Rizzo's Pizzeria & Kitchen

Rating: 2

We ate dinner here in October 2024.

Deep fried spaghetti
Calexican pizza - Birria beef, onions, garlic butter, coriander, spicy beef consomme, mozzarella

Yes you read that right. Deep fried spaghetti.

We wondered if we had just stumbled upon the next big thing, just waiting to be discovered in Lower Hutt. We speculated at length as to what the nature of it would be while we waited for it to show up. And what did show up was perhaps best described as two sizable bricks of spaghetti and a cheese sauce crumbed and deep fried, served with the house vodka red sauce.

We loved how crisp it was, and we appreciated the innovation. Frankly, we wish that everyone would take a leaf out of their book and just start deep frying things that have never been deep fried before. However the dish overall wasn’t a massive winner. The sauce inside the bricks was basically flavourless, and the sauce outside the bricks, while bringing something to the occasion, was only really alright.

The pizza did have a really good base, and we really enjoyed watching the chef hand spinning the dough. But its flavour left a lot to be desired. You could pick out the garlic if you tried pretty hard, and we love coriander, but the overall effect was pretty dull. The consomme came in a little bowl served in the middle of the pizza. We figured this was for dipping our crusts in, although we did also try pouring it on the pizza which we wouldn’t recommend. It was a nice concept, but the consomme was very watery and took some work to soak into the crust. Once it had soaked in, it was a pretty mild meat flavour, certainly not spicy as advertised.

One last thing - wipe down your bathroom walls, Rizzo. Gross.