Rusconi Pizza

I didn’t know about the arcade downstairs. I’ll have to check it out. As far as the pizza goes I can see why they got the awards they have. And the wings were pretty good as well. Great spot to watch the game too. Definitely worth coming back.

Nice little gem in the city!
Great pizza and service
Good venue to watch sports
We’ll be back

This is my second visit. The first trip included a visit to their retro video arcade in the basement. It looks like that has now closed which was a little buzz kill.
Now the food and beverage. We got The Works Pizza — it was solid and we didn’t leave anything behind. The crust was thin and the toppings were generous.
Worth the stop.

Evan was our bartender. He did a great job. Even made us his custom shot. The breadsticks and pizza are really great. There are old school games in the basement. I would recommend a friday or saturday night when there is a live band. The Ashley Fork band is one of my favorites at Rusconi’s.

I’m giving this place 1 star. Great food but service really sucks at this place. I’ve been here numerous times to where no one takes your order for 20 – 30 minutes and then you wait 30 – 40 minutes for your food. Management needs to get a clue and realize they have great food, but 1 person working the floor is not acceptable. We come here for lunch and get an hour for lunch. Placing an order takes half our lunch? Local business workers downtown… be warned, great food but not worth the wait on an hour lunch break!!!

Great service! I ordered the Hawaiian pizza, breadsticks, and some wings. I was surprised the wings were pretty well seasoned.

Nice little spot that I happened to find walking around today. Pizza wasn’t bad at all, but also noticed they have a good craft beer selection despite only having two taps at the bar. May have to check out their happy hour at some point.

Waited for 10 minutes at our table before finally going to the bar to tell them we were here. She finally brought us drinks and then preceded to never come back. Had to go to the bar again to get the waitress back to order food after another 10 minutes.
What’s the point in having seating and servers if you aren’t ever going to come to the actual table?

Nice to go to a non-​chain pizza place. And it’s quite convenient, just a block up from Duke Energy center. The atmosphere is casual, with a fair amount of seating and more than enough tv’s to chose from. Impressively, they were even showing shark week. The food was good, appetizers are what you would expect –garlic bread to fried pickles. The menu has many offerings, plenty of non-​pizza. But let’s be honest, I went for the pizza. The pizza is more on the thin crust side and the offerings are varied. It was nice seeing to many options. We spilt a pizza and got the chicken ranch and the BLT chicken pizza. They certainly didn’t skimp on the bacon! It looked like they had avoid happy hour special $ 2 for craft beers. The beer menu is fairly vast as well. You can check them all out on the chalkboard on one of the walls. Decent pizza, decent prices, good service. Great start to the weekend!

It really shouldn’t be so hard to find a decent pizza place in a city as large as Cincinnati. Somewhere you can walk in, sit down, pick from a range of menu options & in a few minutes, enjoy a couple of slices & a pop, along with maybe a side of garlic nots & a chicken roll or something. But apparently, I ask too much. I walked over to this place one slow weekday afternoon, about 5 minutes too late for the lunch special, so that was off the table. I ordered a meatball sub, which for some reason had pickles on it (on what planet is that an acceptable pairing?) & a pepperoni pizza. While the pizza wasn’t bad, it wasn’t available in slice form either, so if that’s what you’re after, keep walking. Maybe you’ll find something in Chicago.
Service was friendly, if not working at anywhere near breakneck speed.
Not too impressed. But apparently, there are videogames in the basement to appease the hipster doofus crowd.

Fantastic pizza! If you hate chain pizza as much as I do, you will LOVE this place. Our waitress was very prompt and friendly checking in with us often while we waited for our pizza. We got the garden pizza and added feta cheese to it, it was delicious. The crust was thin, but still chewy.
We went in around 9pm, with no wait or really any other guests, but after we placed our order it got crowded fast. It got a little loud, but it’s a bar so that’s expected.
Giving 4 stars because their online menu stated that they served pasta & I was really craving spaghetti only to go in & find out that, that was not the case. No pasta for me apparently.

We got a half veg, +chicken and half cheese, nothing else and the bill came to $ 25. I would expect my pizza to be outstanding for that price. This pizza was not. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t good. To be honest, I’ve had frozen pizzas that taste the exact same! The staff was very nice, thank you staff!

Good pizza and yuengling on tap. What’s not to like. Ordered the house pepperoni pizza, very tasty. Great service sitting at the bar.

I came here for dinner on a Saturday night after attending an event at the convention center.
We sat down at a table and waited 15 minutes for a server to come over and take a drink order. We ended up sending someone to the bar to order drinks for our table. Eventually, a waitress came over and took a food order.
That was the last we saw of our waitress. A food runner brought out our entrees and we were not checked on again. No one came to get a second drink order or to provide silver wear (which we had to get from the bar). We had to stop a bartender carrying ice to get our checks.
The food was just OK. The pizzas were tasty, but certainly not worth the $ 17 price tag they carried, and the appetizers looked like they were frozen food reheats. From a drink perspective, they have just one beer on draft and a moderate selection of canned/​bottles craft beer. I wouldn’t come here to drink, as there are far superior places within walking distance that have better beer selections (and choices for draft beer).
Overall, I would not recommend this bar. The service was simply awful and the food was slightly overpriced and nothing special.

