The parking in Old Town Scottsdale can be at times a challenge. I was able to pull into the back of the restaurant and found parking without an issue. They share a small lot behind the building with the gallery center next door. Each spot has a sign indicating which business the parking is for; SOCA for the gallery and a G for Gelato Spot; and notification that you will be towed if you are not using that spot for the designated business. Upon finding the G spot I parked and we entered the resturant for pizza.
We were 5 total. When we walked in the girl stated that it would be a second and she would seat us. That was followed a few minutes later by another girl stating that it will be just a second. Then a few minutes later a different girl asked how many in the party. I pointed to all of us and again she asked for the number. I stated 5 and she said that it will be a while as they need to clear a table. Ok. She acted like it would be a long while then followed up it would be 5-10 minutes. We were seating within 5 minutes when they pushed a couple empty tables together.
Once seating a guy came over to take our drink orders. We order and he brought them pretty fast. He then took our orders. 4 total pizzas; very thin crust about 10-12 inches, and two salads. Two pizzas were pepperoni, one from the options, and another was a create your own. So far so good. Thing went south from here.
This is just a tip. If you have say 100 seats available then one assumes that you want to fill those. So you have to staff accordingly. Having different wait staff say multiple times that they are really busy not real good. Either they are not experienced enough to multitask and do the job or you are truly understaffed which is a failure on managements part. Whatever the reason it does need to be addressed.
The waiter came over and brought the salads. They were ok nothing really special. Not really a big fan on mostly white iceberg lettuce, a little more actual green leafs would help. Then pretty quickly the pepperoni pizzas came out. About 5-10 minutes later the "options" pizza came out. A large portion of it had burn crust. Maybe a little too much as neither of the pepperonis had any burnt spots. After about 15 minutes the forth pizza did not come out. The waiter was walking by so I asked him about it. He stated that he would get it, he checked and I guess they messed it up and were to remake it. That was the last he came to the table. There was suddenly a "rush" of people for the Gelato. Our waiter disappeared behind the counter and never returned to our table. I grabbed a waitress who was walking by and inquired as to our pizza. She asked what was on it and went to check. She came back with a pizza. As it was missing some of the items; I would say not the one we ordered. She did a drop and go and put the pizza down and scurried off. So when she did come back about 5 minutes later to inquire about it we stated that it was missing what we asked for however we were eating it anyway.
At this point we kind of became self sufficient. It was free gelato night with a pizza order so we just got up and got our own. I also went to the "bar" to get my refills on the drinks and also got up to get a box to go. We received the bill and it was dropped and forgotten. We had the credit card displaying for over 10 minutes and no one came by. I walked up to the "bar" to pay.
So - Because of all of the different mistakes they did take care of a lot. They removed the one pizza from the ticket and also gave a discount. That does mean a lot. The pizza was ok. The late one was cold by the time we got it. The salad below average. The gelato was pretty good. Green ice tea was also good.
Staffing issues needs to be addressed. The waiter who morphed into the gelato server stated that it was actually opposite. He was there to server gelato and helped wait the tables until they got busy in the gelato section. So it appears there was not a pass off to the actual wait staff. Over all maybe a C+.
Since there are multiple gelato spots in Phoenix and well as wood fire and/or brick oven pizza places doubt I will be back.