Matese Pizzeria Restaurant

I don’t normally do this but this was so disappointing I just had to share. We ordered grandma slices and were really looking forward to them (so even though the delivery took over an hour we were not bothered). Opened the box to something that looked nothing like a regular grandma but took a bite anyway. Hard as a rock, cold and flavorless. This will probably be my last time ordering.

Ordered in a meatball pizza and it arrived within 25 minutes which was ahead of the 45 minutes quoted (so kudos for the fast delivery)
Pizza was good… Not omg fantastic nyc pizza. Just needs a little more umpf
Also when i took the first slice out all the cheese and meatballs fell off as one piece

Their pasta dishes are excellent! I like fusilli bolognese, linguine with red clam sauce and the penne with broccoli garlic and oil. They also make a mean eggplant parm sandwich. Lots of coupons and deals offered here.

The good:
The salads
The bad:
The service
The inconsistency
The hour and a half delivery wait
The inability to ever deliver a correct order
The VERY bad:
Putting sugar in my diabetic friends iced coffee when she specifically specified no sugar
Would absolutely not recommend

NOTE: 1) Do NOT park in the lot next to Matese. You’ll either get towed or have to pay off the smug driver who makes it his life goal to make yours miserable. 2) Under ANY circumstance, DO NOT ORDER SEAFOOD FROM HERE.
My mom buys Groupon deals without researching the restaurant (le sigh) and most of the times we’ve fared well. Not this time. To be frank, the deal is awesome. $ 25 for appetizer, entrée for two, and sodas, and it started off swimmingly with delicious complimentary garlic knots and pizza pieces. We ordered the clam bake for our appetizer but it turned out to be almost inedible. Not fresh at all. Really stinky. For the entrée round, my mother ordered the fruti di mare and I ordered the chicken romero. It’s too bad that neither the pizzas nor pastas count as an entrée. Judging by their marinara sauce and bread quality (plus other reviews), the pizzas sound like Matese’s forte. It’s also extremely unfortunate that we ordered everything at once; had we known the quality of their seafood from the clam bake, we really wouldn’t have ordered a seafood pasta. The chicken romero was decent — soft and well seasoned, but the artichoke was too sour (obviously canned), and there was no panchetta? Huh, I didn’t even notice that there was supposed to be until I looked at the menu online! The seafood pasta was … inedible. The calamari was gummy, the clams were just so so so so terrible, and we barely touched the plate. Obviously, our mistake was ordering seafood in a place that clearly functions more as a pizza joint. Stupid mistake. But seriously, how can you serve seafood like that?! I felt bad for the mother-​daughter party behind us who ordered the clam bake after seeing ours.
If I ever came back it would be to pick up an order of pizza. Nothing else. For the Groupon, stick with what you know is safe like chicken/​eggplant parmesan.
*Not included in star rating is the awful experience we had seeing our car getting towed mid meal. The owner, unprompted, thought it necessary to tell us he had a sign not to park there on the door. Our bad, but wouldn’t it also be suuuper simple to be like «Hey, make sure to move your car if you parked in the lot!» because it seems like a lot of people get suckered into that anyhow. It was also night time, the business was like 20 minutes away from being closed, and they’re all buttfaces because seriously guys! It’s a freakin’ day away from New Years Eve.

It’s beyond me that this place only has 3 stars? I just ordered delivery and they were fast and super friendly. Extremely generous portions. I had a grilled chicken Parmesan hero that was incredible in every way. Chicken had an amazing char grilled flavor, toasty bread, perfectly balanced sauce. My gf got eggplant Parm which she was amazing too. Great sauce again. We’ll definitely be ordering again!

I’ve had great experiences since I’ve been coming here in 2012. Alex always has a smile on his face and he made this excellent sausage and peppers pizza for me last night! 11÷10÷15. I blew my diet by eating two slices, it is that good!

I have always passed by this place numerous times so I decided to give it a try and stopped by with a friend for lunch on a Saturday. I ended up being pleasantly surprised. They have a tasty variety of pizzas as well as other things to choose from. We only tried the pizzas and this review is based solely on the various types we tried.
The Sicilian slices have just the right amount of tomato sauce, bread and cheese. The sauce isn’t too sweet but just right. Cheese is actual mozzarella, the bread is a moderate size as opposed to a thick giant piece that looks out of place like some pizzerias that have massive pieces of bread with bare minimum amounts of cheese and sauce.
Plain cheese slices are a normal size with real gooey mozzarella and sauce. They were not overly greasy unlike some other pizzerias.
Buffalo chicken slices have chunks of buffalo breaded chicken breast on top with cheese. It is just a little spicy. If you like spicy chicken in general give this a try.
Bacon slices have a decent amount of bacon on them. It looks to be of the thick-​sliced or slab variety of bacon chopped up. High in calories but everything tastes better with bacon.
Grandma slices are hit or miss. At times the sauce is either too sweet or a bit sour. Needs a little improvement.
Garlic knots were slightly tough and chewy. They do give you a small container of marinara sauce with your order to go along with them.
Service was fast and the people there are friendly. We will be going there again for sure.

