My husband and I went out Friday night, Feb 1, 2012 and decided to go to Impellizzeri's for dinner. It wasn't packed, slammed and nothing was going on at the Yum! Center, so I figured it was a regular Friday night crowd.
         He order the lasagna which had hardly any lasagna pasta in it. It was filled with plenty of cheese and topped with ground up beef. My husband said it resembled the flavor of Hamburger Helper.
         I had the 10 hot wings and they were not a messy kind of sauce. A little dry for my liking and they used red peper flakes to make the wings hot.
After being seated in one of the back booths, our server came over and asked if we were ready to order. We said no but did order 2 beers. Some time passed and the manager saw us sitting there and retrieved our beers for us at the bar and served us. Finally our actual server arrives and asked for our food order.
        About 20 mins. pass and an expo (someone who expedites the food orders) walks by and my husband says to me "There goes our food" as it passed our table. Three minutes later, the expo girl comes by and finally delivers our food. We saw our server walking past us several times, but not once did she come by our table to ask if we need anything else or if the food was good.
        As I ate my 2nd hot wing, I ran out of beer, as did my husband. We set our empty glasses at the edge of our table in hopes our server would walk by and see our thirst dilema; however, a busser came by and swiped the emptys. So we sat there with no beverages or signs we even had a beverage. Still, NO  server to be found. We finally flagged down the manager who initially served us our beers. We asked for only water and at that point we were done.
       The manager comes by and says she has our beer we ordered at the bar coming? We looked at her like she was crazy because we never ordered anything else. She said well they were on the house. As I already stated, we were done. I looked at her and said no thank you, we ordered water from her (the manager) because we had only seen our server twice and now we would like a box.
       The manager knew we had been done wrong as she only charged us for half our meal. If my husband had not already put the $18 charge on a card, I would have dropped a $20 and walked out. I was overly generous in tipping for our server who came to the table a total of 3 times: 1. Drink order  2. Food order 3. Asked if we were ready for our check. I left her two $1 bills and four quarters.
        2 bite, 2 minute rule!!! Check on your tables!! Obviously, she wasn't working for tips.
Friend and I had some time to kill before a concert at the Yum! Center (came from out of town) and we decided to grab a few beers at Impellizzeri's because it's the first place we came across and they had an empty bar and lots of TVs. Â
Five hours, a barrage of craft beers and an order of the best cheese breadsticks later, we hadn't moved from our barstools and the place was completely packed. Â Definitely a good pre-Yum spot if you're in town for a game/concert.
I went while visiting Louisville with a co-worker one night after work. Â I grew up in Louisville and had experienced the awesomeness of the original Impellizzeri's on Bardstown Road when it was basically just a bright lit storefront, and I really looked forward to trying it out again.
I was surprised to see the nice new location on Main Street. Â The atmosphere was warm and woodsy, with a big stage but no performers that night. Â However it was pretty loud in there with other office folks cutting loose at a nearby table.
I hate to say but our waiter was pretty rude. Â Any question we asked was met with sarcasm. Â Question: "How big is the Chopped Salad?" Â Answer... "As big as the Ceasar Salad." Â Naturally we were asking in case it was served family style for the 2 of us ladies to share. Â There were a few episodes like that with him, and we were both put off and felt a bit offended. Â Why do that to your customers? Â It must be tough for some folks to be friendly and hospitable.
After getting through the pain of dealing with our snippy waiter, her Chopped Salad and my Garden Salad came fresh and tasty. Â Then the Sampler Pizza was served and we had no problem putting down a few slices. Â However, it wasn't nearly as thick and heavy as I remember them to be. Â For a Small, 9 Topping Pizza and $30.00, I expected that rich, thick, dream pizza I used to get, but it wasn't a whole lot better than your average pizza.
I'm glad to see them doing so well, but it seems to have come at the cost of quality and small business friendliness.
Ate here with family on a Friday night. Despite that, we were seated almost immediately.
Good: The breadsticks were possibly the best I've ever had. Pillowy sticks of soft dough, brown on top and swimming in a sea of garlic butter.
