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Pizzeria Al Corso

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Slug
Slug
First Reviewer
4 out of 5
Avg. Member Rating
1
Review
5
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Editor Pick

Good Family Pizza Restaurant

  • August 1, 2009
  • Rated 4 of 5 by Slug from Huddersfield, United Kingdom
Good Family Pizza Restaurant

We passed by the Pizzeria Al Corso a couple of times on our way to and from our hotel, to the centre of Mestre, and decided the pizzas smelt too good to ignore. We had also stopped for a beer one evening and found it at 3.50 a bottle, rather than the rather scary six Euros in the centre of Venice. While it wasn’t the plushest of places, the restaurant offered a good and reasonable feed in a lively and clean family atmosphere.

The restaurant is on the end of a modern block of shops and housing, right by the side of the main road into Mestre. They make the best of a bad job by screening the outside area with hedging, but the cheap plastic garden furniture didn’t make the place the most inviting, although the tables were liberally covered with dark pink linen. Once again we had chosen a very popular restaurant with locals, and the tables soon filled up around us. The interior of the restaurant was nice and clean, with a very tempting looking food display area. There aren’t too many tables inside, and the restaurant is small.

I always thought that Italian kids had impeccable table manners, whereas British children are generally just brats in restaurants, with parents bringing an army of toys just to keep their little darlings entertained for an hour while they ate. Unfortunately, the Italian family next to our table proved to be just as attention span deficient, and our meal was sadly punctuated by bored and posturing children. It says something for the food at the Pizzeria Al Corso that I still rate the place so highly.

The waiter was a hardworking and good looking young lad, always with a smile on his face, and a little time to chat to the ladies, and play with the kids. I don’t think he sat down during the duration of our visit. I ordered the seafood pizza to be accompanied by salad, and my beloved also ordered pizza. There was also a full choice of pasta, anti pasta and main courses. The house wine was something of a steal at 10 Euros a bottle, and a lively young red. In Italian fashion, the red wine arrived chilled.

Before our meal, we shared a bowl of fresh bread, for which a small table cover charge was made.

When my pizza arrived, it looked like a Seafood graveyard. Nice fresh mussels, prawn, scampi and clams all in their shells on my lovely fresh and simple pizza. While it took a while to rescue my meat from their shells, and risking third degree burns on my fingers from the hot fresh cheese, the effort was worth it. The fish, the sauce and the base were all exceptionally fresh and delicious.
The only downside was that our salad never arrived, although I tried to catch the waiter’s eye; he was forever darting between tables and the moment soon passed.

Although it was a busy restaurant, the staff seemed quite content for us to linger and finish off our bottle of wine after our meal. We dismissed the idea of sweet as the pizza had been so filling.
At the end of our meal, we went into the restaurant to settle our bill, and discovered our hitherto efficient young waiter scrabbling through the waste bin behind the counter to retrieve our bill! This probably explained our lack of salad, as they had forgotten what we had ordered!

Our young man apologized for the lack of salad with a flash of eyelashes and white toothy smile, and knocked the price off the bill with a flourish. Once again, in the outskirts of Venice, you don’t have to worry about the 12% obligatory service charge, and our meal came to 34 Euros before tip.

I wouldn’t necessarily recommend a special trip to the Pizzeria Al Corso, but it’s a good quality and reasonably priced pit stop for those staying in Mestre.

From journal Venice - Italian Dining

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