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- Price Range:
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$$
- Accepts Credit Cards:
- Yes
- Parking:
- Private Lot
- Attire:
- Casual
- Good for Groups:
- Yes
- Good for Kids:
- Yes
- Takes Reservations:
- Yes
- Delivery:
- No
- Take-out:
- Yes
- Waiter Service:
- Yes
- Wheelchair Accessible:
- Yes
- Outdoor Seating:
- No
- Good for:
- Lunch, Dinner
17 reviews for Gino's Pizzeria
The wife is back from Taiwan and we slipped over to our favorite Italian restaurant. I ordered my favorite Chicken Parmigiana and the wife ordered a meat lovers pizza. And as usual excellent, we love it.
Our service was great and we will go back again soon.
1 Previous Review: Show all »
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7/14/2009
My wife and I moved to Round Rock two years ago, we found out about Gino's and decided to try it.
We… Read more »
It's a cute little place, I really wanted to like it. I love finding little local places and we've been exploring Round Rock since our recent move.
The staff there is really nice, but the food....ehh. We ordered the fried cheese to start with and it was still cold. We asked the server to have it heated and she did not seem at all surprised, so this must be a common error. All of the food literally tastes like something you can buy frozen at the grocery store. And not even the good stuff in the frozen section, the cheap stuff. My husband had a pizza and it looked homemade but tasted bad. We will not be going back.
Oh, and all of the tables have the oil and garlic mixture premade at the table. It's just off putting, wondering how long it has been sitting there.
I really love this place. I've been here a bunch of times over the past year, for both eat-in and take-out. The pizza is one of the best I've had here in Texas....and it's the closest thing I've come across to what I am used to from CT (I compare all pizza I eat to New Haven pizza). The calzones are delightful! I really like the staff here...so friendly. And one of the best things going here is that it's not a chain!
My biggest complaint here is the hours! This is the biggest thing stopping me from getting food from here more often. When I drive by on my way home from work (about 3pm), they are closed. It's a hassle for me to get out later when they re-open for dinner and they are closed on Sundays (ugh!...I'd love to be able to stop by with family or friends for lunch on Sunday afternoons or pick something up for dinner on the way home from work). And so as much as I want to give them more business, it's just hard to get there.
Oh wow. What can I say? I love Italian food. And Gino's is the ticket. They are located in Round Rock on Mays. The have great food and the prices are right on par with Olive Garden. Maybe a smidge higher. Even so, I enjoy that they serve apple juice (my beverage of choice) and I love that they have good, healthy portions.
I'd go back again and again!
Loved the pizza here as well as the Chicken Parm (I know- not very adventurous)- it was my first time trying this restaurant. Gino is the guy usually sitting at the front making sure the customers look happy. The pizza crust was some of the best I have had in Texas. The spaghetti was also very good and the bread with the spice/oil sauce was amazing. I really don't understand why people even bother comparing this place to Italian chains... its authentic.... chances are the guy who made your pizza at ginos is actually Italian... I know- shocker. The Pizza crust is crisp and flavorful- whats not to like- and the toppings remind me of the old ways to do things- I miss those days of coarse hamburger meat and large toppings.
Also... hit up Juarez Bakery on your way out for some take home tamales or pastries- its in the same parking lot as ginos.
A couple friends who had been here before decided we should all go here instead of a chain restaurant. I'm all for good independent places, so I looked at the menu online to get an idea of their prices and offerings and we were on our way.
This is a restaurant, so I'm not going to go into depth about the decor. They don't have the kind of funding that chains do to stay updated. I get it, not a big deal.
First off, service was incredibly slow. The restaurant wasn't busy, so maybe they were understaffed. After several minutes we got our drink orders taken. My iced tea was terrible. Like the stuff you get when you go through a fast-food place at night and the tea has been sitting in that steel container for a day and a half. The waitress also brought refills at same time (one of which was cracked and leaked all over the table), so our table for three was covered with 6 drinks.
They had the olive oil/herb dipping mixture sitting on the table before we were seated, so I had to wonder how long it had been there before we arrived. The bread was like heated up sandwich hoagies, and the olive oil was low quality.
That same low quality olive oil was the basis of their Italian dressing that I got with my salad. But I couldn't even tell because it tasted like pure vinegar.
