Tony's Pizza and Pasta

Tony's was Dave's pick this month.  And I admit, I was a total skeptic on Tony's Pizza and Pasta after I saw the menu online.  BYOB because it's in a dry section of Dallas, not much of a pizza menu, the basics and that's it, no online pictures of the restaurant, and the prices were so inexpensive that I couldn't see how this place could survive serving even decent food.  Plus I knew it would be in a strip mall up in Lake Highlands (neighborhood not known for it's cuisine, at least not to me).  Well, I was totally wrong.

I pulled up to the place, running late of course, and was happy to find the parking spot right in front of the restaurant waiting for me.  No valet, no problem.  The restaurant was packed with people waiting in line out the door.  Luckily, Dave called ahead to see if they took reservations and the do!

We brought a couple bottles of wine for the 4 of us, we quickly questioned not bringing more.  We even asked our obviously underage waitress who was quick to point out the Albertson's next door carried no alcoholic beverages and that the nearest store was a ways away.

I loved the pizza.  Classic New York style pizza, made in a brick oven, reminded me of a place under the Brooklyn bridge I'd been to.  The service was excellent, very attentive to our water glasses, and the food came out like 10 minutes after we ordered it (surprising considering the place was packed).  Their sausage was very Italian and excellent on pizza.

The ambiance was good, not great.  Very cool pictures painted on all the walls in the back room, and the people at the other tables were super friendly.  Everything there was big in portion sizes, especially the calzone.   The only thing I didn't like was the mozzarella sticks.  They were freshly made, but the cheese wasn't gooey enough.  I think I'm spoiled by fake, frozen ones of the TGIF's of the world.

When the bill came, I couldn't believe it.  $34 for the four of us.  I love BYOB!  It was $45 just for a bottle of wine at Eno's.  We had to super tip the waitress because she really did provide great service.  And she even gave me a Canoli to go at no charge when I asked her for one after the bill had already come.  

Overall, I am totally going back to Tony's.  I just hope it stays in business at those prices!

Food / Taste / Beverage - 9, love the BYOB!

Service - 9

Ambiance - 7, friendly folks, typical otherwise

Value - 10, unreal

Parking / Location - 7

Total score - 42

Cheers,

Ben

http://www.tonyspizzapasta.net/

What are the critical measurements of a good pizza joint?

Ok, so math has always been easier for me than others, I ended up an engineer for a while, and I now sell information technology.  So for me, the first thing to consider when starting the Dallas Pizza Club was what system are we going to use to pick the restaurants and what are they KPI's (Key Performance Indicators) we'll judge them by?  As always, you could come up with hundreds of them, but abiding by Pareto's 80/20 rule, I always like to keep things to no more that 5.  So here's my first shot...

1.  Food / Taste - obviously, without good food, you got nothin.

2.  Service - bad service can ruin any meal.  Seems like these first two are a given.

3.  Ambiance - call it scene or gut feel or whatever you will, but an important aspect of any eatery is comfortability.  The best filet eaten in a sewer will be the worst meal you've ever had.

4.  Value - This is important, especially in these economic times and in a city like Dallas, where it's easy to find restaurants that can help you spend $500 in a couple hours (of course you have to have a healthy appetite and liver like me to make it happen, dang you Maker's Manhattans).

5.  Parking / Location - always an important factor because you have to drive everywhere in Dallas (it really is a sprawling metropolis), where many restaurants will take an entire empty parking lot, put out a "complimentary" valet service with cones across the entire lot, and guilt you into a $5 tip just so a guy can park your car 10 feet away.

I think I'll go with a scale of 1-10 for my rating system allowing for a maximum score of 50.  

Thoughts?  Am I totally missing something?

Cheers,

Ben

Welcome to the Dallas Pizza Club Blog!

The Dallas Pizza Club was created by four friends who wanted to try all the best pizza places in Dallas.  So we decided that we'd meet once a month, every time a new place.  We'd review it and of course enjoy some pizza and beer and wine!  After two great club meetings, I decided that we might as well document our experiences for our own record and perhaps it might even be read by someone else.  Who knows...