Venice Pizza House

I really want to give this restaurant a good review — but after last night’s experience, I just can’t.
Was crazy marinara sauce and chose Venice Pizza House because I wanted to support local and had not been there in many years. As a vegetarian, I was happy to see a Vegetarian Lasagna on the menu, and ordered it. I even asked if the Lentil Soup was vegetarian.
The lentil soup was good — but when may lasagna came out, I took a bite, and immediately noticed beef, I called the waitress and asked her to check if there was a mistake. She came back and told me that the cook was new, made a mistake and it was meat sauce. They would make me another.
In the meantime, I was able to share my partner’s pesto pasta, but was saving room for the lasagna. 20 minutes later, after my partner had finished, the 2^nd lasagna came out. I took the first bite and once again, meat sauce.
The waitress went back and discovered the marinara had been compromised by the meat sauce. She felt bad, and sent me home with another pesto pasta at no charge (as they had no marinara to give me.
The waitress was great — the cooks need to learn to how to keep the kitchen safe for all their eaters.

I ordered the chicken, pesto, garlic and cheese pizza. It was amazing. Super cheesy =) It was packed but they found me a table within 10 minutes. I should have ordered appetizers because they cook the pizza after you order. I was happy to wait and next time I’ll bring some friends.

The food here was ok.
For some reason I just felt the food wasn’t as good as what people said.
I did like their Greek salad.
The fries were soggy. They tasted like they were left out and just warmed up. No crunch or freshness to it.
The pizza was on the saltier side for me. Wasn’t the best. Maybe I will come back and try a different flavor for the pizza?
Customer service is ok. A very small and home feeling restaurant.

Boy, what luscious pizzas! Just as I remembered from my undergraduate college days at San Diego State in the mid-‘60s! If only the service matched the food!
When we arrived, the hostess didn’t even check to see if I had a reservation – which I assuredly did. And the claim on the phone that the restaurant only had booths for four or fewer people – which discouraged me from inviting additional family members – turned out to be erroneous as well. In fact parties of six or eight can be comfortably seated here.
My server forgot to bring me an ordered Diet Coke, and I finally flagged her down after I saw her serving drinks to others who came in and ordered after me. Then after another long wait I was informed by my server with a «Sorry!» that the kitchen had forgotten to prepare my ordered Small Antipasto Salad. Fortunately, on his own the owner took this off the bill because of the chef’s inexplicable lapse. One problem with service was that the waitstaff this night was very inadequate in number: 2 servers for 26 diners when I was there. I saw one group of diners seated next to me wait 20 minutes with menus in hand before their order was taken. They were much more patient than I would have been if that had happened to me!
Once food arrived, things began to look very much up. My Antipasto Salad was a nice mix of chopped Romaine Lettuce, Tomato Pieces, Mozzarella Cheese, Italian Salami, and Pepperoncini beautifully bathed in a tangy Italian Dressing. And my The Works Pizza (Pepperoni, Sausage & Mushrooms) with sliced cooked Tomatoes added was a lovely layered masterpiece, with all toppings buried under melted cheese. It was both cheesy and saucy, with the house’s unique sauce that incorporates some wine in the cooking. The crust, too, was pliable, totally unburnt, and perfect. Only one size of New York style pizza is served here: a 12-​inch pizza cut into eight slices. But they are packed slices! Even though I felt full after downing six pizza slices, I consumed my entire pie in one sitting, but only because we were staying at the Harrah’s Rincon Southern California Resort & Casino in northern San Diego County that night and attending the Holiday Bowl football game the next evening. So we had no home cooking facilities available to us, It would have been a waste to leave two slices behind!
Diane, too, raved about her Ham Pizza with Extra Cheese, and ate as much as she could (6 slices). So, we will definitely return for the great pizza, and just hope some of the service wrinkles we experienced are soon ironed out.

Found this place on Groupon. Be aware: There is no curb appeal! But once you walk in everything changes. It is cute, feels homey, lots of Italian paintings on the walls. We made a reservation and I recommend doing so because it was almost full on a Sunday night. We were seated right away & given waters. It took about 10 minutes for our server to greet us but she apologized and took our order right away. We ordered: mozzarella sticks, crispy spicy wings, house salad, pizza, and a spumoni wedge (must get!). I underestimated this place. All the food was great. The pizza was a little on the greasy side and the dough was a bit thick for my liking but still good. Make sure you get a spumoni wedge for dessert! Best spumoni I have ever had! We will be back when we are in the area!