Meh: The pizza, surprisingly. We ordered a large pepperoni and homemade Italian sausage on the original crust. The crust was pretty nondescript, with no real character or texture to it, while the sauce was lacking in something. The pepperoni seemed fairly standard, while the sausage was in such small pieces that it was hard to get much sense of how it tasted.
Bad: Being seated next to the "stage" where a local guitar duo was performing. Very hard to hear any conversation at the table. Also, our waiter was slow, would disappear at times and had to be asked to bring silverware. On the other hand, he was quick in getting drinks for us.
The rating is higher than it would be otherwise solely on the strength of the breadsticks.
This restaurant was extremely overpriced for a product that underdelivered. Â Our first indication that there was a problem was the fact that there were only two tables filled when we walked into the location on Whiskey Row during the dinner hour on Tuesday night. Â The pizzas ranged in price from $14.99 for a medium cheese pizza (+$2 for each topping) to $49.99 for a super pizza with most of the specialty pizzas ranging from $25-$35 for a medium. Â As a point of comparison, Bearnos, which is directly across the street, charges $17-$21 for their medium specialty pizzas with their super pizza being $31.99 and a medium cheese pizza being $11.99 (+$1.49 per topping). As we looked over the menu we hoped that Impellizzeri's would be worth the significant price difference. Â So, we ordered a medium cheese pizza on original crust and an order of breadsticks. Â When the breadsticks came they were floating tray of garlic oil. Â I went through a stack of napkins trying to eat them. Â This would have been much better served in a bowl as a dipping sauce. Â They also served marinara sauce with the breadsticks which we were later charged an extra $1.50 for even though we had not requested the sauce. Â When the pizza arrived it was decent but not anything extraordinary. Â It did have an abundance of cheese on it and the crust was crispy but the sauce was underseasoned and overall the pizza didn't stand out. Â I really think that Impellizzeri's either needs to lower their price point to be able to compete with Bearno's accross the street or they need to become more interesting and innovative to compete with Garage Bar which is just a few blocks away. Â Right now I'm afraid that they are quickly fading away in the Louisville pizza scene because they simply aren't delivering the product that is demanded from the price point that they are trying to compete in.
Review Source:Impellizzeri's looked fantastic from the sidewalk. In fact, it looked so good as we were walking by, that we decided to go there after the Bats baseball game. It was about 9 p.m., so we got seated immediately. There were maybe 4 or 5 other tables full. The interior itself was nice, felt inviting and relaxing.
We ordered a pizza and breadsticks (one other girl got chicken alfredo). The breadsticks really were pretty good. But, some good bread covered in garlic butter will work for me anytime. They were, however, quite enormous.
I couldn't quite decide on the pizza, but I think I ended up slightly disappointed. The crust was amazing, and it had pretty good flavor. However, there was mounds of cheese (yes, I do believe in too much cheese) and it wasn't quite browned enough.
The toppings were pretty scarce, especially when paying $2.50 for each topping. It was still a good pizza, but not quite what we expected when passing by.
Upon moving to Louisville, it was evident to me that pizza was important to this city. As someone who appreciates having a variety of different pizza offerings available to me, this fact was important to me. Early on, Impellizzeri's seemed like one of the must-try places. It took me a while to venture to one of their locations, but a LivingSocial deal for the downtown location finally pushed my wife and I over the edge.
We went for an early dinner and despite the fact that this place was pretty empty were sat in a booth down a hall all the way in the back of the restaurant. This wasn't a big deal to us but seemed odd. Overall, the interior was a little too big and sparse for my liking and didn't give me that warm feeling that I want from a pizza place.
As mentioned above, we had a LivingSocial for this place, so the financial damage was going to be minimized but I was still shocked at how expensive this place was. A medium pizza starts at $14.99 with toppings being an additional $2.50 each. That sounds very high to me, but could be justified if they really delivered. The wife and I decided to order a pizza with bacon, mushroom and garlic, as this has become our de facto barometer pizza used to compare the offerings from competing pizza joints.
