First time diner at Giovanni's last night. Took a date there, food was fantastic! The homemade bread is marvelous. The deep-fried ravioli as an appetizer was great. I have nothing to say negative. Will go back again real soon. read more

The best pizza in Dayton if you like thin crust and flavorful sauce with fresh meat. The best is a meat lovers with extra sauce on top. The atmosphere is more family oriented for small town regulars rather than a quiet night out or date night. Be prepared to wait for a table on Friday or Saturday if you don't make reservations. read more

This place is a local staple and I'm afraid I've gotten roped in with the rest of them who have lived here longer than a year. I agree with other reviews about this places problems. The seating is awkward with long tables down the middle that make for LOUD groups at lunch. The pizza is very good however, if you like thin crust only. Pasta is fairly decent. I will continue to go .....cause I'm a local now and it's just what you do!! read more

Found this restaurant by accident, but the food was out of this world. The pasta and sauce were phenomenal. One of the very best Italian restaurants in Ohio IMHO. Service was also excellent. read more

This place looks like it has been open without updating for the last half century. It probably begged for restaurant impossible to do a make over and failed there too! Do go if you are looking for comfort, nice tables, good art work, fresh looking place settings, sparkling floors. This is the place to go to when you treat the football team to lunch. Pizza is OK. read more

The best pizza in the area. I never get around to ordering the pasta dishes, because I've loved the pizza since I was about 15, so I can't say anything about it. Thin crunchy crust, loaded with cheese, distinctive sausage flavor.... I've never had a disappointing meal here. The salads are unremarkable, breads don't excite me, but for a wonderful pizza, this is the place. Good cheesecake, too, if you've got room for dessert. Don't expect anything all that fancy - we're talking family style pizza house with vinyl table cloths. Do expect a crowd on Friday and Saturday evenings and get reservations. read more

Best pizza I have ever had anywhere, including Italy. Thin crust is amazing and sauce is wonderful. Pasta dishes are great...especially the "sausage and pasta" with bowtie pasta and a unique tomato cream sauce. I have friends from all over the world who make Giovanni's a mandatory stop whenever they are TDY to Wright-Patt. Note that they are closed on Mondays read more

Love the pizza... Best in town. The house dressing is way to spicy and overpowering but everything is over all wonderful! Can't wait to come back for more! read more

I have eaten here a couple of times a month for 12+ years now. The pizza is a little different from most but that makes it some of the best I have ever eaten! If you are ever in Fairborn, Giovanni's is a MUST! read more

We just went to Giovanni's on 23 Feb. They have recently changed their pizza and it's terrible!!! They are very stingy with the toppings. That was the only positive thing about their pizza before so it looks like we will look for a new pizza place read more

Giovanni's - This is supposed to be a large!! - Italian Near Me - Fairborn, Ohio

I wasn't even sure how to rate this place because our day was so confusing. It was our first time ever being there. We got there (Sunday March 18), and had GREAT service from the bartender Jeff. We had lovely appetizers (amaaaazing calamari) great pizza, incredible wine! But.....then this waitress (Carrie) basically attacked the bartender--she was pushing him and yelling at him (in front of all of us!) and while he was doing his best to diffuse the situation, this girl wouldn't back down. I've never seen someone so unprofessional in my life. If not for the great service we had gotten from Jeff before this awful situation, we would never set foot back in this place! It took the atmosphere from welcoming to trashy VERY quickly. We will be back (cautiously), but I highly recommend calling ahead to make sure Carrie won't be working so that you won't get a front row seat to such a horrible display of unprofessionalism by this woman (who I would venture to hope doesn't work there anymore since she did this in front of over half of the customers). Anyway, enjoy the great service at the bar (Jeff made sure even after the uncomfortable situation that we were taken care of and happy), get a carafe of wine, and enjoy some calamari and great atmosphere! read more

Great thin crust pizza, nice evening bar and an interesting Italian menu beyond the pizza.

I love pizza! All kinds of pizza.... & when I'm looking for thin crust, I go to Giovanni's. I usually get extra pizza sauce on the bottom because my family and I like it saucy! Their Tiramisu is authentic and delicious and Carl (one of the bartenders) makes a tasty Choclotini. read more

Our family has been coming here literally forever. My Dad tells a story about me crawling underneath the tables as a toddler. I've never had a bad meal here. We almost always get pizza and salad. I've had a few of the entrees, appetizers, and sandwiches and haven't been disappointed. Giovanni's is known for its pizza. read more

