Shebella’s Pizza & Deli
7035 East 96th Street
Indianapolis, Indiana  46250
http://www.shebellas.com/

For what seemed like an eternity, I had been driving by this place on my way to and from work seeing a Coming Soon sign.  Finally on June 17th, Shebella’s opened for business announcing that they had a daily pizza, pasta and salad buffet in addition to their regular menu.  Within a week after their opening, I was feeling particularly gluttonous, so I decided to give it a shot and what better way than a buffet is there to try out a variety of foods at new restaurant?

Based on my horrid experience at Luca Pizza, I tried to time up this visit around the dinner rush so that I would not have any problems with the buffet not being replenished.  Despite this, Shebella’s still had problems keeping the buffet stocked and the food warm, but I’ll give them a pass on that one since they had only been open a week at the time and they specifically told me that they learned a lot that night and were going to implement changes.

What I Got:  Pizza, Pasta and Salad Buffet $7.99.

I tried as much as I possibly could in order to do a variety of tasting of their sizeable menu, so let’s start with the pizza:

I should have put up a sugar packet as a frame of reference, but these pieces of pizza were cut small like your traditional buffet pizza cuts.  On the buffet, they had the common pizzas like cheese, pepperoni, pepperoni/sausage, supreme pizza, as well as my hated Hawaiian pizza.  Later, they also threw out a dessert pizza consisting of cherry topping and icing  (didn’t try it) and as far as taste was concerned, this wasn’t all that great.  Don’t get me wrong, it was edible enough and the sauce used was tantalizingly sweet, but the crust was spongy/soft and the cheese was just one gelatinous, glue-like mess.  Honestly, this tasted like school cafeteria pizza and that’s not a compliment.

Also on the buffet were multiple kinds of pasta ranging from tri-color rotini to fettucini to macaroni and cheese to cheese ravioli.  To compliment your pastas, they also had meatballs and two kinds of pasta sauces (marinara and alfredo; didn’t try any of the alfredo because I am a marinara junky).

First on my plate was the fettucini topped with marinara sauce and also macaroni and cheese.  Taste wise, it would appear that they used the same sweet marinara sauce as they did for the pizza and I already said that I was a fan of that.  The macaroni and cheese was exceptionally cheesy and gooey, but mostly bland.  If they wanted to make this a little better, they should start using sharper/stronger cheeses.  The meatballs also suffered from the same affliction:  blandness.  They lacked any real flavor other than chewy meat (they were tender).  If they mixed in some extra Italian spices like garlic, basil, etc., they may have winners here because they were sizeable.

Next on the pasta adventure was the stuffed ravioli and yes, more meatballs (I’ve had a meatball craving recently and even though these were bland, I kept eating them).

I will say that the ravioli was the best out of all the pastas that I tried.  It needed to be cooked a little longer so that the cheese would melt a little better, but all in all these were pretty solid tasting.  They were stuffed with ricotta cheese and then baked in the aforementioned sweet marinara sauce.  Like most everything on the buffet, they could have used a little bit more Italian flavoring to give them some kick, but these like I said, not a bad taste at all.  Also, each of these ravioli shells were quite large.

Finally, let’s take a look a the breadsticks and salad bar (they also had two soups available).

The breadsticks were just standard breadsticks although they were dusted with garlic butter and parmesan cheese and I found that to be a good thing as I liked these breadsticks.  I didn’t try any, but they also had nacho cheese sauce available as a dipping sauce for the breadsticks.

As for the salad bar, it was stocked with your general collection of salad toppings, macaroni salads, pasta salads, fruits, puddings, etc.  In terms of selection on the salad bar, I will say that Shebella’s did a good job here because they had just about everything that you would ordinarily want on a salad bar and everything was fresh.  This may seem like somewhat of blasphemy, but I would say that their salad bar was nearly as good as the Ruby Tuesday salad bar (the king of all salad bars).

