Various friends, Harry & Sandy and Al & Judy, visited back in April. We spent one day at Epcot, walking around the Flower & Garden Festival – mostly just partaking of the various adult beverages at the food booths. We also went to Tutto Gusto and had a few beers. Harry really wanted to have a pizza, a real Italian pizza… we don’t argue with Harry about pizza. [We aren’t sure but we think he’s of Roman descent (a long time ago, he’s really a Geordie through and through).] So, if he wanted real pizza then I guess we’re having lunch at Via Napoli …
Sandy wanted the Linguini Frutti di Mare, but not with linguini (I can’t remember exactly what she wanted) – the closest thing was rigatoni. They were able to substitute it for the linguini. After the dish was served, I really think that a tubular pasta was a better choice to deal with the juices from the tomatoes and seafood.
Rigatoni Frutti di Mare
close-up of Sandy’s Frutti di Mare
Harry got his pizza – mushrooms, peppers, and sausage (do I have that right?). He was very pleased with it too 🙂 Made all sorts of happy eating noises and had a huge grin on his face.
Harry’s Pizza with Italian Sausage and Peppers
We weren’t terribly hungry and so we thought that we’d split a Quattro Formaggi pizza and have some salad. Al & Judy split a pepperoni pizza and also ordered salad.
Our pizza – Quattro Formaggi (four cheese)
Our pizza was good… I guess we just really like the pizza that I make. The crust had a nice chewiness and crunchiness to it. The cheeses were well blended. We would have liked to seen a bit more browning of the cheese though, to enhance the flavors. While good, this definitely wasn’t a 10 out of 10 for us.
“Family Style” House Salad – leaf lettuces, roasted red peppers, marinated mushrooms, olives, peperonicini, red wine vinaigrette
The salad story… Well, this salad is served exclusively with pizza. It’s $7 per person. The salad for four adults was about the size of ONE of the dinner salads that I regularly make for us. Wow! $28 for salad. It was good, don’t get me wrong… just not that good.
Overall, the meal at Via Napoli was quite nice BECAUSE we were with friends and they really enjoyed the meal. It was fun and the food was tasty. However, we came away with the feeling that the food in Italy at Epcot is overpriced… Again.