Matt C.
Yelp
Decent pizza, TERRIBLE service.
SO, after seeing that this place was listed as "...#16 best pizza joints in the world," a claim that I quickly debunked on the internet, I DID see that the Westmont location WAS in fact the #29 best pizza joint in the US. Okay! SO, not being that far, and pizza being one of the only foods my daughter will eat, we headed over to get a slice. Party of 5; 4 adults and 1 6yo.
We arrive and quickly find parking on the street, and walk over to Briccos; an unassuming corner pizza joint. As we walk up, we notice people sitting outside, but there is no host/hostess anywhere. We walk inside, where a TEAM of people are making pizzas, the counter girl is on the phone, and numerous other staff breeze past us, running food or handling other tasks. Still, no one to talk to about seating.....ok....we stand around for like a minute, looking around. We must have looked lost enough that a young man FINALLY asks us whats up, and we tell him we would like to dine in. He looks around the pretty full inside area, and starts doing math in his head. I mention that we saw some tables outside available, and would actually prefer that, so we all head outside. Once there, he sets the table up for FOUR, while he states that he "has to figure out how to get a 5th seat...." We mill about around the table, blocking the sidewalk. We mention that a DIFFERENT table would actually hold all 5 of us easily, so we move over there. The table is dirty, but we don't care at this point. Seating issue resolved, we sit and wait for service. And wait. And wait. It's 7-8 minutes or so, and no one has come by; we don't have silverware for everyone, we don't have menus. I go online and start looking at the online menu. Finally, someone shows up, hands us a carafe of water, and 4 menus. We already know what we want, because I looked it up online, but before we can order, he's gone.
He comes back a few minutes later, with 4 MORE menus, and we tell him that we are ready to order: a large Bricco pizza (basically a plain cheese pizza, and a large Miami; a Bricco pizza with pepperoni, burrata, and calabrian chili honey) and an order of fries.
To be fair, the fries came out pretty fast, with 3 dipping sauces. They were a BIT greasy, but they WERE tasty and the dipping sauces were great; one just plain ol' ketchup, one a spicy aioli, and one a mayo aioli.
The pizzas took FOR. EVER. to come out. Literally, 35-40 minutes. When they DO hit the table, they look great. Coal fired all the way; charred edge, thin crust, but not floppy, nor crunchy. Just a great, toothsome crust. They drop the pizza, and we ask the waiter for another carafe of water. After he leaves, we notice that every other table had a basket of spices/grated cheese/etc, but we were never provided any.
That was the last time we SAW our waiter. He never came to check on us. Never came back with that water. When we were done eating, I had to walk inside to get a to-go box myself. When we finally saw him we begged for the check so we wouldn't have to wait another 30 minutes before seeing him again.
I would say my Briccos experience was more a 2.5, but the service was more bad than the food was good. I would say that ordering takeout from here might be nice, but I wouldn't want to come do a sit down dinner here again. It's a shame, because the pizza WAS good, but the service was not. No greeting, no attention, no follow up, no consistency. Again, I would totally ORDER a pizza from here again, as long as it's strictly pickup or delivery.