The House pizza and chicken wings were incredible! Our server Stephanie got us some homemade Alfredo sauce to go with the pizza. The sauce was amazing on the Chicken, jalepeno and pinapple pizza.
Stephanie made our trip here today extra special. Thanks!

Wish I could review the food, but I can’t.
Ordered to-​go pizza and meatballs, and the kid at the front said wait was 20 minutes. Ok, fine. That time frame came and went. 35 minutes of waiting, and other people who ordered after us getting their food, come to find out they never put in our order. To make things worse, the female waitress says «it’s going to be a while, can you wait?» No lady, I can’t. Why would anyone wait another 35 minutes for your more than likely mediocre pie? She then gave my friend a «free» pizza card except we had already paid. So not really free. Seriously, don’t go here unless you want to wait for nothing.

Just disgusting and overpriced! The only good thing about our visit was the nice waitress! The food was absolutely gross. We spent $ 50 on two pasta dishes. We had leftovers because it was so bad we couldn’t eat it. My husband doesn’t like us to complain so I kept my mouth shut. And the leftovers ended up in the trash. I got the fettuccini Alfredo and my husband got the shrimp scampi. I make better sauces at home. Their prices should be cut in half. Go somewhere else!

This is my favorite pizza restaurant in San Diego hands down. I am so thankful that it’s just a couple minutes from my brother’s house, but I wish they would open a location closer to me in Escondido so I could come here on the weekly!
We usually go with the antipasto salad, some wings, garlic fries, and a couple of pizzas for a group of 4. All of these things are so delicious, especially the fries and PIZZA. It’s the perfect middle crust, not too thick and not too thin. Every server we’ve had has been very sweet, and they have a TV for watching Sunday football. Seriously though, I know all of these hater reviewers are coming back for more, because this place is the bomb.

Best pizza in San Diego?!? Meh… I’ll say I’m more keen on NY style or brick oven pizza. Their crust is thinner than a pan crust but still not thin to my liking.
My boyfriend and I shared a Meat Lovers Pizza. It comes with 8 slices. The flavors of the meats were good, not too salty like some other meat lovers pizzas. There was a good amount of cheese. The crust is not thick or thin. My biggest problem with the pizza is that the sauce was too thin and it leaks to the bottom, making the pizza soggy. After the first slice, it was just disappointing.
The cannoli was ok as well. The cream was too thin and the crust was slightly overcooked. The worst thing about it was that they didn’t fill the cream to the middle!!!
Overall, I’m glad I had a groupon to eat there. It’s definitely not my go-​to pizza place.

Yum, we had the veal parm. My boyfriend took me to Venice because it was a staple of his childhood. We had a feeling that the portions were large, so we shared the antipasto salad and the veal parm.
What I loved was that you could get a carafe of wine for a very low price. We were full of sharing this night and it was cool to have a little bit of a romantic night at a neighborhood restaurant.
Our waitress was Veronica and she was really cool. We had a good conversation and it made our visit even better. It seem that she took an interest in her patrons and I left feeling like I had made a friend. That’s the best part of visiting a neighborhood.
Definitely will be back to try more of the menu items and to drink up all the wine.

Service was great and fast and the food was delicious. I love crust and theirs is prefect. Not too thick not too thin. Nice consistency

Do you like pizza? Do you like it when the crust is kind of flavorless but it has a lot of cheese and this strangely satisfying crunch when enhanced by the exhaustion of moving and the mild buzz of seasonal fall beers? Then you are going to love Venice Pizza House!
Famished from the task of packing my entire house in one evening and desperately in need of some cheese and processed carbohydrates to deaden the pain, I searched around on Unilocal and figured out their Friday night special was a cheese pizza for about $ 9.50. Done, sold, let’s do this. After a simple online ordering process (I enjoy anything that lets me not talk to a person), I set an alarm to remind me to go get the pizza which would be ready in only about 20 minutes. The location is, I would say, a mildly sketchier part of town with a mildly sketchy bar right next door, so I did feel a little bit weird during the actual pick-​up process around 9 pm, but nothing happened and I got in and out quickly.
The pizza was… good. Just good. Goodish. Not outstanding, by any means and I probably wouldn’t go out of my way to repeat visit. But something about it was strangely satisfying. And by something, I mean the fact that I was eating delicious refined carbohydrates covered in massive amounts of cheese and garlic.
So to summarize… cheap deal, no talking, sketchy, goodish, cheese. And that, my friends, is Venice Pizza house.