So I don't like my drink, the bread is sad, and I've got a bowl of vinegar-flavored iceburg lettuce in front of me...onto the entree! My friend convinced me to get the baked ziti. I thought I'd mix it up a little and get the baked ziti alla Gino, with chicken and eggplant in it. Big mistake. The chicken and eggplant that come inside it likely leftovers from the parmigiana--breaded and fried. What made it worse was the eggplant. I tried a few pieces and decided that it tasted like Windex. I ate around it, but still wasn't impressed. The ziti was overcooked, and the sauce was lacking in flavor.
The only thing this place succeeded in was making the Olive Garden look like 5-star dining.
GREAT shrimp diavolo and fried raviolli. Friendly staff and very relaxed atmosphere.
I love there pasta! I am a huge pasta fan and theres is really really good :) I had more then i could eat and thats not normal with pasta, anywhere else i go they never give you enough :)
I think you can tell if it's a good italian restaurant if you leave with stains on your shirt.
It's local and family owned--much better than the chain stuff by far. Their oil/spice mix rivals the one offered by Carabba's and their food is delicious! We had guests from out of town visiting and he wanted some good chicken parm so we brought him here. He ate his entire dish, side dish, and then some. A+ from him!
Prices are very reasonable and their staff is friendly. It can get busy on the weekends ~30 min wait.
I have been going here since before they expanded the restuarant and I have to say the meal is always good but not toe curling great. I understand from other people that really rave about this place that the big attraction is the pizza and calzone. I split a calzone for lunch and it was very good. If you have a real thing for Italian desserts (as I do) don't bother with the canoli.
Possibly the best Italian food in Round Rock. Family owned and operated the food I order is always of the best quality. The staff is always prompt and friendly.
A notch above the cookie cutter chains the plague Round Rock.
P.S the Puttanesca, and chicken picata are excellent!
Best Italian food I have ever had.
good variety.
small place tucked away.
not open on sunday's
Italian ran and owned.
Gino's has been in Round Rock for forever-and-a-day. Over the years they have expanded and upgraded the decor. It is now a very comfortable, romantic escape from the clatter of mega-chain Italian restaurants.
I have some pretty high standards on pizza. I rate theirs very high with tasty crust and good ingredients.
My wife and I started eating there years ago but quit because we had a nasty habit of eating so much that we nearly killed ourselves. It's that tasty. Back then, it was a tiny little family-run business with very personal service. The owner once came by the table and put me in a half-nelson (OK, not really) until I tried his latest dish. He said, "You don' like - you don' pay." As it turned out, I like very much! The dish was delicious. I enjoyed the "real" conversation and his passion for his food.
We recently went back for another try and the new expansion was very nicely done - but the old soul remains. All of our dishes were fantastic. It's now once again on our very short list of restaraunts that we consider "ours".
Family friendly and romance-capable, Gino's provides a relaxing dining experience for a very, very reasonable price.
This place is great. We've been here more than once and it's always wonderful. The wait staff is really attentive and the food is awesome. A customer near me ordered the lasagna once and it looked so good I just had to try it myself. It was awesome! While on a low-carb (blah) diet once I ordered the salad with chicken - again, delicious! I did try the mannicotti at lunch once - not so great. My husband likes the pizza a lot but I've never tried it. The garlic/spice and olive oil mixture with the bread is sooooo good. Oh and the Italian cream cake is fabulous - I frequently get a slice to go. I also like how they bring you a drink along with an extra little carafe so you can refill your glass whenever you need to - this is really helpful when you've got a big manly husband who usually finishes his first drink before the waitress even leaves the table. The only complaint I wold have is the size of the tbles - they are really tiny. Not a problem if it's just two people dining but when you've got 4 or 5 it gets kind of cramped - especially with the decorations and such on the table. For those reviewers who didn't like it I'd really recommend trying it again - this place is really awesome but you may have hit a (rare) bad night.
Wait, what? After reading the other reviews on this place I keep thinking maybe I went into an alternate universe and experienced a restaurant completely opposite from the one mentioned before me. As Will Ferrell said in Zoolander, "I feel like I'm taking crazy pills!" This place was not very good. Maybe we ordered the wrong things and maybe it was an off night for the folks at Gino's, but I couldn't agree less with the 5 and 4 star ratings.
