Zio Mario's at East Brisbane : Aussie style

1 Mowbray Terrace, East Brisbane, QLD, 4169
Ph: (07) 3393 1033

Its Saturday night and its my son's 7th Birthday. He is not in a great mood and my wife does not want to travel a great distance for food, plus it's late. I remember a friend at work has told me about a place her dad goes to in East Brisbane that he thinks is OK.

The location is surburban, and if you sit outside you can get highlights of the city. The setup is very promising - looks like a traditional Melbourne Pizza parlor from the window. The lady who immediatelly attends to us at the front door is very friendly, and it almost feels like you are going into her home.. its that kind of place. Everyone seems to know you..
Then I get the menu... well I don't know about you, but anyone who charges over $20 for a large pizza needs to deliver something pretty special. And at this point, I think it's a shame because the prices would preclude you from coming regularly, or getting takeaway..
Our order is taken by a middle eastern lady who again was friendly, but seems to have problems conveying the types of soft drinks available. I had their Italian beer Menabrea which was quite nice.
Now, the pizza.. well lets just say that it was not to my liking. To give you some background, I am from Melbourne and I like Melbourne style pizza. Its generally a fairly thin base with a good coverage of stuff on top with the tomato and cheese base.. not to much of anything on the pizza.

This pizza was a cheese lover pizza. Both the Americana and Capricosa pizza's were overloaded with mozzerella cheese on top, smothering all the ingredients. The base was nice enough and thin but it was very plain with no hint of spices at all.. And at $22, I felt ripped off. The americana didn't seem to have enough salami and the capricosa not enough mushrooms.

The kids had their Tropicana pizza. Again, overloaded with cheese on top and included chicken! OK, this is strange and I would be ok with that, but people who eat Hawaiian pizza's do not like surprises and that includes my kids. They spent most of the meal disecting and removing the chicken chunks.

Overall, I am giving 8 for service and 6 for the pizza. Nice enough place, but the Pizza just didn't cut it for me..


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