Famoso Pizzeria – Commercial Drive

Hello friends! Grayson and I decided to revisit Famoso Pizzeria last weekend and it was quite the visit. I’ve been to this location a few times before in the past and have been to the Surrey location as well. Each time I’ve gone, the food from Famoso Pizzeria has been memorable and I always want more. I wish I could say the same about this particular visit…

My favorite thing about Famoso Pizzeria is their open kitchen because you get to see the brick oven and watch your pizza get made. On this particular night, we were warned that they had quite a few new staff working so service might be slower than usual. We don’t mind it too much when service is slow if we aren’t hungry but we were on the cusp of hangry so ordered right after we sat down.

Meatballs

★★★

We decided to start off with an appy. We ordered 3 of their meatballs because Grayson wanted to try them. Their meatballs are special because they use a blend of beef, pork and veal in them before adding ricotta for richness. Our favorite part about the dish was their Pomodoro sauce because it’s sooo hearty. I loved dipping the crostini in the Pomodoro sauce! It was sooooo delicious!

Their meatballs were firm and held together well. Nothing worse than your meatballs falling apart while you’re eating it right? The meatballs were a good mix of the 3 different proteins and the Pomodoro sauce made it all the more scrumptious.

San Andreas

★

We decided to try the San Andreas pizza because I saw it on their Instagram page a while ago and it looked super tasty. Unfortunately, it was a bit of a “instagram vs. reality” moment because our pizza looked nothing like the one on their Insta!

This pizza came with Chipotle crème fraîche, Fior-di-latte, diced chicken, tomatoes, green onions, cilantro, topped with smashed avocado and chili flakes. We didn’t really notice there being any green onions or cilantro though. The photo on their Insta also had a lime wedge but there wasn’t one on our pizza. But maybe they ran out of limes and was saving them to use at the bar, who knows!

I wish that was the end of it but our pizza wasn’t cooked very well either. The base was still doughy throughout the pizza to the point that I could stretch it still. As someone who has made pizza at home before, I could tell that the dough was still raw. We immediately spoke to our server and were offered a new one. We appreciated that but we were already disappointed.

The re-done San Andreas pizza we got was on the other side of the spectrum. It had burnt and charred edges. The strange part was that even though the top was charred, the base of the pizza was still on the soft side. We would have sent it back again but by this time we were too hungry to send it back again. I ended up cutting off all the char bits and we made do with the slightly underdone crust.

The pizza itself was alright. It wasn’t anything too spectacular and nothing we would have waited this long for. There was a bit of chicken on there but it wasn’t marinaded so it didn’t have much flavour. The smashed avocado on top was scant and tasted better when it was spread on the pizza. The pizza had large flakes of salt on top so certain bites were saltier than others. The wedge of lime would have really helped brighten up the pizza by adding acidity. Needless to say we weren’t crazy about the pizza.

Prawns a la diavolo

★★★

It was supposed to come with 9 large prawns in rose sauce with feta and grana padnao on top. “LARGE PRAWNS” was a huge overstatement because they weren’t very large in my opinion. In my mind I was thinking big prawns like the kind with the shell and everything but clearly I had misjudged what was described on the menu. It was especially disappointing because the dish was $20 and the dish didn’t accurately reflect the price point especially if their 12″ pizzas were also $20 each.

I told myself that it came with a salad and garlic bread so that’s slightly better. Unfortunately, as soon as I reached for a prawn, I realized that it was ICE COLD! I had to do a double take because how could something cooked in a cast iron dish be ice cold??? Grayson tried one too and it was the same! I asked for it to be remade immediately because it was unacceptable! Our server then told us that they would “remake” the dish for us.

15 minutes later we got our dish back. While it was piping hot this time around, there were only 7 prawns in the dish because Grayson and I both half ate one each the first time around. I appreciate that they put the cast iron pan back in the oven to make sure it was hot this time. However, expected to have 9 prawns instead of 7 because that’s what the dish was supposed to have. They had new staff but it’s unreasonable that 2/3 of our dishes needed to be sent back.

I’m glad that our server was able to offer our food to be re-done and take take some money off our bill but I was just soo disappointed. I’ve been to Famoso so many times before and have had great visits each time but after this experience, I’m reluctant to go back especially now that it seems like they are changing over quite a few of their staff.

I wish I had a better review of Famoso Pizzeria to share but you all know I write how I feel and take out all the fluff because that’s the kind of restaurant review I like to read. Oracle says she’s going to go over the weekend so hopefully she has a better experience than I did!

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