Pizzeria Del-Dio in Orlando, FL

I recently met with TastyChomps to go try some Italian food at Pizzeria Del-Dio in Orlando. Del-Dio was once located in Fern Park and I have some vague memories of trying them back then, but that location changed ownership. In the early days of this blog, I actually wrote about the Fern Park Del-Dio while they had the second owners. Their pizza wasn't the best with some issues with the crust/sauce/cheese ratios and they eventually closed. Del-Dio's original owners reopened in the back corner of a strip mall off of Colonial Drive in Orlando, facing the Executive Airport.

When I arrived at Pizzeria Del-Dio, our meal started with a meatball appetizer. This consisted of two large meatballs in sauce. These were nice and flavorful. The garlic flavor was very strong here.

Next, we split a pizza. We ordered half pepperoni and onion and half sausage and spinach.

This was a very good pie. The crust/sauce/cheese/topping ratios were done right and there seemed to be just the right amount of everything. The pepperoni & onion slices were good, but I preferred the sausage & spinach. The spinach was sauteed with garlic and the sausage was sliced as opposed to crumbled (better that way).

Our meal ended with a cannoli for dessert.

I enjoyed my meal at Pizzeria Del-Dio. They served some pretty tasty pizza. Now that I know where they're hidden, I'll be stopping here again for more pizza at some point...

Stavro's Pizza House in Daytona Beach, FL

I had dinner at Stavro's Pizza House in Downtown Daytona Beach. There seem to be lots of Italian restaurants in the area that use the Stavro's name. It's very confusing because they all claim to be completely independent and not connected to the other Stavro's in any way. The menus and foods at each of the Stavro's seem to vary a lot from location to location as well. I wonder what the story is here how so many Italian restaurants in the area all ended up with the same name?

We ordered a pizza topped with half pepperoni/half meatball. The pizza here was pretty average. The crust had a nice texture that I liked, but there was too much cheese in my opinion. Never good when there's so much cheese that it can't be supported by the crust and it floods off of the slices. Otherwise, this pizza wasn't too bad. I might stop here again at some point...

Ikea in Sunrise, FL

 What visit to Ikea is complete without buying some sort of food? On this visit to the Ikea in Sunrise, I had the Swedish Meatball Combo, served with the standard mashed potatoes and lingonberry sauce. This came with a side salad and fountain drink (lingonberry soda, of course).

Brick & Fire Pizza & Pasta Parlor in Winter Park, FL

I had dinner at the Brick & Fire Pizza & Pasta Parlor in Winter Park. I had heard good things about the restaurant, so I was looking forward to giving them a try. The meal started with a Parmesan Flatbread appetizer.


A half meatball/half cheese pizza came next. It was an okay pizza. Not the best, but not the worst either. There was a bit too much cheese on the pie for my personal taste, but it didn't have the messy look that pizza with a lot of cheese sometimes gets. The pizza seemed well made, just very cheese heavy. Their crust had a lighter, more airy consistency compared to most other pizzas and was really good. I'm not sure what they did differently with this crust to make it light and fluffy like this, but I liked it...


If I return to Brick & Fire, I think I'm going to have to try a pizza other than plain cheese. On their website, they have pictures of their specialty pies that look really good. Based on those pictures, I'd try either a Greek Pizza or a Goat Cheese Pizza.

Papa Gio's Pizzeria in Avalon Park, FL

Avalon Park is one of the communities in Central Florida built following the new urbanism model. Much like Celebration or Baldwin Park, Avalon Park features a walkable downtown area, which was void of pedestrians when I visited. The feature that sets Avalon Park's downtown area apart from the other planned communities are the huge cooling towers from the Stanton Power Plant that tower over the treeline. To add to the wonderfulness, if the wind is blowing in the right direction, you can probably get a whiff of the Orange County Landfill that also neighbors the community. Avalon Park has a very Simpsons feel...

I had never been to Avalon Park, so I decided to check the place out and get dinner. I considered giving Brianto's Original Hoagies a try, which seems to be a favorite among some of the other local food blogs, but I wasn't in the mood for a meaty sandwich. Instead, we settled on a place called Papa Gio's to get pizza.

Inside, the dining room walls were painted with both scenes from New York's Little Italy neighborhood and scenes of Italian countrysides.

We started with some garlic knots. They were okay, but definitely not the best around. These knots actually had very little garlic on them, which kind of defeated the purpose.

The half spinach/half meatball pizza soon followed the garlic knots. As far as New York style pizza goes in Orlando, this was one of the best pies I've had in a while. The crust was nice and thin. They got the proportions of cheese and sauce perfect, and it all tasted really good.

