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| - Pizza is pretty cool, and pizza places that aren't the three large national chains are always interesting to check out. It's like a weird lottery of quality, and something to keep in mind when you approach one of the copious strip mall pizza places in metro Phoenix. Gus's isn't something that will rise to the top of the 'must try' list.
My biggest problem with this place is not that it's overtly bad, it's just largely underwhelming. The only thing I knew about this place going in was that they had some abnormally large pizza for bigger groups; no other context for Gus's was given. What they have is a pretty standard selection of pizza, wings, sandwiches, pasta, etc. that you're going to find at similar establishments. The wings weren't bad, but it's a really simple thing to not mess up so I can't award bonus points based on that. As for their pizza, I can tell that they use quality cheese. My problem is how that's just about all I could taste. The pizza sauce didn't have a distinct enough flavor for me, and I couldn't really distinguish either the sausage or pepperoni on it. The crust was largely tasteless too, which was a pretty big disappointment. It's far from the worst pizza I've ever had, but it just doesn't all come together.
On the service front, I was rather underwhelmed. To be fair, we had a table of 15 or so, and there was only one server on the floor at the time. We ran out of paper plates pretty quickly, and tried to get more and we couldn't find our server for a minute. What makes this even more perplexing is that other than a few patrons at the bar, we were the only table. I don't expect our server to be omnipresent, but I feel like they weren't around as frequently as they should have been given how few people were there. It's just another aspect of this place that adds up to disappointment.
If you want pizza from Gus's, probably get it to go or delivered. It may be a better experience than dining in. If you don't live in the immediate area, you probably have better options and it's really not worth a drive to seek this place out.
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