Gino Giannilli's - June 24, 2023

Well, folks, we're back to western Pennsylvania pizza. Chip and I were looking for a dine-in experience last night, so we decided to try Gino Giannilli's in Latrobe. NOTE: this restaurant does not seem to be associated with the Giannilli's we went to a few months ago in Greensburg.

We looked on the map and saw that it was only a few blocks away from the Hotel Loyal, where we had a great experience in the spring. We parked in the lot catty-corner to the restaurant, all the while trying to figure out what the heck the building used to be.

It has the telltale look of a government building (and it definitely had that vibe in the entrance as well). It wasn't big enough to be a school, so we guessed an old post office. We asked our server about it but unfortunately she had no idea.

Another unfortunate thing is that the dining room only had 7 booths and two 6-top tables. So we arrived at 6:00 and were told that we could either take the 6-top (which we really didn't want to do) or wait for a booth. 

We opted to wait. 25 minutes later, we were still waiting. So we decided to just order carryout, and if a table opened up before our pizzas were ready, we'd grab it. As we were placing the to-go order, one of the servers said "one of the tables is getting ready to leave" so we asked the cashier to put the order in as a dine-in order. We were seated at 6:32. The atmosphere wasn't completely sterile, but it didn't have the charm of some pizzerias we'd visited.

I was pleasantly surprised to see that Happy Hour prices were good from 5 to 7, which is almost unheard of on a Saturday night. We each ordered a draft beer. They had 6 or 7 on tap, and a similar number of wine-by-the-glass options. 

Our pizzas arrived at the table at 6:47, and needless to say - we were hungry. They both looked amazing. We'd ordered a medium white pizza with tomato and bacon, and an XL pepperoni and mushroom (the special was a 2-topping XL for $16.99 which is why we ordered such a large pie). Strangely, the medium was described as being a 6-cut rectangle, while the three other sizes were the traditional rounds. I have no idea why, but was excited to try and compare both pizza shapes. We passed on the sausage because they only offered Italian hot sausage.

The white pizza captured my attention first. It had a great deal of bacon on it, and loads of cheese. 

The crust was perfect - a bit puffy around the rectangular edges, with the bottom crust not too thick nor too thin. It was slightly chewy, in a really good way. And the cheese - MWAH. Delicious, with a perfect cheese pull. The garlic sauce was fragrant without screaming GARLIC. 

Because we had to wait so long to be seated and for the food, Chip said "they have a tall hill to climb." Well, the white pizza was so good that they were halfway up the hill. 

Next, the pepperoni. The back crust was ever so slightly charred. I think the dough was the same, but it was rolled a bit thinner at the back, leading to the charring. I don't think it detracted from the taste, though - it was also delicious.

The pepperoni was very flavorful without being at all spicy. The mushrooms were canned. But thankfully the pizza had been in the oven long enough that they browned nicely, so they weren't rubbery in the way that canned mushrooms can sometimes be. The cheese blend seemed to be the same as what was on the white pizza, but it wasn't quite as browned or as noticeable as it had been on that pie. 

The sauce was sweet, which is usually a detractor for me. But somehow the sauce seemed to pull everything together well. Perhaps because they didn't overload the pizza with sauce, so there was just a hint of sweetness.

Overall Gino's was an excellent pizza experience. I wish we could figure out why they weren't using all of the available dining space. There was an area of the dining room toward the front of the building that was completely empty, and they also had a second dining room which was being used solely for pizza box storage (which struck as both as so dang weird. Have you ever seen more pizza boxes?!?!). 

I would put Gino's in the top 5 or 6 Westmoreland County pizzas that we've tried so far. Give them a try and let us know what you think!