I was talking to a friend who moved across the country a few years ago. I asked him, when he's visiting home, what's the first place he stops to eat? I don't know what I was expecting, but he caught me off guard when he said Antonio's in Liverpool. I'd never heard of it, and we order a crap load of pizza from wherever we can find it. I live about 25 minutes away, and nobody's talking about them, so the place literally just never occurred to me before then. He's got Antonio's calzones on his mind during his 2-day drive across the country, of all places. I couldn't imagine a better endorsement than that.
Most of my life I've never really been into calzones, but I've been coming around lately after a few good finds. He said it wasn't optional though, so on day 1 we got a chicken wing calzone along with a breakfast pizza. Now I know what you're thinking: "WHICH breakfast pizza?? They have SIX of them!" It wasn't easy to choose, but we went with the meat trio, and it was wild. Too many people are talking about Byrne Dairy breakfast pizza, and it's a tragedy I had to stumble onto this one by chance. Look at the picture. The eggs are fluffy. All three meats are fresh and didn't come from a tin or a hose, or wherever the hell some of these places get their breakfast meats. Most importantly though, the sauce. Breakfast pizza has a nasty habit of being grossly under-sauced, if not completely dry. Absolutely no problems here.
There's plenty we haven't tried here, but the freaking calzones. We got the buffalo chicken, the cheeseburger, and the philly cheesesteak. For starters, they are absolutely massive, and as soft as you can possibly imagine. This especially came into play with the burger and cheesesteak ones that are emulating the experience of a sandwich. Bad bread can suck the life out of a burger or sandwich. These were like a brand new plane of existence. The dough is dense but always soft enough to never get in your way. It goes wherever the contents go, and cradles them in a cloud.
The buffalo chicken was shreddy, tender, and delicious. Super straightforward. The burger calzone was the best burger version of a thing I can remember having. It had pickles and raw onions and was filled with Thousand Island dressing, then came with additional dressing for dipping. I'm assuming it was homemade because I've never appreciated Thousand Island dressing more. We were excited about the philly, because a lot of cheesesteaks we order lose us with the bread. I'm pretty sure these were made with standard Sysco philly slabs, but I've never cared less. We asked if they had cheese sauce we could dip it in, but they didn't. It came with red sauce, but it was a weird match. It went amazing with bleu cheese though.
The last arena you absolutely can't ignore is the mac and cheese. There's a whole section on the menu, and they all sound amazing. We've tried two, and both took Forever to decide on. When I got the first one, I was kind of disappointed that rigatoni was the only pasta choice. While I still maintain that a smaller, twistier pasta would be better, I didn't care for a second while I was eating it. They're absolutely packed and then covered with cheese and sauce. The chicken is always breaded, and the cheese and sauce is always super rich. We did buffalo chicken and CBR, and the flavors are drizzled over top. This is some of the best mac and cheese I can ever remember ordering from a restaurant.
Weird as it is, I could take or leave their regular pizza, and we haven't even tried their wings yet. We get wings from every place we ever go that serves them, so that's kind of a big deal.
This place is extremely underrated and not talked about enough. read more