Anthony's Coal Fired Pizza

Anthony's Coal Fired Pizza is chain from Florida that has opened it's first doors outside the state in Las Vegas' Town Square. Yesterday was the second time Ian and I had eaten there, and our experience was not as good as the first time, though Ian was more critical than I was. We ordered the Eggplant Marino pizza ($8.50 for the 9" lunch special) and Anthony's Italian Salad ($5.95 for the small lunch salad). The prices are normally pretty high here for a pizza ($16.50 for a 12"), so taking advantage of the lunch special allowed us to keep our meal under $20, including a beer for Ian.

Our Italian Salad was fresh and simple, and was served with a good yet uninteresting red wine vinagrette. It is probably overpriced for what you get but at least they use kalamata olives and cook their hard-boiled eggs to perfection. The Eggplant Marino, which is also available as a side dish with pizza dough bread, was a recommendation of food critic John Curtas' that I read about in the Desert Companion. His description of "ultra-thin slices of lightly breaded eggplant" appealed to me so that's what we specifically came here for. The flavor of the pizza was good and I liked the eggplant, but Ian thought the pizza was nothing special and soggy. Considering that they advertise their pizza is "well done" on every wall of the restaurant and on the menu, we at least expected the crispy crust we had last time on our delicious sausage and pepper pizza. Next to us we saw someone order the side of Eggplant Marino, which would be my choice next time since it seemed to make more sense served that way. We also noticed a lot of people ordering the coal oven roasted chicken wings. They reminded me of my mom's chicken wings but were served over grilled onions accompanied by foccacia. The presentation was great and I would assume they are pretty good based on the number of people who ordered them.

Though Anthony's isn't the best pizza place in town, it's still pretty good. Ian would have to disagree with me there, so you'll just have to try it for yourself.

Today's food rating: 6 (Ian gave it a 5, I gave it a 7)
Ambiance: 6.5
Would we go back? PROBABLY NOT ANYTIME SOON, AND IF I DID IT WOULD DEFINITELY BE TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THE LUNCH PRICES.