Would I Buy It Again? Well, if you are asking about the Pizza, Pasta and Salad buffet, I would say no.  Everything here was edible and the price wasn’t too bad, but it wasn’t good enough to make me want it again.

As far as future visits to Shebella’s, I’m still undecided.  I would definitely stay away from the pizza and pasta items on the menu, but since this place is also a deli (not a true deli like Shapiro’s and the like, more like a pre-made sandwich kind of place), I will admit that I’m kind of intrigued by some of the sandwiches on the menu, so I may try one of those in the future.

Still this is a locally owned business with a staff that was obviously trying their best by putting a lot of work and pride into what they were doing, so that alone may be enough to get me to go in and give the sandwiches and this place one more shot.

-IndianapolisEater

Apezza
10122 Brooks School Rd
Fishers, IN 46037
http://apezzapizza.com/

A new entrant to the Geist area is Apezza, which is located in the same strip shopping center as Scotty’s Lakehouse.  This place prides itself on its homemade pizzas and says on their website “Our pizza takes a little longer…but it’s sure worth the wait!”  I’m always a little leery of a pizza place that hypes up its gourmet factor, but I was willing to give this place a shot.  Apezza is a delivery and carryout only business, so it has to be approached as such.

What I Got:  Large Meat Lovers Pizza ($18.95) and an order of Garlic Butter Breadsticks ($3.95).

First things first, the menu says that this large pizza can feed four to six people and I will say that is definitely the case if you have a group of “normal” eaters.  We had a group of six heavy eaters and we only needed a small pizza on top of this in order to fill ourselves up, so that gives you a indication of the size.

Taste-wise, this was delicious.  The sauce was fresh and sweet and it was overloaded with meat and that’s always a positive.  The fact that I have to point that out when ordering a meat lovers pizza just shows how careless some other places get with their “meat lovers” pizzas.  The meats included sausage, pepperoni, bacon and ham and all of them seemed fresh too, so that was a positive as well.

Apezza also claims that they use three different cheeses on their pizzas and while I don’t have a sophisticated enough pallet to tell you what those three cheeses are, I could definitely tell that they had more than your typical mozzarella on top of this pizza.  All of the cheeses were melted perfectly and that is another positive, especially when comparing it to other delivery pizzas.  What made this good was that the cheese tasted like real cheese and not some plastic composite because and that’s got to be because it was fresh cheese and not something that was frozen and shipped across the country from a warehouse.

We got a regular crust (thin is also available) and my goodness, it was also perfect.  It was cracker like and crunchy and admittedly, I’m not a big fan of that type of crust but I was a big fan of this crust.  Again, not something that you would get from a typical pizza delivery joint and I think that is what made it so wonderful.  Also, even though this was a regular crust, it was still somewhat thin.  I can only imagine that the thin crust must be super thin!

The breadsticks were also delicious.  They were large, doughy and if you like garlic butter, you’ll love these because they were slathered in it.  The funny thing about these breadsticks was that even tough they were doughy, they weren’t heavy.  They were huge, yet actually kind of light.  That was definitely interesting, but it made them taste all that much better since it didn’t feel like you were eating a big block of bread going all the way down and I can certainly appreciate that.

Would I Buy It Again?  Absolutely yes. It costs a little bit more than your typical delivery pizza (especially with the $10 pizza wars going on) and you’ll probably need a few friends in order to finish it, but the extra cost is definitely worth it because the taste of the pizza and breadsticks more than make up for it.  I’m glad this pizza place has moved into the Geist area because now we not only have a place that is delicious, but we also have someplace else to get our pizza other than Domino’s, Papa John’s, Hot Box, etc.  Thank goodness.

They also swear by their wings, so next time I order from here, I’m definitely going to try to give the wings a shot as well because if the pizza and breadsticks are any indication, I’ve got to believe the wings are going to be pretty good too.