Remember when you played grade school soccer and decided it wasn’t cool to wear a cup because «Hey, I’m like 12 and totally manly» and then Mike the guy you never really liked but everyone thought he was cooler than you kicks the ball towards you and it grazes your junk just ever so slightly and for a split second you feel fine and then the dull ache starts and doesn’t leave for a few hours???
Well my dining experience was something like that except for the part where the dull ache left after a few hours.
I run past Rusconi’s a few times a week and had just read an article online talking about how they have wing Mondays, decent pizzas and just opened up a arcade in the basement. Needless to say I was pumped… until I sat down. After sitting down and introducing herself our waitress asked us if we wanted anything to drink and of course we all did.
«Whats’ on tap?»
«Well we are actually all out of draft beer upstairs so you’ll have to order bottles/​cans»
«OK, what about the taps downstairs»
«You’d have to go downstairs and get that beer yourself and its cash only»…
Welp, this is starting swell. After we ordered some bottled beer, which they did have a decent selection of, we decided on a few appetizers and pizzas.
«We’ll take two orders of wings and three pizzas»
«I’m sorry but we are all out of wings»
«You’re out of wings? How can you be out of wings? You are a pizza and wing bar»
«I’m not sure but we are out of wings.»
Welp, this is getting even better. After a little bit of waiting and having another round of drinks we see three large pizzas being brought out and they look big and delicious. Then we notice that our apps are coming out right behind the pizzas. This must be some sort of new dining trend where the appetizers come out at the same time as the main course, so chic Rusconi’s is. It only gets better.
«Is there any way we can get a few sides of ranch?»
«I’m sorry, we’re out of ranch.»
«Really?! How is a wing/​pizza joint out of ranch?!»
By now our group of six is kind of doing the 100 yard stare just waiting to get the hell out of this place because it has been nothing but a bad experience at 8PM on a Thursday night. We ask the waitress for our bill, hand over our cards and await her return. TWENTY MINUTES LATER she returns from the bar, in a restaurant filled with one other table of customers and hands us our things. If complete and utter failure was on the menu, I’m pretty sure we ordered it. Half the party didn’t even bother going downstairs for the arcade. One can only handle so much disappointment in one night.

Stopped in recently one night with some friends because we heard they had a whole bunch of old arcade video games in the basement. It looks like it is a pizza restaurant during the day, a club at night, and an old arcade in the basement.
We headed straight to the basement and proceeded to have a good time. There was a table set up for beer pong and this is where we started, reliving our younger college days. After that we started playing arcade video games, going back to when we were children. There were also home video game consoles set up with TVs in multiple paces such as Sega Genesis. We played Ninja Turtles, Streetfighter, Space Invaders, Ms. Pac Man, racing games, etc. It was Friday and someone said that it was free game day. I can’t vouch if this was true but whenever we needed tokens to play the games the bartender would just hand us a stack. We just made sure we bought drinks throughout the evening. The bar in the basement was cash only which was the only downside.
When we left, the upstairs had a dj spinning some good electronic dance/​club music. We all enjoyed ourselves and will probably return for the games. I might even check out the pizza some time. If I find myself coming here again and checking out some of the other parts of the business I could see giving them a higher rating. Definitely had fun with the old games!

My friend and I went here for a weekday lunch. We noticed it was new to the area and also saw the sign out front advertising the 2 for $ 5 special. You get 2 pieces of pizza and a drink for $ 5. Pretty good deal!
We thought the special was any pizza and were craving the buffalo chicken one. Our waitress explained the special was just for cheese or pepperoni, so we decided to give into our craving and split the 14″. It gave us 3 pieces each and was very filling. Bring on the carb coma at our desks afterwards! The food took a bit to come out, but our drinks were always full and our waitress checked in on us frequently. The crust was my favorite part– it wasn’t too hot but it had a great taste and didn’t make you feel guilty because it was thin yet chewy. The buffalo chicken was put on after it was in the oven– so I cut my pieces because the chicken was struggling to stay on the piece.
Our waitress was great, positive and attentive. She split our bill (~$ 10 each with pizza and pop) and even offered a to-​go drink for us. If you are going for lunch I would recommend calling your pizza order in before you go to shorten the wait time.
Overall great place and we are lucky to have another downtown lunch option!

I think Pizza Taste is personal so I wouldn’t tell anyone not to go here but it was not for me. My pizza is all about the crust and their crust was not very memorable. The sauce was good and the toppings were good if a little heavy handed.

I’ve been here a couple of times and been impressed so far. There have been a few kinks with too few people working at certain hours, but nothing that you wouldn’t expect from a new restaurant. The food is good, the people are friendly and the atmosphere is laid back.
Their menu is pretty straightforward and to the point, a fact I appreciate in a world of menus that have advertisements in them and you have to clarify to friends what page number the meal you are ordering is on (I’m looking your way Cheesecake Factory…) Pizza, Pasta, Appetizers, Salads, Subs, and of course a full bar. The pizza is great!
They have put in an impressive amount of televisions, so I’ll be really interested to see this place come football (americano) season.
A warning (or incentive to visit if this is your thing) later in the night the atmosphere shifts from laid back sports bar to club. They have a live DJ and a dance floor forms. Not really my scene at that point. I give it 4 stars the majority of the time, but 2 stars later in the night.

Ok, I’ll try to keep this short and sweet. Rusconi’s to me is like the combination of Lucy Blue’s (but better pizza) and a typical downtown sports bar. My first impression was a very good one and while I am slightly saddened to see FB’s gone (and the Alice in Wonderland massive yellow chair), it’s great to have a new business in this slightly out of the way place. I expect Dunnhumby employees will enjoy having this so close to them. The pizza we had was made with fresh ingredients and the beer «hoptails» tasted great. I will be back to enjoy a slice on the small outside patio area. There are plenty of TV’s and WiFi. cool.