From the outside I wouldn’t expect too much but it actually looks nicer inside. One drawback is the limited parking though. We ordered two meatballs, garden salad, and ½ cheese ½ house pizza. The garden salad was good but the ranch tasted like Kraft. I expected homemade ranch or at the very least not store bought Kraft. My boyfriend enjoyed the meatballs and said he liked the flavor and sauce. As for the pizza, we both agreed we liked it. The cheese was delicious and the crust was light and yet had crisp to it. Good pizza.

So i hv been looking at this in Groupon for about 4-​months now. The Groupon pic looks legit AF.
Then it happened. We were in SD and i Unilocaled the address and low and behold i just so happened to be 8min. away.
We did it, we went there.
…and
It was Everything I dreamed it would be! It was Awesome!!!
Just ignore the parking, El Cajon Blvd, and everything outside. Not a good location, but F-​ing Awesome food and service!
I asked for the pizza on the Groupon pic.
Also had the Calamari.

I’m surprised it took a Groupon offer to find out about this place. It’s been around since 1954 and has won numerous awards over the years, but I had never heard of it before.
There is no designated parking lot, so you’re on your own to find a spot. I found a spot on El Cajon Blvd, a couple blocks away. I made a reservation for 4 at 7PM and we were seated by 7:10.
Our group of 4 decided to share the appetizer sampler and split the antipasto salad. The sampler had deep fried mozzarella, zucchini, and wings. The antipasto had a good amount of cheese and salami, to go with the usual veggies. Both the apps and salad were fine, but the pizza was the star of the show.
We ordered the house special, which had generous amounts of meats and veggies, with just the right amount of cheese. The crust was golden brown and was the perfect thickness. I only had 2 pieces, but that was all I could handle. I was full, but not weighed down by too much grease, like some other pizzas.
There are so many hip, trendy pizza joints these days, it was nice to go back in time and know there are still some old school places left that serve some great pizza. My one suggestion would be to spice up the beer selection a bit.

I’ve been curious about this place because some people are denouncing the pizza and some people are raving about it. Unfortunately, I’m in the former category, but I can understand why people like this place. If you ignore the slightly sketchy location on El Cajon Boulevard, this seems like a great family restaurant. It reminds me a lot of a place we used to visit when relatives were in town: friendly, booth seating, non-​intimidating menu, options for different varieties of picky eaters. And unlike a lot of trendier places, it was not unbearably loud.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t too excited about the food. The salad was fine, if nothing special. The pizza though was rather disappointing. The crust was thick and had the texture of soft bread rather than being chewy or crispy. The sauce was bland and the toppings were meager. Lots of cheese though!
I don’t think I’ll be back, but this might be a good place for others!

Excellent service! There was only one waitress during lunch and she was quick and responsive even though there were a ton of tables.
The pizza was delicious, however I wish they would put the cheese on the bottom too, not just the top, because the crust got soggy pretty quickly.
Besides that, we loved it. They had great music playing (oldies!) and the atmosphere was really nice. There was also plenty of parking outside.
Overall, great experience and I would definitely dine there again!

I AM SO SAD I discovered this place the week I was leaving and moving to Oregon.
SUMMARY —
LOVED The pizza and greek-​ish salad. HOLY Fantastic.
It wasn’t the cheapest pizza in the world but it was very very very good… Overall I was impressed. The servers were very nice and so helpful in deciding what to get. We got some specialty pizza with a ton of meat etc. The server suggested the salad and we accepted. We are a salad family so dad and I demolished the large. Definitely suggest getting the large if you are sharing.
The pizza was cooked perfectly and had great flavor and generous toppings. I would definitely go back.
I had a Groupon and even with that it was a bit spendy but it was yummy!

Brought a friend here tonight because she lives in the neighborhood. She mentioned that there was an Italian joint within walking distance and it’s been around 50+ years. So I thought, game on!
We opted for entrees versus pizza and now I’m regretting that choice. She ordered the spaghetti and meatballs and I had lasagna. The dinners came with soup or salad. We both opted for salad and we were disappointed. The lettuce was wilted, the one tomato slice on my salad was yellowish.
My lasagna came in a hot container that sat on top of a plate. They warned me it was hot and they were right. The problem was that the dish wobbled and didn’t fit the plate. So the scalding hot dish almost landed on my lap. Not cool. The lasagna was good, but nothing to write home about. I wouldn’t order it again. My friend said her spaghetti was meh. The bread was burnt on the back.
We were both pretty underwhelmed. The staff was annoyed about a client that called in an order for 7 people about 8:20 and I heard one of then cursing. (I get the annoyance but keep it out of earshot of your customers)
But given that the place has been around a long time, I’d give the pizza a try. I’d skip the entrees though. I’ll update my review after throwing down a pie!