Oregano's Pizza Bistro

I first experienced Oregano's while in Scottsdale, and immediately fell in love with their stuffed pizza. I was psyched when they opened a location in Flagstaff. Their Chicago stuffed pizza is my favorite , the pasta is excellent, and the hot sandwiches are good. However, their recipes tend to be quite salty, which is why I only eat their food once in a blue moon. They also change their menu occasionally, and more than once they've dropped a favorite item, such as the stuffed sproccoli pizza and the shroom boom pasta.

Oregano's is very popular, and now has a new, larger location in the Safeway Plaza on S Plaza Way. I also tried the new location on N Country Club Dr, and it's pretty nice. Although a local, AZ chain, it definitely has grown, with 22 locations now, so it no longer qualifies as a small chain by my standards.

The old location used to be Gretel's Black Forest Haus, which had decent wiener schnitzel and strudel, and offered some German beers that were otherwise hard to find at the time. Nonetheless, I never really got into that place, and only ate there twice. The Matterhorn, which was downtown a number of years later, was better.

The Matterhorn's former location is a saga in and of itself. It was originally an old gas station, long abandoned. Manzanitas, a Mexican restaurant that specialized in homemade tortillas, originated where Las Gorditas currently is. Then they rebuilt the gas station and moved into it, lasting for a good while, but I never went there. After they went out of business, the Matterhorn moved in. I thought they were an excellent German restaurant, but they didn't last long.

Then came Scott's Chicago Pizza. They started out at a gas station at the corner of Old 66 and Railroad Springs Blvd before moving downtown. They had insanely delicious Chicago pizza, but it was so sloppy it fell apart in your hands, and when they moved downtown they couldn't keep their act together. That location is now India Paradise, which I have no desire to visit, no matter how good they may actually be.

As long as I'm on the topic of Chicago cuisine, one thing Scott's tried to do was resurrect the Chicago beef sandwich for Flagstaff. The original, and greatest, Chicago beef sandwich place in Flagstaff, was Babe's. They only lasted a couple of years, but their location downtown would in turn become the birthplace of Fratelli Pizza and Mama Burger, before those businesses migrated to their current locations.


Location
Web site
Business Category:Large chain or franchise (>20 locations)
Breakfast (1-10):
Lunch (1-10):8
Dinner (1-10):8
Cleanliness (1-10):7
Service (1-10):7
Noise (1-10):4
How often visited:Routinely
How likely to return:Definitely
Last known visit:2021-05-26
Last updated:2021-08-01

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