-IndianapolisEater

Luca Pizza di Roma
7407 N. Shadeland Avenue
Indianapolis, Indiana
http://www.pizzadiroma.com/nam/index.php?lang=en&region=nam

I was driving around one random Sunday weeks ago and came across this place.  I’ve known this place from the Castleton Square Mall for years (most of their locations are in mall food courts) but I didn’t know that they had locations outside of the mall, so I was intrigued.  When I got closer, I saw the sign for the All You Can Eat Buffet and I was hooked.  Unfortunately, I had already eaten lunch that day, so I went back a week later and gave the buffet a shot.

What I Got:  All You Can Eat Buffet $6.99 (drink not included)

I went with two friends and when we walked in on a Saturday around 11:45, we were the only ones there, so that was not a good sign.  We walked in and asked if they had the buffet going and they said they would get it going.  Again, not a good sign that they were totally unprepared for something despite the fact that they open at 10:00 or 10:30.

They threw a couple of pizzas and some breadsticks in the oven (they already had lettuce salad, pasta salad and cookies out on the buffet, so at least they were partially set up).  I’ll just go through this by the types of menu items they had out there.

Pizza:  This wasn’t their normal huge size pizza by the slice type pizza that they put out there at the mall.  These were normal sized (think a medium pizza at any pizza place) and they were pretty basic types of pizza.  Sausage and pepperoni, pepperoni, etc.  The pizza was fairly tasty, but the lack of originality and the lack of pizzas being changed out was very disappointing.  Granted, we were the only three in there but I was hoping I could have a pizza that wasn’t just a normal type of pizza.

Breadsticks:  After a bit, they took a batch of these out of the oven and I must say, these things were awesome.  They weren’t stuffed or anything like that…they were just basic breadsticks and they were wonderful.  I’ve never been a huge breadstick guy, but I could have sat there and eaten these all day long (I did have about five of them, so I did do some damage).  They also included a nacho cheese style dip (not a fan, so didn’t try it) and a marinara style dip (runny, gross and flavorless).

Salad Bar:  Didn’t have any, but this was just your basic salad mix that you see at the grocery store with lettuce, carrots, cabbage, etc.  There was some shredded cheese to throw on there, but that is about it.  They just had basic dressings as well (Ranch, French, Italian, etc.).  Boring.

Pasta:  At first, they had two mayonnaise based pasta salads out there.  One was your basic tri-color rotini with broccoli, etc. (boring and essentially flavorless) and the other was a small shell shaped pasta (like you might find in some macaroni and cheeses) that included chunks of bacon and honestly, it was awesome.  Later, they threw out some spaghetti that they didn’t strain that was watery and terrible.  The marinara sauce you were supposed to use was the same one for the breadsticks, so that was depressing.

“Dessert”:  They had chocolate chip cookies out and I’m a huge cookie lover and will eat almost any type of cookie and like it, but these were awful.  They tasted just like the cheap store brand cookies that you get at the grocery store that are dry and hard.  Not cool at all.

Would I Buy It Again?  Most likely not.  I really was upset after this experience because I was really looking forward to it.  The only way that this place could ever give a positive experience is that if you went there during the busy part of the day when they were continually cycling food and fresh pizzas out of there.  The funny thing is, I’m not sure when the busy part of the day would be because of the location of this place.  It is near an office park, but I don’t think that office park could sustain it to stay busy enough to make it worth it.  You’d almost have to rally twenty of your friends to go with you so that the kitchen would stay busy.

That said, if you want a calzone, this is your place.  As I was depressingly looking at the buffet, I looked over at the “regular” food and saw some of the most delicious looking calzones that I’ve ever seen in my life.  I wish I had gone that route instead of the buffet.  Oh well, from now on, I’ll just stick to ordering by the individual slice at the Luca in the mall.  By the way, even as depressing as this place was, it is still better than CiCi’s.  Just thinking about that place makes me want to gag.

-IndianapolisEater

Bella Pizzeria
3855 E. 96th Street
Indianapolis, Indiana
http://www.thebellapizza.com/

I’ve been on a big pizza by the slice kick recently and being that this place was close to my office, I decided to stop by for lunch one Friday.  Bella Pizzeria is a New York-style pizzeria and has a variety of slices, breadsticks, calzones, etc.   In addition to traditional New York-style thin crust, they also have thick crust pizza as well.

