LaScala’s Italian Restaurant Pizza Review

LaScala’s Italian American Homestyle Restaurant is located at 615 Chestnut, Philadelphia, PA 19106. Established in 2005, LaScala’s is actually the seventh location of Apollo Pizza. This is their only full scale restaurant and is their biggest representation of their company here in Philadelphia. Apollo pizza originated in 1969 with the birth of their family’s pizza recipe. The true history of this company began over 80 years ago when Frank Rocchino and Charles LaScala arrived in Philadelphia from Italy. This new location was named after these relatives to honor them.

LaScala’s Italian Restaurant in Center City Philadelphia is a beautiful place. The details inside there are amazing from the brick walls cleaned and pointed all around to the big bar. They also have giant windows for you to view the Philadelphia Center City passer bys while enjoying your meal. There is also a very big room in the back that I believe is reserved for catering.

The menu at Lascala’s is very diverse. You can order basically any type of Italian food there from pasta to pizza. They are famous for their pizzas though as they have won several awards. Their pizza is gourmet fine dining style pizza. They have many different types of pizza too and you can customize it based off what kind of toppings that you would like.

I ordered one of their specialty pizzas that had clams, bacon, tomato sauce, pepper flakes, and parmesan. Their pies were really good. Their thin crust crust was slightly charred and had a harder crust the closer you went towards the handle of the pie. Actually the edge had a semi irregular shape from the effects of the hardening of the crust.

The sweet tomato sauce had semi large chunks of tomato underneath all of the other toppings. The tomato sauce definitely stood out even though there were plenty of other toppings on there. The top of the pie had thin long slices of parmesan cheese spread throughout the pie. There were small slices of clams mixed well with small bits of bacon on top. The pizza had a nice spicy kick to it as the pepper flakes were used well. The final effect was a very good pizza.

There was one catch – the waitress. My waitress was nice but very airheaded. Her lack of attention to my group’s order caused a bit of a problem. I had order several items for our group and she forgot the main entrée. So everybody waited for about a half hour until finally we asked her for our food and she showed an expression of “I don’t remember you ordering that.” Thus, the meal was incomplete and my group was not happy.

Another problem that I had was when I presented a large dollar bill and asked for change the cents were not given (just the dollars). I don’t want to sound thrifty but a customer deserves to have their full change back not partial. It doesn’t matter if it is a penny. The common courtesy approach would be to ask if they want the small change not simply just to exclude it.

I really am having a hard time putting LaScala’s into the Best Philadelphia Pizza Club because of the bad service. However, there pizza and the atmosphere were really good. The price wasn’t bad either. The pizza only cost $12 and it is the type of gourmet pizza that is worth every penny. So I will give them the benefit of the doubt that maybe they only have one airheaded waitress and hope that next time I will be served a little better.

LaScala’s Italian Restaurant – Welcome to the Best Philadelphia Pizza Club!