I'm always reluctant to order spinach as a pizza topping because it's hard to know what you're going to get. The worst is when you get chopped frozen spinach on a pizza, which then combines with the cheese while cooking and ends up resembling creamed spinach. Other times, you will get fresh spinach leaves on a pizza, which I like. And yet other times, you get sauteed spinach which can be really good if done right. This is how Papa Gio's made their spinach pizza and they did a good job. It was nice and garlicy, but the only problem was the spinach didn't seem to be drained fully before being put on the pizza. While the meatball side of the pie was nice and crispy, the spinach side was way too soggy in spots where there was too much spinach juice. But really, it was a minor complaint to a really good pizza.

I'd gladly expose myself to the radioactive trace elements from the power plant to get more pizza from Papa Gio's!

Anthony's Pizza in Casselberry, FL

The last time I ate at Anthony's Pizza was way back when smoking was still allowed in Florida restaurants. I don't remember much about the food, just that the smoking/non-smoking sections did nothing in the small restaurant. The place smelled horribly like an ashtray and left me with no desire to return any time soon.

Fast forward to 2009. After receiving several email recommendations that Anthony's has the best pizza around, I decided to go back and give them another try. Anthony's had a wait when I walked in, so that was a good sign about having good food. The servers initially seemed really flustered by the amount of people in the restaurant, but overall, the service was okay. The half spinach, half meatball pizza that we ordered came out pretty quick. It was a really good pizza with a nice thin crust, a good sauce/cheese ratio, and it was pretty tasty. The sauce had a bit of a strange flavor that I couldn't quite place, but it was otherwise pretty good. I'd gladly get another pizza from Anthony's!

Cafe Murano in Altamonte Springs, FL

I ate at the newly opened Cafe Murano in Altamonte Springs, FL. This Italian restaurant was formerly Gina's Lakefront and has a nice view of Cranes Roost Park. After waiting about ten minutes, we were seated. We ordered our food and then waited. The food took a very long time to be served, about an hour. During that wait, I took notice of my surroundings. The restaurant had way too many TVs in the room, all playing something different. In the environment that the restaurant seemed to be trying to create, the TVs really didn't fit in. There was a very loud and drunk birthday party on the other side of the room, and then a DJ took over the TVs and started playing music videos.

Finally, the food was served. I ordered the Rigatoni Broccoli Rabe, which consisted of large rigatoni noodles topped with Italian sausage, garlic, and broccoli rabe. It was good, but reminded me too much of something I would make myself at home. It was a really simple dish, and truthfully, I ordered it for the broccoli rabe because I don't see that on menus very often. I'd get it again!

Someone else at the table ordered a brick oven pizza topped with meatballs. They couldn't finish the whole pie on their own, so I tried a slice. I wasn't expecting much since the restaurant didn't seem to specialize in pizza, but I was pleasantly surprised. It had a nice thin, crispy crust. There was a perfect amount of cheese and sauce on the pie, and I liked the meatballs too. Sometimes the meatballs on pizza taste like plain ground beef, but these had plenty of flavor. The edge of the crust was a little burnt in spots, but besides from that, I had no issues. If I return to Cafe Murano, I think I'll definitely be getting the pizza too!

Cafe Murano had really good food, but that hour long wait for food that generally doesn't take that long to make was a bit of a turnoff...

Pizza from Caffe Positano in Lake Mary, FL

I picked up a pizza from Caffe Positano in Lake Mary, FL. I've bought pizza from their other two locations in the past (Apopka and Sanford), but for some reason I thought this location didn't serve pizza. I remember going here when they first opened looking for pizza, only to be told that they didn't have it. I finally returned to the restaurant, and it seems they are now equipped to make both pizza and other types of Italian food.

Just like at the other two locations, the pizza was really good here. It was nice and thin with a nice cheese/sauce ratio. The only weird thing happened when I picked up the pizza. It was coming right out of the oven when I walked in. Several employees proceeded to argue with one another about who would slice the pizza before anyone actually sliced it. It was kind of strange that 4 or 5 people in the kitchen all had excuses to why they couldn't slice a pizza.

Pizza from a Publix Supermarket Deli

The Publix Supermarket in Lake Mary, FL has an experimental gourmet deli where they sell all sorts of ready made foods. Wikipedia briefly discusses this deli. One of the items that the deli sells that differs from the rest of the nearby Publix Supermarkets is freshly made pizza. The store has been open a while, and I have yet to eat any of the deli food with the exception of sushi, so I decided to try the pizza.

A half cheese/half meatball pizza was ordered. I ate the cheese slices and was impressed for the most part. The only weird thing was with the basil on the pizza. It seemed they sprinkled a whole lot of basil over one slice of the pizza, and nowhere else. For a pizza coming from a supermarket though, the pie was pretty good. I have had much worse from nearby Italian restaurants that are supposed to have good pizza.

