Stuzzi

We went here first at a Sunday lunch, just happy to get into someplace with no line. We had a stromboli, salad and bruscceta. It was very good, the service was fine. I went back for lunch a few days later. I had a simple pizza. It was very, very fast and the pizza was very good. We went back a week later for dinner. We had pizza and stromboli, with wine. Great wine but very pricey.
My impressions: this is very good food, well prepared, with fine ingredients. Great mozz. Fantastic tomato sauce. Great pizza crust. What it lacks is service: there is one young lady who we have seen there every time; she is on it, always, efficient, prompt and watchful. That’s it. The others are inexperienced, seem to be bored, have no knowledge of the menu (or seem so). An older gentleman, maybe the owner, stands around looking at his phone and waving his finger at the servers. His time would be better spent engaging the customers and helping out. There needs to be person at the bar, someone available to help out these incompetent servers. Maybe this is where the ‘older gentleman’ should spend his time, but only if he would put down his phone and pay attention.
Other comments: Always serve some sauce on the side with stromboli, do not make it an option and do not charge for it ‘extra’. If sauce is going to break your price point, raise the price but do not charge ‘extra’ for it. With your entrees, always serve a dinner salad with it and have an option to ‘upgrade’ the salad. Come on. $ 19 for chicken parm and no salad?
Finally, if you cannot taste the difference between this sauce and other place’s sauce you may as well skip this place. It is by far the best you will ever find. And if you understand and love ‘Italian’ pizza this is the place for it and just get over the staff and the other BS. This is it. If you want American pizza, head on up Belmont to Belmont Pizza, which is good too, but it is not like Stuzzi’s.

Came here tonight for a family dinner with my sorority sisters. I was excited to try it out since I haven’t been here in over three years.
The food was definitely delicious. A few of us ordered the rigatoni vodka pasta and we all loved it! I was able to get some grilled chicken on top per my request.
The true highlight of the meal was the dessert pizza. If you’re gonna order one of these bad boys, this is your place. Covered in Nutella, fruit and other drizzling caramel goodness we scraped the whole plate clean in about two seconds!
All in all we absolutely loved the food here and will definitely be coming back! The only downside of this place is that the service is extremely slow so come prepared for a long night ahead of you. For us it was fine however since we wanted to spend a longer night catching up.
We were also disappointed with a few of the servers not being very friendly to us. The owner however was a true gem and came over a few times cracking jokes with us and sharing some stories.
All in all pretty solid dinner experience and I would definitely come back, BUT only if I have a long night open for dinner. I’ve heard great things about the mini calzones as a lunch option so definitely need to come back to try those!

My wife loved the pizza. Meatballs & calzones are delicious. They have very good wine. Service is not all that great @ night, but better for lunch.

Great authentic Italian food. Since I grew up in Rhode Island I was used to great Italian food; it’s much harder to find in Richmond. Nice atmosphere and great food.

I’m giving this two stars because the pizza is pretty good.
The first time I called in to pick up for lunch. Their lunch special is great-​$ 5.00 for a personal pizza. I had to wait about 15 minutes after I was told it would be ready and the owner told me I should have called it in so I wouldn’t have to wait next time?
The second time we went on a Saturday night around 7. It was crowded, but that’s to be expected. We waited about 40 minutes for a table and they decided to set up an additional table for us, but it was directly next to another party and impeded the normal flow of traffic so other patrons and serves had to squeeze through us the entire meal! It was extremely awkward. I would have much rather waited ten more minutes for a normal table than have other customers’ squeeze by the table the entire time.

Great pizza. I had the grandmas pizza with Sausage, a calamari appetizer and a cannoli desert. Great from beginning to end. Great atmosphere, awesome pizza that we got to cut with scissors (so fun!). This is easily the best square pizza in RVA.

I had a pretty good experience eating dinner here. The pizza was full of flavor and crust was awesomely crunchy. Serving the pizzas on a wooden board with scissors was a nice touch. My only gripe was that the pizza took a long time (even though it wasn’t busy) but I guess that makes sense if they’re cooking it in the wood-​fired oven. Just don’t expect your food to be super fast if you’re starving. Nice restaurant ambiance with candles and dim lighting– would be ideal for date night.

Several visits to Stuzzi have left me disappointed and frustrated that a quality pizza dining experience cannot be enjoyed in Carytown.

CHECK YOUR BILL.
They did the pizza right. That’s all I can really say.
We ordered the calamari app, a Quatro Formaggi and a Soppressata pizza. My girlfriend got a limonata. The server didn’t seem to know what that was (and it’s on the menu). When the calamari came back, it was very tough. Was easily willing to look past it. Hardly ruined my experience. We ordered our pizzas, and 40 min later my order came back and my girlfriend’s order didn’t. I heard her order it, she knew she ordered it, but the server acted like it didn’t exist. When they realized the error, the kitchen staff (in full view of the customers) stopped clowning around with the waitress and got to work — but only after the owner lit a fire under them. There was zero customer service — nobody even was so bothered to refill water (I even slurped a bit on my straw when the server was around to see if they’d notice) or do a wellness check. The owner stood around like a wooden plank screwing around on his phone, thus participating in a bad service environment. Then, BIG SURPRISE, we were given the wrong bill like so many others here. If the owner wasn’t so busy chatting women up at the bar or screwing around on his phone, this could have been saved. They ONLY person doing their job was the bus service. She was hustling.
After reading these other reviews, it was rather shocking to see. Ghastly service. The pizza was tasty, but that’s it. They’ve been around for a few years, but Stuzzi won’t last much longer if things don’t change.

This is worth a try if you have not been. The pizza is more authentic Italian … which some may or may not like better (more of a wet sauce — no eating with a fork).
I like the atmosphere and the authenticity from Italy they try to bring.
Its worth a shot on and don’t go by reviews as you may love it or hate it but if your looking for different this is the spot to try.

Tried this place for the first time last night.
The pizza was really good – we tried Margherita and Grandma’s sausage. Both were excellent, authentic, tasty.
The caprese and calamari starters were both decent, though not amazing, and a little overpriced.
The service was – as others have said – a little awkward. The place was totally empty when we were there from 5:30 to 6:30, which is weird. The staff all sort of hid behind a corner when we arrived until someone awkwardly acknowledged us. I also got the wrong beer (ordered a Singel, got a Peroni) and never had the ability to ask the waiter about the mistake. Meh, drank it anyway.
Overall, we would return for the pizza and hope that we got better service.

I wanted to keep this strictly about food, but I feel compelled to write about the owner’s treatment of employees since that is part of the experience at the restaurant. The owner openly and frequently berates his staff in public. You don’t need a fancy MBA degree for a lesson in how to treat people, even when they work for you. It leaves a bad image after consuming mediocre food.
He also sleazes around female patrons, my roommate being one of them. One of the last times we were in there, he came up to her and put his hands on her shoulders.
It’s just not a comfortable experience if you’re turned off by drama. I go to dinner to enjoy the experience. Between the food and owner, they get half a star each for a one star rating.

Terrible. Rigatoni and the pizza we had were way too salty. We spent approximately $ 100 on takeout and when we asked for a little grated cheese for the pasta in our order the owner insisted on $ 5 for it. Nice waitstaff, poor customer service comes from owner.