Tenuta’s

Ronnie — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 17:56:15 +0000

Based on a friend’s recommendation, T. Mario and I checked out Tenuta’s Italian Restuarant recently. This Bay View establishment stood out from your standard pizza joint in a lot of ways. For one, they had a full menu of Italian dishes; I would go so far as to say that the pizza isn’t their focus. Another huge difference is the atmosphere. When you first walk in you’ll immediately notice that the lighting is much dimmer than your average restaurant. There are candles lighting every table and the lights were turned down to the point that someone with shitty night vision would be in total hell, crashing into tables and whatnot. While this would be hilarious for me to watch, I can’t imagine the poor bastard who couldn’t see would be enjoying it very much.

Not that there’s anything wrong with dim lighting. There are plenty of times when a more intimate setting would be appropriate. Like if I was having dinner with a nice lady instead of a dude friend. Anyway, T. Mar and I got a table and commenced with the romancing.

In addition to pizza, their menu features a wide variety of pastas and salads, as well as a few steak and seafood options. As for the pizza, they offer four different kinds of crust: Thin, Virgin, Deep Dish, and Stuffed. The stuffed crust za was recommended, so we went straight to that. We decided to go all out and get the veggie, featuring mushrooms, onions, green peppers, black olives and tomatoes. The wait for stuffed crust is a little longer (the menu states 25 minutes, but I don’t think it was quite that long), so we ordered some Lakefront brews and settled in.

I hate when the waiter sneaks up on you

While we were waiting, our conversation slipped back to how dim the lighting was. “It’s like we’re in that movie, The Descent,” T. Mario remarked. Two different servers or bartenders broke glassware before our pizza arrived. What are the odds of that? It was too dark to get a look, but it’s quite possible that those weird creatures from that movie were actually working there. The years spent in the caves would probably make handling wine glasses a little trickier.

When I think of “stuffed crust,” I think of cheese in the crust. Tenuta’s stuffed crust takes that definition a bit differently, essentially wrapping the entire pizza in crust. It was an impressive beast we had before us, and I don’t think we had any hope of finishing the entire thing.

THE GOOD: The pizza was much larger than either of us had expected. Which was good, since the veggie stuffed crust was more than $20, and we definitely felt like we were getting our money’s worth. All of the toppings (more accurately “fillings” in this case) tasted extremely fresh. Our waiter was definitely not one of those creepy white things from The Descent and had the entire beer list memorized.

Leftovers

THE BAD: The excess amount of crust combined with a relative shortage of cheese and sauce (compared to the other toppings) let to a bit more of a doughy taste at times. “I feel like my mouth has a yeast infection,” was T. Mario’s exclamation. Some of the more elaborate pizzas were a bit more expensive, but based on the amount of food we got it’s probably warranted.

TRY: If you’re going with the stuffed crust, I would recommend adding extra sauce and/or extra cheese to your pie. I mean, the pizza was good as it was, but it would have been a lot better with something to help cancel out the excess crust. The stuffed crust was an intimidating pie that two grown Doctors of Za couldn’t even manage eat finish half of, so maybe don’t go with the large unless you have a bigger group. Or if you have some sort of death wish.

I will definitely be returning to Tenuta’s at some point to try their other pizza varieties. I think I would prefer to get it as take-out and spare myself from the awkward romantic lighting thing. Unless it’s, you know, an actual date-type situation. Ladies?

RATING: Like going spelunking and not getting brutally murdered by strange cave creatures.

Doctors of Za » Tenuta’s – Doctors of Za

Tenuta’s