I have had some bad restaurant experiences, but never have I felt like a place misrepresented the product deliberately to rip me off. At A Casa, I felt that way.
The girl who answered the phone was helpful & patient, so she gets the 1 star. Otherwise, the food is -2 stars, at best.
If the other reviews are real, I cannot believe anyone around here would have such poor taste in pizza. I should have known better when no other "Yelper" had a photo, nor did they have more than 8 total reviews to their name.
The "shop" where my husband went to pick this up looked barren. You can tell this is not a hot spot for food, & NO ONE else was in there, nor arriving or leaving as my husband was there, like you'd normally see with popular (or even less-popular) establishments. Very weird.
First, as you can see in my photos, the "pizza" looks nothing like the photos on their website or menu. What we got (2 pizzas for $30) was totally NOT a representation of what they advertised, it was way inferior in all ways.
I asked for (+ paid extra for) the oat bran crust, which was conveniently described in a marketable way by another "reviewer." As you can see in my photos, this "oat bran" crust is not what I got at all, & there was no "touch of honey & nuttiness flavor," like the other reviewer claimed there would be. The "oat bran" crust looked & tasted NO different from the regular crust we got. It tasted stale first & foremost, beyond that it tasted like bleached processed grains, & had the aftertaste of processed food. So we were up-charged for nothing.
I was also told over the phone by the girl at A Casa, that the Sicilian Tomato Pie (another up-charge) would be "thicker crust," & that the sauce would be "really thick," which it was not at all. See my side-profile shot. It was thin as can be. It too tasted sour, canned & NOT homemade.
As you can see in the photos, the Hawiian pizza we bought ($17.95 + up-charge for oat bran crust + tax = $20.62) has about 5 bits of topping per slice, which is really sparse. Most pizza places would be ashamed to try to pawn something like that off on their customers. Toppings tasted like can drive donations. One pepper for ten pizzas.
Why hasn't any other "reviewer" posted a photo of their food or their visit? Weird.
The cheese was REALLY cheap. It was the kind of mozz that feels like plastic, both before & AFTER you cook it. My mother used to buy factory-made bake-at-home pizza kits as fundraisers for the school where she taught, and those always had rubbery cheap cheese; this was just like that. Bounces around like a rubber ball in your stomach after eating it, and sticks to your organs as toxic sludge in your body for the rest of your life.
Unfortunately for us, we fell for the Yelp "reviews," which were either fake, or left by people who curiously never ate real pizza, ever in their lives. We paid a lot MORE than we would at good pizza shops (Pinocchio's being top on my list, or nearby La Porta for artisan pizza) to get an inferior pizza, which we then had to cook ourselves. Who on earth would want to do that???
To be 110% honest, I could have bought Red Baron at the grocery store for the same quality, but much better taste.
My husband makes pizza from scratch which is outstanding, & we both regretted not having him cook instead of believing these misleading reviews tonight. NOT 5 stars by a LONG shot. NO WAY! If this gross pizza is 5 stars, my husband's homemade recipe belongs on the cover of Food & Wine Magazine.
Unfortunately, A Casa is totally misrepresented on Yelp! Total waste of our money!
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Update (6/7/15) shortly after my original review, which noted the other "reviewers" with under 8 reviews to their name, & suggested they were faux reviews, suddenly three of those people magically add photos to their profile. Really? Kind of an odd coincidence, especially for people who haven't posted a review for several years. How convenient. They just randomly said, "Hey, I better check up on my A Casa review of that one time I ever ate pizza in my life, and perhaps I should spend the time to add a photo to make sure my years-old review appears legitimate..." Right. read more