Sicilian Pizza from Dalli's in Lake Mary

I had a strange craving for Sicilian Pizza. I normally don't like Sicilian pizza all that much, and it seems I'm almost always disappointed with Sicilians whenever I get them. It had been years since I ate a Sicilian pizza, and I don't think I've ever eaten one in Florida (as I was looking through my pizza menus of local restaurants, it seemed most places don't even make Sicilian). To prove to myself that I still don't like Sicilian pizza, I ordered a pie from Dalli's pizza in Lake Mary, FL.

I picked up the half cheese/half meatball pizza and took it home. I ate the cheese slices, and it wasn't too bad. I would take a traditional slice of pizza from Dalli's over a Sicilian slice, but it was still acceptable. I think my problem with Sicilian pizzas is that there is too much of everything. There is way too much of the chewy crust, and because of all of the crust, there's more sauce and cheese than you get on a normal pizza. It all seems like a bit of overkill in my opinion, and I'd much rather have a traditional thin slice of pizza where there isn't huge amounts of all of the pizza components.


Sicilian pizza was better than I remembered, but I think I'll stick with traditional pizza until I get another Sicilian craving, whenever that will be. One last observation I had was that while normal pizza tastes good cold out of the refrigerator the next day, Sicilian pizza tastes horrible like this. I couldn't eat the leftovers cold and had to heat it up.

Caffe' Positano NY Pizza

I ate at the new Caffe' Positano in the Super Target shopping center in Sanford, FL. The restaurant is a few stores down from the Yokohama Japanese Restaurant in the space formerly occupied by Vivona's. Vivona's was a good Italian restaurant for a while, but when they opened this location, the Vivona's started going downhill. It seemed the quality and portions of the food went way down and the price increased. Towards the end, the Vivona's employees acted like the customers were an annoyance, and the service was horrible. The last time I went to this Vivona's location, the whole place smelled like rotting meat, and then a few weeks later, both of the Vivona's were closed. There is still one Vivona's left on Park Ave. in Sanford with different owners.

After Vivona's closed, Caffe' Positano opened in their place a few months later. I ate there a week or two after they originally opened, and the restaurant is pretty much unchanged from when Vivona's was there. Unlike the Caffe' Positano in Apopka, this one seems to be geared more towards take out. I ate in the restaurant anyway, and ordered a pizza and garlic knots.

The garlic knots came out first, and had plenty of garlic on them. They weren't served with a side of tomato sauce like most Italian restaurants give with their knots, but I never use the sauce anyway.

The pizza came out soon enough. We ordered an eighteen inch pizza topped with half meatball. The first thing that I noticed was the the meatballs were cubed instead of sliced. I had the cheese half of the pizza so I won't comment on the taste of the meatballs, but cubed meatballs remind me a bit of how meatballs are served at places like Pizza Hut and Papa Johns. As for the cheese half of the pizza, it was a pretty good pie, with the exception of two complaints. The first being that the crust was a bit too crispy. It moved past the perfect pizza crust consistency and was too near the consistency of a cracker. My second complaint was that it sort of tasted like their oven needed to be cleaned. The pizza had a burnt charcoal-like taste that pizzas sometimes get if they are cooked on an oven that's due for a cleaning. Otherwise, it was a pretty good pizza. I would put this pizza a step above the pizza that Vivona's served while they were in their prime.


The next day I had some of the leftover pizza, and the moisture in the refrigerator softened the crispy crust a bit. It turned the pizza that was too crispy into a pizza with the perfect crust consistency. It's amazing how sometimes pizza improves the next day out of the refrigerator.

Dalli's Cheese & Meatball Pizza

I ordered take out from Dalli's Pizza in Lake Mary, FL. I ordered a half cheese/half meatball pizza. It was a pretty good pizza for the most part. The only problem was that the meatball half of the pizza was extra crispy, while the cheese half didn't seem to be cooked as much. Maybe they cooked the meatball side in a warmer part of the oven due to the extra toppings or maybe their oven needs some tuning up and cooks unevenly. Besides from the unevenly cooked crust, the pizza was pretty good.

Last time got food from Dalli's, I noted that there were all new people working in the restaurant. Most of the people working the kitchen here used to be older white guys including an old man that would get very upset and start yelling in Italian (I'm assuming) if an order was messed up. Now it seems the majority of the people in the kitchen are younger Hispanic people, so I am assuming the restaurant was sold. Regardless of the people working at Dalli's, the food is consistent with what it always has been, and the pizza is good!

Broadway Pizza

I ate dinner at Broadway Pizza in Altamonte Springs, Florida today. Everyone ordered an extra-large pizza with half cheese and half meatball. I ate the cheese slices. It was a nicely made pizza with just the right proportions of cheese and sauce. The crust wasn't crispy enough in the center of the pizza though, and it was a bit too droopy when a slice was picked up. Otherwise it was a good pizza...