First I'll mention where the good points came from. We arrived there right when it opened and were seated immediately which was awesome. The girls working at the front, including our waitress, were all friendly. Can't complain about any of the staff. The atmosphere of the restaurant was fantastic. It was a lot bigger inside than it looked from the exterior and it was kind of a romantic setting. The wine selections displayed at the front of the house, the candles and fake flowers at every table, really made me smile. Well, there were plastic table covers, BUT they were white and clean and everything was set up in a sophisticated manner for the most part. Now the food. I'd say my salad and the sun dried tomato dressing it came with was very good. One thing that threw me off was the kind of tacky late 70's early 80's wooden bowl the salad came in. I remember when my parents got wooden dishes that looked just like that as a wedding gift and kept them waaaaaay longer than they should have. But that's besides the point.
So the salad was good, the bread and oil mixture was tasty, but one of the best ingredients I tasted was the marinara dipping sauce that came with the fried ravioli appetizer we ordered. The fried ravioli is a different story. It wasn't very hot, in fact it was almost cold ricotta in the middle and yet the ravioli shell was overcooked on the edges. That breaded crust couldn't disguise the taste of over cooked noodle.
Back to that delicious marinara sauce; we figured whatever we ordered that had red marinara on it had to be pretty damn good if that was the same kind used in our fried ravioli dish. So, I ordered an individual sized pizza with jalapenos, green bell pepper and mushrooms. My boyfriend, ordered the classic spaghetti and meat sauce....can't go wrong with that right? Wrong. According to him it was awful. I would've tried it, but I don't eat beef and there was a ton of that in the dish. I swear there was a pound of ground up beef sitting on the top of his spaghetti. It had a little bit of runny tomato sauce, but the kind of sauce that is watery and has a clear tomato juice tint. Blah. In the words of my boyfriend, "It tasted like a big pile of salty noodle and beef stew. As if the salty water that the noodles had boiled in mixed into the meat sauce." Needless to say his dish did not have the delicious marinara sauce we had previously as an appetizer. Enough said.
My pizza looked decent, EXCEPT that none of the vegetables looked fresh or had color. The mushrooms were those dark wet ones that I'm pretty sure came out of a can. The same with the bell pepper and jalapenos. I make my own pizza at home a lot and cut up fresh vegetables to bake on top of it and they never look like the veggies did on Gino's pizza. The taste was ok. The crust was good and the cheese was decent, but all in all the taste was flat and veggies were quite soggy.
I don't know why, but my boyfriend wanted to get dessert for me there and even though I asked him not to order anything, for fear it would come out disappointing as well, he did so anyway. We shared Gino's version of Italian Creme Cake. While he wasn't crazy about our choice, I actually really liked it. It was a little cold and sort of hard, but it was sweet and the icing was terrific. Whipped and creamy just the way icing should be. This cake made me leave the restaurant without feeling totally cheated.
For the record though, the prices on the menu seemed to be overpriced to me. I hate to say it, but I think we could've gotten a better all over meal from Olive Garden and still come out 20 bucks ahead, AT LEAST! We spent near 50 bucks on this horrid meal. Yikes. Sorry Gino's but your fancy menu items, nice wait staff, and lovely atmosphere could only take you so far in my book.
This place was packed on a Saturday night but we were seated quickly - next to a table full of Italians (promising sign...) I live a few miles a way and am not a huge fan of Italian food, nor do I expect 4-star food from restaurants in suburban strip malls, but I left here very pleasantly surprised. I had the Chicken Siracusa and thought it was delicious - my wife even sopped up every last bit of the sauce (got it w/ capers instead of mushrooms). Everyone in our party of 4 was very happy with their meal and the service (young waitress but great attention to detail, better than our experience at Wink to be honest). The crowd suggests they have a lot of regulars and I could see this being a place that you'd want to frequent, due to the combo of quality/quantity/service/price (and lack of non-chain non-tex/mex restaurants in the area). I look forward to trying the pizza.
I don't know what it is about neighborhood restaurants and Italian food. I guess everybody likes Italian, and lots of Italian folks like to run a nice little restaurant where they get to see their neighbors a lot. Gino's is another nice neighborhood Italian place.
The menu might be a little too big, or I might be just watching too much Kitchen Nightmares. Either way, some of the stuff from the deep fryer wasn't so good. But the pasta, the soup, the salad, all wonderful. Haven't tried the pizza yet, but it seems popular. Big portions, too.
The service was terrific. Very friendly and helpful. When we complained (mildly) about the fried appetizers, they seemed genuinely distressed that we weren't satisfied.
The ambiance is nice and comfortable. The wallpaper is a little cheesy, but what do you want from a neighborhood place? They aren't made of money, after all.
So, my suggestion on Gino's is, stick to the heart of the menu, and you'll go home fat and very happy.
