—commonly attributed to either Lorenzo de' Medici or Orson Welles. (In either case, it's also the slogan of Martino's Italian Villa in Kokomo, Indiana.)
The Martino family is proud of their restaurant—and with good reason. Opening its doors in 1962, Martino's Italian Villa, located on Kokomo's hardscrabble northside, still resembles an autentico ristorante straight out of Central Casting: they've got the wax-covered Chianti bottles, the red-and-white checkered tablecloths, frescoes, and even those plastic grapes hanging from the walls.
Martino's possesses a cool, retro ambiance, a happy circumstance that probably owes less to any conscious attempt at aestheticization than to the simple fact that precious little has changed about this place since the early 1960s. Note the classic day-glo signage.
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| The beers are cold; the staff is frozen solid. |
Readers of this blog know that Kokomo has a ton of tucked-away pizza, but to any real Kokomoan, there are only essentially two Italian restaurants, and Martino's is one of them.
(The other is Pastarrific, which I reviewed here last winter while in the bitter depths of cabin fever.)
Unlike the vast majority of pizza purveyors in town, Martino's has an impressive web presence, including a lengthy history page and (gasp!) actual photos of the interior of the restaurant, past and present.
One of the benefits of eating a large veggie pizza for lunch on a Tuesday is that you're likely one of a only a small handful of people doing the same. Martino's Pizza Room is attached to the restaurant proper, which is a convenient, useful addition. Cruised right in, cruised out.
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| Photo courtesy of http://www.martinositalianvilla.com/history. |
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My favorite part of Martino's veggie pie is how they really drag it through the garden: tomatoes, bell pepper, mushrooms, and onions, though no olives of any color or creed, disappointingly. The cheese is good and plentiful, if a tad bland, and the sauce, which is quite possibly housemade, stands out.
It's a classic Midwestern thin crust, cut into squares, and loaded down with toppings.
As far as drawbacks, I've eaten Martino's pizza enough times to be able to say the following: it's just not consistently top-notch. It's never been bad, but on rare occasions the experience is more akin to eating a big salad with cheese and dough. Other times—in fact, I would say most times—it's one of the more special pizzas in town.
The large veggie (16-inches) runs just north of $20 (after sales tax and the city pizza tax—just kidding, Tea Partiers, take it easy); so this isn't exactly a bargain pie. Still, well worth checking out for the ambiance, the "Pizza Room," and a quick slice of Kokomo history.
Class=O.
Next Tuesday: ?
Next Friday: Mike's Italian Grill!
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