Critic's Review
Pizza Cucinova is a curiously. A franchise started by Sbarros; the franchise operation seemed to have folded up while they were building out this place (all other locations have closed and their SSL certificate expired a year ago), but they opened anyway. Maybe they were emancipated; I can't imagine they're paying franchise fees to a company with a broken website that isn't doing the national marketing that's promised when you buy a franchise.
I drove by the other day and noticed they had a lunch special; $10.99 for a pizza and a soft drink. Still not the original $8 pizza concept, but better than a $14.99 build your own. Someone had to give the place a try.
I went in at lunch time, because I wasn't sure when the special ended and I wanted to see the lunch "crowd".
5 employees and 2 customers. Not a great lunch ratio. I asked about the special but I couldn't really understand the girl behind the counter; I heard "pepperoni" so I asked for a pepperoni pizza and an iced tea. She indicated they didn't have iced tea; again I couldn't understand her so I surmised that I'd just be getting a cup.
The soda machine is hidden around the corner. At first I couldn't find it.
To my horror there was also no water; only sweetened and diet drinks. I chose the Minute Maid lemonade. Older folks might remember the slushy containers of Orange Juice in the old days.
The lemonade was not lemonade; not weak lemonade; just plain water. It's pretty much what I wanted anyway, but it was amusing.
I took a seat and waited for the pizza. It became clear that this was not flash cooked pizza; it took 12 minutes for the pizza to come out. A long time to wait with a cup of water.
I saw my pizza come out and I could hear them giggling as they seemed to have trouble cutting it. Pizza is served in a box whether you eat in or not; not very cost effective.
The oblong shape amused me; I considered having a slice in the restaurant but it was too hot to eat, so I packed it up and headed home, 2 blocks away.
The pizza measured 12x10; an oblong pizza is the work of an amateur dough stretcher. Notice the double slice in the upper left; the work of an amateur pizza cutter.
My first bite of the pizza explained why they had trouble cutting it; the crust was tough; I believe the correct term is "shoe leather". Not crispy, just very, very chewy.
A thin layer of cheese; to be fair it might be ok if the crust wasn't so hard; this is 100% what we used to call Mall Pizza on Long Island.
Conclusion
Pizza Cucinova is what happens when Brazilians buy a franchise and the franchisors disappear. You open up with no reasonable way to order a plain cheese pizza, your pricing is misguided, and your dough is overworked to the point of it being more suitable for boot making than pizza making. Why go to the expense of making a sandwich board for your lunch special but don't even bother to post it on your facebook page?
These people will be here as long as the owners can stomach bleeding cash. If they can't get lunch customers with Yolo, Suviche, Timpano and Royal Pig closed then they really have no chance when things get back to normal.
Pre-Review Musings
The problem with the menu here is that you can't get a plain cheese pizza, or a pepperoni pizza. I never want 4 toppings on a pizza, and I never want the dumb "specialty pies" that always have 2 things I don't want on them.
So I can get a 4 meat pizza for $12.99 but If I don't want Soppressata it's $14.99?
Note to justify the higher price they're making 11" pizzas instead of 10".
Here is the original Pizza Cucinova menu as conceived by Sbarro when they created the franchise just a couple of years ago:
Notice the sensible pricing: $5 for plain cheese, $6 for 1 topping and $8 for unlimited toppings. Unlike these folks, Sbarro knows how to run a restaurant.
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I stopped in with the full intention of ordering a pizza, even though I wasn't really hungry. A 10" pizza is equivalent to about 2 and a half slices of an 18" pizza, so it's not a lot of food.
Not much of an outside space; 2 customers outside at 1:30pm.
Inside, the place looks like your typical fast casual cutout; a corral on the left with faux wood tables with uncomfortable aluminum chairs in the "dining" area. A real low budget undertaking. 4 more customers for a total of 6 curiosity seekers on opening week.
There's no menu online and there's no paper menu in the store, so I had to get right up to the counter menu to see. To my horror, it's $14.99 for a "build your own" pizza. Say what? The original concept of this place was $8 personal pizza, which they raised to $9.49 over time before closing all of their locations. This place is trying something new; good luck with that.
I wasn't paying $15 for a 10" pizza so that was the end of that.
Conclusion
I'm not sure what's going on here since the Pizza Cucinova franchisor seems to have disappeared, but they have no chance of surviving for long at the current price point. Maybe they figure they're on Las Olas so people will pay a Las Vegas price, but they're wrong.
Previous Musings
So this place is now open; still sporting the Hot Tomatos sign that should have been removed years ago. This is a "make your own" personal pizza concept similar to Blaze and multiple other places that closed in shorter time that it took for them to open (FlashFire, Pizzafire). And of course Midici is one of the biggest financial blunders in the city's modern history.
What's weird and interesting is that the parent company in Ohio, which is owned by Sbarro's, seems to have disappeared. The company website lists 5 stores; all of which are closed. The last facebook post is in 2019 and this store isn't listed anywhere.
If this is in fact a franchise, why would you pay franchise fees to a company with no marketing presence? Pizza Cucinova is trademarked, so it can't be an independent location. It just seems odd to me that they opened at all.
Let's open a restaurant and lose all of our money.