Anytime Special

What I Got:  Anytime Special; one slice of pizza with two breadsticks $6.49 ($7.07 with tax)

As you can see above, I elected the sausage, mushroom and pepperoni combination (my favorite pizza combination, by the way).  The toppings on the pizza were plentiful and tasty, although it did seem that the mushrooms were the canned variety which is a negative.  Despite that, this was a decent tasting slice of pizza.  The only issue with the slice was that the crust was not all that pliable, so when I tried to fold it in half like your customary New York-style pizza, it broke in half.  A definite fail there.

The breadsticks I chose were pepperoni stuffed breadsticks (they also had regular and cheese stuffed) and they were very filling.  Tastewise, they were only mediocre as they were overwhelmed with dough and did not have enough pepperoni and cheese stuffing.  The marinara dipping sauce was also very runny, although it did have a very good and sweet taste.  If it had been a little thicker, this would have been one of the best marinara sauces that I had ever had at a pizza joint.

Would I Buy It Again?  I guess so, but only because it was filling, I like New York-style pizza and it is close to my office.  The prices were a little high for my liking, but in terms of getting something like this for lunch, I guess this will do.  That’s not a ringing endorsement, so if you have other alternatives nearby to where you are that would allow you to get New York-style pizza, I would recommend giving those a shot before you try this one.

FYI, they also have locations at Hamilton Town Center and Clay Terrace Mall.

-IndianapolisEater

GUSTO!
7153 Southeastern Ave.
Indianapolis, IN 46239
317-356-5113
http://www.Gustoindy.com

When a restaurant moves from Fountain Square to Franklin Township it seems odd.  I had not been to the Gusto! location in Fountain Square but take a look at the photo and you have to wonder how this sad, windowless building in a shady looking strip mall could be thought of as a positive move.  That being said, I’m here to review the chow, not the business acumen of the owner.  Since this is relatively close to my home and provides a new, allegedly tasty dining option for me and my south-side brethren, it’s all good.  Or not.

What I had: With my wife and four year old daughter, we stopped in for dinner on a Friday night.  Only a couple of tables occupied in a room that despite some obviously fresh paint looked as it could have been Mr. Brady’s basement.  Very 1970’s.   We ordered a small cheese pizza (8” $5.99) for my daughter, breadsticks ($4.99) and “The Works” (16” $17.99) for us.  The place started to fill up and the single server was absolutely running her tail off.  Not only taking care of the dining room but also the phone and carry-out orders.  We asked that the cheese pizza arrive with the breadsticks and they did.  It was cheese pizza, whatever.  The breadsticks were the type that is simply pizza crust cut into strips, not the hand- rolled variety noted on the menu.  They were flat out terrible.  So dry they seemed to suck the moisture out of my fingers when I picked them up.  Lots of tasteless herbs and spices scattered on top as well.

Thirty minutes later the server informs us that the oven “Flared-up” and burned our pizza.  A new one has been made and will be out immediately.  For our trouble we are offered a 10% credit to our bill.  I’m not happy but I am still hungry.  Apparently “will be out immediately” means 30 minutes later at Gusto!   By the time our pizza arrived it was very late, we had been at the table for 90 minutes and we had to go.  So I had the pie boxed and carried out.  Once we got home, still hungry of course, the dagger.  This pizza was absolutely raw and doughy in the middle.  Are you friggin’ kidding me?

Would I Buy It Again?  No! In my many years of eating in thousands of places, there is just a handful that I wouldn’t give a second try.  The server at Gusto! is the only reason that I would be tempted but nope, never going back.

To be fair, I called the restaurant and in a calm, polite manner told them exactly what I wrote above.  The server answered the phone (Of course she did!) and she apologized.  Still not going back.

-Smokin DB