Little DeMarinis Pizza

I've been to Little DeMarinis twice and had the pizza twice, and I'm not a big fan. Both times we've sat at the bar and dined, and the service was OK but not great. Several times we had to flag the bartender down to get drinks.
The pizza is just OK as well in my book. It's thin crust, of which type I'm a fan of, but I thought the cheese was bland and was nothing to write home about. I like buttery, salty cheese. There are a lot of great pizzas to be had in the Milwaukee area, and I'm sorry to have to say this one wouldn't currently be in my top ten.

Wow! Finding this great pizza place in our neighborhood was a pleasant surprise! I've gotten take-out here a couple times, but I'm very much looking forward to having pizza and beers in the restaurant next time. It's a happening place on a weekend night, great for family and friends. It's some of the best thin-crust pizza I've had in Milwaukee, but it's also a great neighborhood bar if you're just looking to have some drinks and watch the game.

My recommendation...get the 18" x 13" pizza with sausage. Wanna mix it up a little? Same size, but make it a half sausage/half pepperoni. Doesn't get any better than that combo! Also, I'd recommend getting some onions on that baby too. They don't overdo it, so it just adds a nice extra element.

Check out that beautiful photo I took. How can you not get that?!?

The Cheese, Sausage, Mushroom and Onion is fantastic. The sausage and homemade sauce make all the difference. This is a classic pizza place, and is owned by the children of the former owners of the old Mama DeMarinis in Bay View, which closed several years ago.

They even give you the choice to have canned shrooms on your pizza, just like the old school place on Wentworth and Potter. (People think it is weird to offer canned mushrooms, so I wanted to give a plug for the practice. I like my pizza the old fashioned way!)

Nothing trendy or fancy about it, just a good place to get a good meal. It is our go-to when we don't know what we want to eat. Great place to take kids, since they have a game room, and give out coloring pages to the little ones.

The meatball sandwich, and garlic bread are also yummy every time.

Really good pizza! It was a bar on one side and restaurant in the other. Really cool spot. But the pizza stole the show! We ordered a thin crust pizza and it was delicious! I ordered my daughter a Vegan pizza and it tasted like any other pizza you very with meat and dairy products. I can't wait to visit again. The staff was extremely friendly and kind.

Original recipe maybe but definitely NOT the pizza I grew up with!

Came up to visit mom for the holidays. Almost never make it to Milwaukee any more but when I do I always try to order what was my absolute favorite pizza... one from a place called DeMarini's in Bayview. Mind you this was from decades ago. Since then that restaurant split and the location I used to go to even closed. As a substitute i had been going to Dom & Phil DeMarinis. With the couple of times not being as good as the original, I thought I would try Little DeMarinis which is "supposedly" the re-opened one from when I was little.

Service was good ... though I suspect my pick-up order was messed up. 5 pizzas $100 bucks. Great crust, decent sausage, cheese somewhat burnt, but almost non-existent sauce...even though I had ordered extra sauce on three of the pizzas!!! Seriously it was a joke for even normal sauce and poorly made at that as the little sauce that was there was not consistently spread across the pie.

Comments from other guests:

"This is pretty bad"
"Must have given the good cooks the night off" (sorry guys just quoting others and quite frankly it was poorly made)
"There's no sauce on this"
"Hmmm, the regular sauce cheese pizza has more sauce than the extra sauce ones"
"Did they use the sauce amount for the small pizza on the large?"
"This slice has sauce; must have pooled in the corner"

Called to complain. Response was we can remake them. Not really a solution since that's a 30 minute drive and hello I bought 5 large pizzas meaning I have a bunch of family over. Or we can make a note in the system and give you free extra sauce on your next order...gee thanks. Unfortunately, there wasn't anything that really could be done. If I had dined in I would have sent it back.

Don't know what to say... I'm obviously a big fan of proper sauce on my pizza. The sauce used was a great flavor just hardly there. If prepared right, this would have been a pretty good pizza. Even so with the burnt cheese and the sausage -while good- was not as good as what I grew up with....but it would have been close. sigh...

It's been 2+ years since the last time. Next time I'll go back to Dom & Phil's again. :( If they mess it up, I'll give this location one more try. And if that doesn't turn out... hello my new favorite pizza place Patsy Girmaldi's.

We loved the Mama's recipe and were excited to see them reopen in the old legion post. We went there within the first couple weeks of opening and experienced the two hour waits for pizzas. Since they switched up their pizza oven and service went back to normal.

We have been there several times since the opening and every time the crust has been crisp and flaky. However, we posted that we were at Little DeMarininis and the negative reviews kept pouring in. There must have been a bad cook on Feb 7th because two different friends said the crust was soggy and the pizza wasn't good. Ours was cooked perfect but we weren't there on the weekend.

If you aren't in the mood for pizza (which is hard for me to turn down) then I recommend the chicken parm dinner which is big enough to feed two people. The best bet is either the sausage pizza (love their sausage) or the Italian Garden pesto if you are in the veggie mood.

Also, they do make parbaked pizzas that you can finish at home. I just wish they delivered!

I've heard the different DeMarinis are the result of some sort of family squabble, but I hope they can one day realize that the founding generation must have taught them all how to run good restaurants. They share the passed down wisdom, they should be linked by that pride. I didn't find any service problems, just the opposite, they were friendly, fast and accurate. On the customer end, I can see that like the rest of the family, the owner-operator here has the basics down, a solid time tested recipe, well treated hence high morale staff with a sense of attachment to the restaurant, trained to treat customers with respect. But the main question is, which pizza is better? I can taste the difference between the other Bayview "Original Recipe" De Marinis Pizza, which is apparently only about 50 years old, and this even older "original" recipe which may date back to the early 1950s. I like the commitment to consistency. I'm not sure which one I prefer.
When I worked in the private sector (market research number crunching), and made more money, I found that the least ordered pizza topping is anchovies, at about 1%. Given that information, many pizza places don't stock the little fishies, so those that do are special to me. It's in a former VFW, still set up the same way, so the ambiance is quite different than the other deMarinis, this one is a better place if there's a sporting event you want to watch while eating (they are actually closing for the Superbowl though). This one attracts a younger, more ebullient crowd.

We came here for Mother's Day. Everything was delicious and the service was good. The pizza was delicious. I definitely recommend the cheesy garlic bread! Will be going back soon!

This Place does their OWN thing which creates a unique experience that keeps you coming Back. The pizza is Outstanding...... Sausage ers Beware.

I've heard friends and family rave about the pizza here and after due time we decided to try it out. We ordered for carryout a large pizza and a salad. I was really surprised upon arrival to find the place is just a huge U shaped bar with tables scattered around the bar. There were also more people sitting at the bar than the accompanying tables. Seemed more like a bar atmosphere than a pizza place!
The bartender, who addressed me first, went in the back to retrieve my order. Upon return, he politely informed my that their salad "had gone bad" and that he would not be able to fulfill that part of our order. I give kudos to this place for at least being honest instead of serving bad food.
Our pizza was decent, not great! Similar to a lot of other pizza-joints in the area. I'd consider going back again some day to try this place out again.