My family and I went here hoping for great pizza. There is even a sign on the building saying voted best pizza in town! ... I think not. The pizza was not that good at all, my children wouldn't even eat it and they love pizza! I ordered pepperoni and mushrooms, the pizza was hot but the mushrooms were cold! My husband ordered BBQ chicken wings and I have no idea what we got. The wings were not fully cooked, the "BBQ sauce" was light almost clear, and they tasted like ham! Like a honey glazed ham! The waiter even said, here are your BBQ wings! I ordered bruschetta, that is not what I received. What I received was hard bread with a big pile of chunky onions on top all covered in olive oil! To top off this complaint, the floor was filthy and my husband said the men's bathroom was disgusting. We will never go there again. read more

I have come here a few times to have lunch with one of my girl buddies- we always get the lunch specials. They are very reasonably prices, though not all are good. The Italian sub is great- definitely my favorite thing on the lunch menu! The spaghetti and meatballs isn't so great- the meatballs were bland and my pasta was drowning in sauce :/ I'd say this place is hit or miss in terms of quality. The prices are great though- $5.99 for a very filling lunch. read more

Ate here for the first time after a meeting in Fairborn. I ordered the eggplant parm, one of my favorite dishes. It came with a side salad, and I opted for the house dressing, even after the waitress stressed its garlic-y-ness. She also let us know that there was a 30-minute wait for eggplant parm (also for lasagna), so points for honesty. The salad was not very appetizing, looked dumped from a bag with a few fresh garnishes, and the dressing was awful--not only so full of garlic it burned the mouth, but with an odd sour taste as well (a creamy dressing that tastes sour is off-putting). My hopes were on the eggplant, so after 30-plus minutes' wait I was ready to dig in. The breading was soggy & the whole dish was smothered in tomato sauce that just wasn't good. Really put me off Italian food for the foreseeable future. read more

I really wanted to like this place, but like every other Italian place I've been to in Dayton, this one fell short. We went on Saturday evening, and it was crowded. It was a short wait, though, and the staff was pleasant. The salad dressing is AMAZING. I will give them that. It's 10 parts minced garlic with a little olive oil and whatever else. Really good. My boyfriend had the pepporoni sausage pizza, and it is a really good thin crust pizza. For apps, we had the bruschetta which was terribly disappointing. I am not joking when I say it was 2 or 3 pieces of toasted wonderbred cut into triangles with halved tomatoes slopped on top with a sprinkling of Kraft parm. Really bad. I had the gnocchi with marinara. The gnocchi was homemade, I'm pretty sure, as was the sauce, but it was terribly bland. Not bad, but not very good, either. It has such potential as a wonderful mom and pop place if they could figure out how to season their food. Oh, and for dessert I had the tiramisu. It was soggy and covered in Hershey's syrup. That's blaspheme as far as I'm concerned. read more

I moved to the area almost a year ago and my wife and I have been trying to find an authentic tasting, quality Italian restaurant and this is it! The experience was amazing from beginning to end. The service was above average and the food was perfect! We will 100% be back! read more

Worst service ever!!!! Took over ten minutes to have our order taken by Jennifer. When we finally did get our pizza it was cold and we were not given plates or napkins. After I went to the counter and asked for plates we at last were given some. We were never asked if we wanted drink refills or if we wanted anything else. When we asked for a box to take the leftover pizza with us we were brought a bag! Other people were being given boxes, but we were supposed to put our pizza in a bag, don't think so. After we got a box, we had to ask twice, we went to pay. I told the lady at the register about our problems and that we had driven twenty minutes to get there all she could say was, "sorry about that". We made a mistake once, will not repeat that same mistake again. Will NOT BE BACK!! read more

The pizza is ok, but pretty average. But that's the only thing worth eating here. Their red sauce on pretty much anything there tastes like plain store brand spaghetti sauce from a jar, except for bland. I'm not one to usually complain about service, but I'll make an exception here. The service was rude and slow on the part of just about any staff I interacted with. I really want to give them 2 stars, but the pizza is just good enough that I'll give them 3. It wouldn't be a dinner destination I'd pick, but if I were in downtown Fairborn and just really needed a pizza, I suppose I'd stop here. read more

Meh... Gave them two chances & that was too many. The first time my wife ordered a Chicken Parmegiana sandwich it had no cheese or sauce on it. Guess their idea of parmegiana is more parmenada. Second time I needed something to go and specifically stated I needed it in something microwavable yet when I opened the bag at work to heat it, twas in an aluminum tin. No utensils in bag either & the sauce was very bland even for midwestern palates. read more

Went in thinking it was an Italian restaurant...left knowing it was just a pizza place. Ordered spaghetti and meatballs with Italian sausage. Noodles were very rubbery and sauce was very bland. Caesar salad was completely covered in dressing so it was hardly edible. Service was slow. Waited about 10 minutes for a refill of water and decided after that to go up to the bar to get a refill just to find out that the bartender was kind of rude. The 2 stars are for the pizza. Which is mediocre to decent. read more

In town for a week of work. Stopped by Giovanni's for dinner! Menu looked typical Italian, but great. Settled on the Pizza because the Italian sausage was homemade and the dough is made in house. Thin crust was awesome, sausage awesome, pizza awesome. Service was a little slow but server was hustling as they were very busy. I recommend it for sure! read more

Love Giovanni's! Very delicious pizza, always cooked to perfection. Even just a simple cheese pizza is great from here!

