Valentino's Pizza, Grace St.

true dat!

Valentino’s on Grace St. is sometimes a bit too intimidating to check out.  The building nor the area are very inviting, but the pizza is pretty damn good.

I randomly ran in to fellow Pampariyte, Andy, while I was riding through campus today and whats a better thing for us to do than grab a couple afternoon slices?

I told Andy about my trip to DaVinci’s and that I heard there was another one in Church Hill or something.  It turns out that there was a DaVinci’s in the Coliseum Mall on 5th street downtown.  We rode down there and found the mall to be abandoned, or at least under construction.  We peered inside and sure enough there was a DaVinci’s.

Then we checked out Leon, on 2nd street and Marshall?  Not sure, but they had no pizza dough so we had to move on.  We continued up 2nd street and spotted the green, red and white stripes of the Italian flag wrapping around Valentino’s.  Of Course!  How could we forget about this place.  All these years and I had never so much as thought of stopping in here for a slice.  Crummy facade aside, we dive in.

postin' it up, curbside

The inside of this place is filthy.  Honestly, this time of year, I would do my best not to touch anything in here.  Instead, we opted to sit on the curb and enjoy the brisk fall weather with our hot slices.

Andy described the flavor of these cheese slices the best; buttery.  It kind tastes like the butter that they use at Auntie Mae’s Pretzels, or whatever the fuck that place is called.  Everything was sweet and buttery, which is kind of weird.

The crust ends tasted kind of stale, like our slices may have been sitting out for a little while before they re-heated them.  The sauce was fairly generic and sweet, typical of a cheap tomato sauce.  I do think they are a little over priced.  Both DaVinci’s and Vito’s are cheaper and better.  All in all, it wasn’t a bad pizza at all.  I enjoyed my slice and I look forward to having my 2nd slice when I grab it from Andy’s fridge later.  I didn’t ride with a bag so Andy put the boxes in his gnarly baskets to take home for me.

-gRant