I was brought to Pizza Banfi from a local Yelp search and read all the glowing reviews so I knew I had to give it a shot. It isn't really that hard to park around in the neighbourhood, there's street parking everywhere.
First thing I noticed is that the place was rammed. Second thing I noticed is that it reminded me of what it would have been like if the set of "Cheers" was an italian restaurant instead. It seemed like everyone else that came into the store seemed to either know the staff or knew each other. I felt kinda let out... "where everybody knows your name..."
A cool thing I actually found out from the reviews (thanks Elaine K!) is that they split their dishes into halves for you. This is perfect cause we wanted to try everything. We ordered the caesar salad, the veal ravioli and the "Banfi" pizza.
They do give you a plate of antipasto which included olives and peppers which was really nice and a small thing of bread and italian seasoning. Nice thing to know incase you're planning on how big the portions are going to be.
The caesar salad was actually pretty good. The homemade sauce really brought out the sweetness in the fresh romaine they had. However, it seemed like a squirt some sauce and toss the salad kinda dealy, it would have been nice to see some other things in the salad... Cheese? garlic? I bet it was just all pureed into the sauce, but still...
The ravioli was underdone and wasn't exactly very good. It was really hard and unpleasant to eat as a whole. The veal kinda matched the hardness so the whole thing kinda tasted like a wet cracker. That and their sauce kinda just tasted like pureed tomatoes, there wasn't really any character to it. Pitty...
The pizza was decent... I like how they used bocancini cheese, but didn't think their sauce was that great in the first place. They do use gas ovens, but I found that their pizza crust was too soft and holding it was a hard enough task because it just kinda flopped as soon as you lifted your slice up.
I'm sorry to say that I've had way better pizza and italian food around. I may come back to give this place another chance since everyone else is writing great things. Maybe it was an off night? Maybe not =P