They have awesome food. I love coming here and seeing smiles on everyone's faces. They have great service

I brought my group here for lunch on Thursday 9/28. The table service was fine, but it took nearly 30 minutes to get our food. The house dressing in the salad was a bitter, garlicky dressing that left a bad taste in your mouth. Two of us ordered the Thursday special, a Zita type of pasta with a spaghetti sauce on it. The sauce had some flavor, but the pasta was lukewarm and just about the rubbery texture of undercooked. It was a totally unimpressive situation, especially when you consider no one from management asked how things were going. I ate here years ago when I was in the service and the place had good, so maybe they were just having an off day this time I patronized their restaurant. read more

This place is always busy and they never seem to have enough servers. They have a nice side room for group lunches/dinners, but the main eating area is pretty snug. The food is okay...nothing to rush out for, but I like that it is a Mom & Pop kind of place. I will say that once I was there in the side room for a group lunch and I saw a cockroach crawling on the wall. It was a LONG time before I ever went back. read more

Save your money and eat somewhere else. My wife and I went to Giovanni's about a year ago and did not like anything we got. I asked about a certain seafood dish on their menu and they told me the seafood came out of a can, bleh. A year later (today) having recently moved into the same town as Giovanni's, I had a spaghetti craving and with few options, I thought I'd give it another try. If you read some other reviews, you'll notice a consistent thread: the sauce sucks. It tastes like exactly what I'm sure it is, tomato paste straight out of a can, that has been watered down. No discernible seasoning at all. I gathered this and remembered it from the first time my wife and I walked into the place. I remember looking at everyone's plate and thinking "man...that just looks like reconstituted tomato paste". When I tasted my spaghetti, my suspicions were confirmed. A "salad" came with my meal. Disgraceful. It was thoroughly chopped lettuce, the kind you put on tacos, not make a salad with, two grape tomatoes, one, just one slice of cucumber and four slivers of onion. Simply pathetic. Who does that? Who thinks that that's salad, and serves it to people? The observant reader will notice that most of the higher reviews are based on Giovanni's pizza. I haven't tried it, and with the quality of their other food given that I had to pay for it, I won't be either. No pizza will redeem this restaurant for me. read more

Been here four times now and the pizza is really, really good. Several of my Dayton friends say this is the best pizza in town. I highly recommend it. 15 bucks for a large three topping, worth the extra money over the chain pizza places for sure. read more

Food is fantastic. All the meats are straight from their deli, which is located inside the restaurant. Pizza is a gamechanger!! You won't be disappointed read more

Best thin crust pizza in Dayton. It reheats well so enjoy a good meal and get a pizza to go. If you love garlic then get the house dressing. It's good for dipping pizza crusts too. Stay away from the hoagie, low quality patty. The specials are great. There is often a pasta and shrimp plate. read more

I love this place. Good staff, the house dressing is amazing, as well as all of the entrees and pizza. Always one of my favorite places for dinner. read more

Great pizza and excellent service! There was no waiting time whice was nice. The waitstaff were very attentive and very interactive in engaging in conversation with us which was nice. We will definitely return again to try other things on their menu. read more

I sincerely hate to review a long standing, locally owned business poorly... My husband and I decided to try something new for our belated 25th anniversary. It was a bit of a drive for us, about 30 minutes from home. My husband suggested I call to ensure they were open due to Covid. The woman who answered the phone was a little curt in saying they close at 8pm...on a Saturday and that we need a reservation, which we placed. Upon arrival, the building exterior was run down. The entrance is in the rear, facing the parking lot. When we opened the door, my husband commented that it smelled good. Until we walk though the bar and the odor of dirty ovens is all you could smell. The hostess asked if we were told that they have an abbreviated menu (basically pizza) due to Covid. We were not informed of that when we made our reservation...disappointing for my husband who was looking forward to lasagna. The restaurant interior was dated and run down. We had a really great waitress (who could probably make better money elsewhere). She offered cheese on my dinner salad. It was basically flavorless (the cheese). My husband ordered breadsticks and I tried a bite to be disappointed again. They were very basic, nothing special of flavorful. My husband and I ordered a half & half pizza. My side had mushrooms which I did not order. The waitress offered to remake, but I didn't want to make my husband wait longer. There was only another family of three dining in, and yet it took quite a long time for the pizza to be served. It appeared as though there were plenty of employees in the kitchen...at least one was playing with his phone. The pizza - SO disappointing. I don't know how anyone can ruin a pizza, but it was just not good. This is the first time in our lives I believe either of us can say we did not like the pizza. It lacked flavor, especially for a restaurant to boast as "Italian." There was nothing at all about the pizza that made it uniquely theirs, or even good. It was even worse leftover...inedible....we threw it away. Seriously, who throws away pizza? Bottom line, don't waste your money at this establishment. read more

