Our friends Mike and Rhonnie Guido recommended a pizza place we had never been to before. The name of the place is Valentino’s on Malabar Road in Palm Bay, FL. We were on our way back from seeing the shuttle launch in Titusville, so we swung over to pick up Rhonnie and Mike and we went to Valentino’s.
The first thing I noticed as we approached Valentino’s was the wonderful garlic smell. It smelled great. This was a good sign.
Valentino’s menu says that they serve the world’s best pizza. It also says they deliver. One of these things is true. The other isn’t.
We started our evening with that delicious smelling garlic cheese bread. It was good, but it wasn’t worthy of raving about. The smell of the bread was better than the taste. Of course, we were there for the pizza, not the garlic bread.
Valentino’s serves New York style pizza. To date, I haven’t found a New York style pizza that I really like, but I kept an open mind. We ordered two extra large pies, a Hawaiian (pineapple and ham) and one with tomatoes, basil and garlic.
The first problem was that the pizzas took nearly 40 minutes to arrive at our table. That’s far too long for thin crust pizzas. The second problem was that they gave us two large pies instead of two extra large. The third problem was that they delivered the pies to the table straight out of the oven without letting them rest. The cheese was still molten and far too hot to eat.
All of these problems were definitely a bad start. The first slice I had was from the Hawaiian. Finally, a New York style pizza with enough sauce. The crust was thin, tasty, and done just right. The ham and pineapple were also very tasty. I wish there had been slightly more ham and pineapple, but that wasn’t a big problem. Once the cheese cooled a bit, it was also very good.
The other pizza (I wish it had a name) was very good. It had tomatoes, fresh basil and garlic with an olive oil base. There was no tomato sauce. The crust was a little overdone, but not bad. The problem with the pizza was that it had onions on it. It wasn’t supposed to have onions. Rhonnie doesn’t like onions on her pizza. But it had onions just the same. In my opinion, the onions didn’t ruin the taste of the pizza. In fact, it tasted very good. But they weren’t supposed to be on the pizza.
Our waitress was apologetic for how long it took to make the pizzas. She was also apologetic for there being onions on the pizza. But all we got was an apology. No free garlic bread. No discount on our bill. Just an apology. It’s just my opinion, but I don’t think that was enough.
Anyway, if I disregard the problems, the pizza itself was actually pretty good. I would give it a 7 on a scale of 1-10. But if I also factor in the poor service, that rating would come down considerably. Rather than focus on the service, I’ll simply say that the pizza at Valentino’s was pretty good.
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I actually don't mind onions if I am expecting them on something I order. The pizza was still good but not what I wanted. I remembered Valentino's having much better service and better pizza the last time we went there, which was the first time. We will keep the search on for you guys!
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