The service here was pretty good and the wait for the pizza was not bad, but when it came out, it honestly was just not very appealing to the eye. I'm sure this is no surprise to any Impellizzeri's regulars, but this thing is loaded with cheese. While this style of pizza is not my favorite, if done well, it can be a nice alternative. Unfortunately, our pizza was not done well, meaning that this thing felt severely undercooked. Even thinking about it now makes me a little nauseous, as it just tasted doughy and cheesy, but not in a good way, as nothing was bubbly or browned. To top it all off (excuse the pun), those $2.50 toppings were severely lacking. The bacon resembled bacon bits and the mushrooms were paper-thin.
Overall, I was pretty disappointed with Impellizzeri's. It is not a huge deal to me, because there are so many great pizza places in Louisville I have already enjoyed and many more I wish to try. I will allow it is possible that the downtown location may be weaker than the others or that we were simply served a poorly prepared pizza, but in reality, the experience was so lacking and so overpriced that I certainly will not be returning to Impellizzeri's of my own volition.
I went for lunch with 2 friends on 2/23. We, like another reviewer, were seated at the very end of the hallway, despite a mostly empty main dining area. I suspect they do this because it's closer to the kitchen, and less walking for the servers.
I was happy to be going there because I've heard good things from others. Unfortunately, I was disappointed. The pizza is very expensive, and too much for one person to have for lunch. Â I got a stromboli and side salad. The salad was good, but the stromboli was pretty forgettable. They also only have pint glasses of beer.
I paid about $18 before tip for a strom, side salad, and pint of beer, for a casual weekday lunch. My opinion is, Impellizzeri's is the place to go if money is no object - and neither is value or great food. I won't be back.
When I moved to Louisville, I was surprised at the number of independent pizzerias. Each seemed to have its own cult following, but the one I heard about most was Impellizzeri's. The day there was a LivingSocial deal, there were many excited people around the office clicking "Buy Now!" I figured this was a great chance for me to try their pizza, and luckily for me, the coupon was for the downtown location.
Hubs and I decided to cash in our voucher after picking up our race packets for the Big Hit half marathon at Slugger Field. We sat down to an early dinner (around 5), and after much discussion between hostesses, we were seated at the booth down a hall as far in the back as you could go without sitting in the kitchen. The interior is pretty huge, and there were maybe 5 other parties in the whole restaurant. It was a strange choice, but ultimately didn't really matter.
What we noticed first were the prices. The prices of the specialty pizzas seemed unbelieveably high (who would ever pay $26 for a small deluxe?) , and the build-your-own pizza option we chose seemed reasonable ($14.99 for a medium cheese on original crust) until you see that they charge $2.50(!) per topping. We ordered our favorite - bacon, mushroom, and garlic - which brough the total to $22.49. Fine. If it was great pizza, then it would be worth the price. But the thing is, it's not great pizza. I'm not sure it's even good pizza.
The first thing we noticed when it was brought to our table was "whoa, cheese!" The weight of the pie was at least 2/3 from the cheese, which was just melted, and not at all bubbly or browned. The fact that they have the option to order extra cheese (for $3 nonetheless!) seems like a sick joke. All the cheese could have been okay if the toppings were just as plentiful to balance the amount of cheese (especially given the $7.50 price tag) but sadly that was not the case. The bacon was small crumbles, the garlic was unseen (but tasted), and the mushrooms were sliced paper thin. The crust was surprisingly crisp and good, and overall taste was fine, but I could barely finish 1 1/2 slices, even after removing giant blobs of quickly-hardening cheese. The leftovers have been sitting in our fridge untouched, and I don't really have any desire to try another slice anytime soon.
Luckily, we checked yelp right before we ordered and got the breadsticks as an appetizer. Â They were warm and soft and buttery, and came with pizza sauce for dipping (which we were later charged an additional $1.50 for, but did not specifically order...) and were the only bright spot in the meal.
Overall, don't waste your time or money. There are plenty of pizza places in Louisville making pies right.
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