portion of garlic bread. The pizza was a thin slice (New York style) with alot of toppings. There was so much food we couldn’t finish.
The prices on the lunch special were very reasonable. You get quite a bit for what you pay for!
I’ll definitely be ordering my lunches here more often!
FYI: There’s happy hour on drinks from 11 — 3 Weekdays.

I’ve been here a couple of times and service is always bad. The most recent time, we waited 15 minutes to get greeted and that was after we had to ask the manager to send a waiter over. Waitress was careless, forgetful, and very slow for it being a slow night business wise. Food is always good which is why I continue to come. I’m going to start just getting it to go.

This was my first time visiting Russo’s. A little quaint, but well kept. Good service and okay atmosphere. Being vegan, I suppose I have to pretext my review. They were able to accommodate my order (personal pie/​no cheese/​veggies), so that’s always a plus! The food was decent, but it didn’t merit the price. It wasn’t expensive, but it was definitely overpriced. My co-​workers ate their food, but no one seemed overly impressed. Eating here is proof that you can be vegan almost anywhere! If you’re looking for New York Pizza? I’d look elsewhere. I’d go again, but not voluntarily.

Hostess open the door, sit us, give us menus and we wait for 15 and no server to acknowledge our presence. We ask the manager and notice that servers were reluctant to take care of us… place was busy but not to capacity. Food is good and good price.
service… while waiting we notice people comming in, wait and leave after no one taking care of them.

TLDR: Bad management, horrible online ordering experience, no accountability for mistakes. Cold food, soggy calamari, and told my food wasn’t cold enough to have been sitting long.
My family and I have been to Russo’s multiple times and it’s always been a decent experience, however, the experience we just had completely ruined our whole view on this specific location. We ordered online at 7:20, through their Order Up site, and asked for our food to be delivered by 8:30. We called back at 8:45 and were told that the food was still 10 minutes from leaving the kitchen. In the same conversation, 2 minutes later, I was told it was leaving the store. I asked to speak to a manager and was left on hold for over 5 minutes at which point I decided to hang up and call back. When I called back, the hostess got the manager and this is where the entire thing took an even more unexpected turn. As soon as he answered, the food finally arrived 45 minutes after expected with a receipt stating the food had been ready since 8:15. The manager then started asking who I was and if I had ordered from them before, «to know who [he was] dealing with,» how I knew my food had been sitting for an extended period of time and challenging me to come to the restaurant to somehow verify my claims. He even told me that if the food had been sitting for 30 minutes it would be much colder than it was (the pizza was luke warm, the chicken wings were warm at best and the calamari was soggy and full of oil). When I told the manager I was disappointed in the service, quality of the food, and standards of the restaurant, he put the blame on the ordering website and told me that if I wrote a bad review I was trying to hurt his employees and their families and that the only thing he could do was work on the ordering system. This was a huge disappointment and I will be contacting the owners to let them know what kind of management they have at this location.

Dear Russo’s,
I’m sorry that I have to take some stars back. But having been a customer of yours since the day you opened this location, I feel obligated to tell you that something isn’t right.
1. Service. It’s always been hit or miss at this location, but for the past few months it’s been all misses.
Last night was a comedy of errors. The hostess nearly got into an argument with me because I ordered a Coke Zero to drink. This is the second time in as many months this hostess has told me that you don’t carry that. Either you turn off the first tap on the left on your soda fountain at night so I can get myself a Coke Zero from your machine at lunch when you’re doing counter service only but cannot get one at night when the server uses the same machine, or your hostess needs to learn what fountain drinks you carry. Last night we got bread without having to ask several times (which is the norm), but it came out cold. Our server, who appeared to be still attending Hightower High School, apparently was given some phrases to use when talking to customers but it was clear that he had no idea what he was saying to us or why. I understand that he’s young and he needs to start somewhere, but he needs more training before he goes back on the floor. Start with the basics, like waiting for us to actually look over our entrees and maybe take a bite before asking it everything is okay. [It wasn’t, but he hightailed it out of there so fast we didn’t have a chance to send back an entrée brought out with the wrong sauce.]
Most of the crew here is young and probably working their first job. Unfortunately the good servers seem to have gone off to college or something and we seem to be left with green servers who were taught bad habits by only slightly less green servers. Train them right and they’ll become an asset.
2. The food. Russo’s may be a chain, but the food is usually pretty consistent. Last night the kitchen gets the award for under-​seasoning a dish of cannelloni — it was tasteless — while also over-​seasoning the meatballs, which came out of the kitchen tasting burnt and just plain awful. I can tolerate the B team in the dining room, but not in the kitchen.
Finally, do you really have to play Fox News Channel in here with the sound turned up while we’re trying to eat? Play some music or just turn the TV off. TV doesn’t belong in a restaurant in general, but the sound of Bill O’Riley ranting about how the country is going to Hell isn’t something that makes most people want to linger over dinner or order dessert.
However, I would like to thank the girl who is probably the daughter of the franchisee for jumping up from her homework and opening the door for us when we left. She was sweet, and she gives me hope that y’all can get this place back to where it was about a year ago. Y’all work hard. But you need to get a handle on the people working for you both in the front and back of house.

These guys just topped the Olive Garden for second worst bread sticks, Fazoli’s will never have its crown taken away.
Haven’t tried the pizza, took a flyer on the fettuccine Alfredo, will not order this again. Did the cook drop an entire stick of butter in it. I could feel the HDL and cholesterol depositing in my artery walls.
Service, well it’s counter. Someone does bring your food to the table, but refills any just about everything else is on you. Which is great as you need to burn off that stick of butter.
That’s all I got.

We have come here previously and the service was atrocious!!! We have decided to give it a third try and the service seems better. The food is always very tasty but the service has killed it.
It would be nice to see 50″ TVs mounted so you can enjoy some wine and a game every now and then…
Also, wine area could be expanded in some way, would make it better for Baileys and Coffee with Tiramasu :)

I got take out from here over the weekend, I can’t say I was bowled over especially given the price, which I found to be steep. I ordered a pizza for my daughter and the eggplant parm for myself. To be honest, I like the eggplant at Olive Garden better and my daughter wasn’t overly impressed with her pizza. I can’t say I won’t ever return, but it isn’t a first or second choice or third… actually, I’ll just suck it up and drive to Olive Garden next time.

went to Russo’s for the first time to satisfy my families pasta craving. As opposed to ordering 4 entrees we ordered a half tray of Chicken Alfredo. The staff was excellent not to mention the cashier Dave that suggested we get the tray. Our wait was short even though the restaurant was busy with a Thursday Night dinner rush. Our experience was only enhanced by meeting the Manager Juan, he went out of his way to speak with us and to make sure we were taken care of. You could’t ask for a better experience from a staff. With the proximity of the restaurant to our neighborhood. I can see Russo’s becoming a staple.
One more thing, The Alfredo was amazing! And that bread tho!!!