Charcoal Guidos

 The closing of the upper crust left a bit of a thin crust pizza gap on Moody street. Well, this week a new restaurant stepped up to fill that gap. Charcoal Guido's opened for lunch and dinner this past Wednesday. I managed to get there with some friends on Saturday night ( not our best choice timing wise).

The decor is very cute well put together and the bar looks really great, the top shelf of liquors is even bookended with two bottles of skull vodka, a touch that definitely gave me a smile. For such an epic looking bar the drink list was a bit of a let down, hopefully something they will work out in the coming months.

We started with the lamb skewers and Arancini. The lamb skewers were simple and delicious, definitely a must get for meat lovers. The Arancini was very good as well nice and crispy on the outside with the right amount of soft rice and melty cheese on the inside. Then we moved onto the pizzas which were excellent. We were a table of 4 and we split 3 pizzas leaving 1/2 a pizza of leftovers. We tried the prosciutto, the sausage and ricotta and the diavola. The prosciutto was a lighter treat with a no sauce pizza crust topped with salty prosciutto, slightly sweet thin slices of cheese and lightly dressed arugala. The ricotta and sausage was a pizza overflowing with high quality italian sausage melt in your mouth ricotta, tomato sauce and caramelized onions. While this one lost something in the structural integrity department the flavors were perfect. I didn't try the Diavola but my friend who did was extremely happy with her choice to add it to our table. There were also tasty looking salad, pasta and entree options that we didn't end up partaking in on this trip but will definitely try next time we stop in. The prices are pretty good with our entire meal coming out to around 70 dollars for 4 people though none of us partook of the alcohol offerings.

This brand new restaurant definitely still has some kinks to work out in the logistics department the waiting area is small, the putting your name in for a table process is disorganized, there are no reservations,  it's VERY loud, the space could benefit from some experimenting with the table placement, and they haven't quite worked out a take out option yet.

However, the quality of the food does making dealing with these inconveniences worth it. Just maybe stay away on Friday and Saturday nights until they have themselves together a little bit more.
All in all I am very excited about this new addition to Moody Street and I'm also excited to check out their lunch menu ( I'll update here once I do).