At first glance, Grimaldi’s seems to nail it. Dough made in-house, cooked in a coal-fired brick oven, to a beautiful golden-brown crust. What’s not to love? Turns out…there are a few things.
My partner-in-dine, our mini, and I went to check out Grimaldi’s this last weekend. When we arrived, I realized that there were very few windows and some were even covered up for some reason. That coupled with the Classic American-Italian hits on the radio, I guess they are really going for that old and dark Italian restaurant vibe.
Their menu consisted of pizza and calzones along with some standard italian style starters. The pizza came in 12”, 16”, and 18” sizes and you could choose from 24 different toppings. We opted for a 12” Brooklyn Bridge, and a 16” Margherita.
The first to arrive was Margherita. It was absolutely gorgeous and was pretty excited to bite into it. The excitement left pretty quickly though. The structure of the pizza was great. The crust held up on the fold-test (fold your pizza in half and it shouldn’t have any problems holding up the toppings), it was crisp on the outside, and light and fluffy on the inside. But it didn’t taste like anything. There was just very little flavor to it. Like white Wonder Bread or something. All I could taste on the crust was the flavor of the oven. That little hint of charcoal.
Where the Margherita did shine, was it’s sauce. Well…the flavor of the sauce anyway. It was very slightly sweet and had a nice acidic bite to it. Lots of oregano and basil flavor, which I love. But there was just so much of it. I’m pretty sure they spread it around on the dough, then put the toppings on, then put more sauce on top of that in little splashes. When you fold the slice and take a bite, sauce oozes out. Not drips, like a wet soggy greasy pizza. Just kind of squishes out. Next time I go, I’m definitely going to ask for light sauce, or just ask them not to splash extra on top.
The mozzarella wasn’t anything special. I’m pretty sure it was just your run of the mill low-moisture mozz. It was pretty dense, in perfect slices, and didn’t have much pull to it.
The second pizza, the Brooklyn Bridge pizza came next and I didn’t have high hopes for this one. The toppings were red peppers, creamy ricotta, and italian sausage. It looked like, and was, a mess. The toppings kind of had this weird porridge-like texture. It was very thick and wet. You couldn’t really identify the sausage in texture of flavor. The predominant taste was a blandish ricotta with some peppers here and there, or maybe it was a sausage, I’m not sure still. The dough was more of the same, and again too much sauce which I’m sure contributed to the mess on top of the pizza.
Verdict:
I wanted to review this place first because I think it’s what a lot of people in this area think of when they want something different than your run-of-the-mill pizza and they want a “good” pizza. And I think that this is a great “gateway-drug” into what fantastic pizza could be. It’s leaps and bounds better than most pizza chains I’ve ever been to but there is plenty to improve on.
If I was hungry at Legend’s or the marina, I would absolutely eat the Margherita pizza here. I would just ask them to hold some of the sauce. I wouldn’t get one of the “Chef’s Selections” again though. I think it was just way too much for this style of pizza and it muddied it up rather than enhanced it.
One thing is for sure, Reno has much better to choose from.