Went with another couple last night (Fri. 5/16/14) It was a disappointment. The waiter rushed us throughout the night. He didn't let us see the wine list when we asked for it. He stated that he could move things along if he just told us about the wines. Each course arrived when we were still working on the previous one. He crowded each course on the table and we could barely move anything. The stuffed onion was good but the sausage stuffing was cold inside, like it was still partly frozen.. The tomato sauce on the rest of the dishes tasted very bland and like cheap canned sauce. I didn't enjoy the lasagna at all. The pasta was thick and tough. Won't be back. The meal was a 2 on a 10 scale. P.S. We have been a customer there since the early 1980s read more

Cute lil place, good pizza, decent priced. over all it was good.

Service was very slow and the food was not good. Had Pasta Giovanni thinking it was a signature dish. Canned peas and mushrooms. Not sure where (or when) the tomato came from. My date's order cane out wrong and we waited for 15 minutes and the replacement never came. We will not be returning. read more

I'm actually very surprised by the other reviews here, perhaps they were used to more Americanized Italian food, like what you find in chain restaurants. The main reason I like it is it's reasonably priced for my college friends and I. Olive Garden doesn't taste nearly as good (nor is it authentic) and yet it costs about 30% more. People are complaining about the sauce, but I recognized the sauce instantly - it's a traditional red wine marinara sauce. Marinara sauce is, as a rule, usually thinner than the usual pizza or spaghetti sauce. See, if you actually go to Italy, the sauces there are not thick and smothered in cheese like they are when people make them in America. They're actually very simple with more attention paid to the seasoning. I loved their sauce, I could even see the fresh pieces of parsley added. My date and I got the cheese ravioli with two meatballs, a sausage and roasted vegetable dish, and a large pizza with Italian sausage, green olives, and tomatoes, all to share to celebrate both of us overcoming recently being sick and unable to go out. The meatballs in my dish were perfect, just the right balance of hearty bread taste and delicious beef taste - without being super salty! Someone took the time to soak the bread crumbs in beef broth when they made them. The sausage on the date's plate was out of this world - I think it said on the menu they make it themselves. It was like the best toasty, crispy breakfast sausage you've ever had, times ten. I believe it's because they actually put fennel seed in the blend, which is a traditional staple seasoning. In other words, it wasn't your average Bob Evans sausage. Also, not too salty (yes, I'm a prickler for salt, I do not appreciate over-salted food.) The accompanying vegetables seemed to have been cooked in white wine due to the after taste they had. Ah, the pizza. Guys, there's a reason they're consistently voted the best pizzeria in the area. I've tried a lot of pizza places nearby - Domino's, Papa Johns, Donatos, Pizza Hut, Fox's, Cousin Vinny's, all the franchises basically - but none of them tasted like this. I suppose that's to be expected when comparing a family-owned place to a franchise, really. The sauce was similar to the ravioli sauce, but thicker and richer in taste - it was not just a red, tasteless background for toppings like some pizza places treat it. The cheese - the best part in my opinion - was very fresh. Many people don't know you can actually make fresh mozzarella cheese at home if you have any cream, and I believe they must have made theirs fresh. It was just bursting with a fresh taste that I really can't describe if you haven't had homemade, un-aged cheese before. The toppings were kind of average taste for me, truthfully, but I forgave that for the cheese. The one thing I can agree with on other reviewers is that the serving times are weird. My date and I have been there before on a quiet Tuesday night, where we were one of only a handful of tables, and our meals took a good half hour. Yet when we were there just now for this review, it was late on a Friday and the restaurant was very crowded. There were lots of group parties around us, and we figured we would just stick it out and accept a long wait since we were wanting Italian. But, we actually got our (large) pizza within about 8 minutes of ordering it, and we were just beginning to appreciate it when our dinners came out. We've never had service so fast there. I did take note, though, that there were a LOT more servers on the floor that night - probably 3x as many as our past visits. Perhaps they hire more people on the weekends to account for all the weekend pizza carryout orders, I'm not sure. If you actually read this whole review, good for you. Go get some meatballs :D read more

Breadsticks with alfredo are very nice appetizer....good Caesar and greek salads.... nice atmosphere....pizza is a little bland