Pizza @ Gio's Cafe I

I ate at Gio's Cafe I in Sanford, FL for dinner after someone had read about it in an Orlando Sentinel review. It was a Greek/Italian restaurant which sounded interesting, and it got a positive review.

I was actually expecting more Greek food and less Italian. The Greek food probably took up a quarter of the menu, while Italian took up the remaining three-quarters. Nothing Greek sounded too impressive to me either, and it seemed kind of overpriced. Everyone ended up getting garlic knots and pizza, both of which were recommended in the newspaper. The garlic knots were okay, but they could have definitely used triple the amount of garlic that was given on the rolls.

The pizza was served, and I definitely disagreed with the Orlando Sentinel review. I thought it was a pretty bad pizza. The crust was a little thick for my liking, but that's just based on my personal preference. My real issue was with the cheese. The layer of cheese that was put on top of the pizza was very thick and dense. While the pizza was hot, all of the molten cheese poured off of the crust onto the plate. As it cooled, the cheese's chemical bonds solidified, but they didn't stick to the pizza. As I would take a bite, all of the cheese would pull right off of the slice. It was very chewy, and a lump of this chewy cheese is still stuck in my throat hours later as I am writing this.


Another issue that I had was that the restaurant wouldn't sell me a side salad with the pizza. According to the waiter, side salads were only available if I was eating an entree. Otherwise I would have to buy a much more expensive meal-sized salad. Perhaps I should have ordered an entree though. It seems you can't go wrong with spanakopita, and I'm sure it would have been better than the pizza (that I'm still working on freeing from the back of my throat)...