It’s been hour and half… called and said ‘it’s on its way’… please, enough with your BS. I’ll leave additional comment for food, but it’s already enough… since I only ordered becuz it’s two blocks away. You are the worst Italian pizza takeout ever around bayside. Period. Good buy.
Just got delivered in 2 hours… spaghetti is all overcooked and pizza is dried as hell .
One word. Do not order from this garbage makers.
Waste of money and time. What a loses in Italian dishes. Just eat when you do some laundry next block. .1÷10

solid delicious pizzeria menu, efficient, quick service, tasty and hot every time (don’t make that dirty ha) love that this place is close! thank you matese crew for always making my tummy happy!!!

I wanted to give Matese an extra star. After a year or so we started to try them again. Delivery times have improved, an hour or so is fair and they give a decent estimation when you order from Grubhub. They are one of a few places that have coupons you can use on Grubhub. They are still inconsistent with bread and we still don’t 10)% trust we will get everything we order. That will take time to rebuild. We did notice that they offer two similar dishes, one as a pasta one as a entrée that comes with pasta. The entrée was $ 6 more than the pasta dish so we assume the entrée would come with more meat than the pasta version of the dish. We ended up ordering both. Comparing them side by side I would say there was virtually no difference over the meat included, so if you see the same dish as a pasta or other entrée, save the money and order the pasta version of it– you won’t be missing anything. Use that $ 6 and get an appetizer or something, or just pocket it.

good place just got 1 regular slice and 1 Sicilian slice.
regular slice was good just had some burnt stuff from the oven on the button
Sicilian slice was okay not that great
will give it another try

Decent food. Nice Italian food!

This place has fantastic food.
Try the chicken piccata it’s delicious.
Also they got great lunch specialsas well as dinner specials.
The staff is not very nice as well.

Stuck in traffic for the Whitestone bridge, I wandered through the local streets looking for dinner… I found Matese pizza… I had the Sicilian pie. which was excellent… soft and yeasty on the inside, crisp on the outside, with the right amount of cheese and sauce… and the sauce was flavorful too… the correct balance between sweet and acid… nice tomato flavor and good seasonings. I also on a whim ordered a slice of bbq chicken pie… it was good, but could have been great if they did more than put cubed chicken into bottled bbq sauce. All in all… I’m full and satisfied. The décor is plain… just like every other walk in take away pizza joint off ever been in… And it is clean.

I’ve been enjoying Matese since I was a teenager– what seems like a very long time ago.
Kids would wait for the bus right in front and grab a slice, play street fighter (the arcade version has been taken out a long time ago… there’s an extra fridge for drinks there now…) and just hang out.
The sicilian slice is pretty amazing– but it’s not as good as I remember.
There have been updates since I was there last too. Everything seems cleaner. Which is nice. Though I miss the old school formica booths.

I am a simple woman.
When it comes to pizza joints, I only order two types of pizza and they are what I judge the restaurants on: the Margherita and the White.
This place cannot do either.
First of all, when I think Margherita, I think a thin, crispy crust with a sea of red sauce and dollops of fresh white mozzarella with basil sprinkled throughout. Be light with the ingredients, people. Unfortunately, what I received was the opposite: a soggy crust heavily covered in mozzarella with random dollops of red sauce (what???). A few basil leaves gathered towards the middle. The sauce is decent and the pizza tasted fine… if it wasn’t a Margherita. It’s as if a white pizza ditched his best friend, Ricotta and decided to be hang out with the popular kid, Tomato.
Speaking of white pizza, why would you put soggy spinach and not offer an option without any? The white pizza here was bland and honestly the worst I have had so far.
That said, I am still on the search for a good Margherita/​White pie in this area. Been very disappointed so far. How y’all screw up the two simplest pies? For shame Flushing and Bayside.
2 stars for the Not-​Margherita; –1 for the White. Never again.
(On second thought, adding a star to bring it up to 2-​stars because delivery took less than an hour and pizza came piping hot.)

Like garlic? Come eat at Matese! Honestly, it’s good for what it is: a pizzeria-​cum-​local-​Italian-​family-​joint. So, a star for that and the decent prices. We like their pasta with meatballs — only two, but they are huge and yummy.
But for the rest? Two stars only. We often order pick-​up, but almost every time, the food is never ready when it’s supposed to be and my husband ends up waiting there forever even though the order was placed ages ago. Two orders ago, they forgot the garlic knots. Last night, they forgot the salad (but somehow managed to remember the dressing). The owner happened to be there and was extremely apologetic, but it’s been one too many times of poor service. We live so close and like the food that we may order from Matese again, but it will be awhile since you can only be a glutton for suffering so many times before cutting the cord.

Omg! But all I can say is Horrible experience.
I order fried calamari which were wet and soggy.
My entrees were chicken with tomato and artichokes it was so bland, no flavor, dry, pasta was over cooked. Also order chicken with eggplant but the main ingredient was missing from my dish the eggplant! Very annoyed, couldn’t even enjoy my meal. Threw it all out and ate the bread with usually comes with butter, in this cases it didn’t. salad which had so much red onion in it, that ruined the whole salad.
Overall will NEVER buy any more food from
Here bc I just wasted so much money on food that wasn’t able to eat and enjoy!

At times decent but on average it’s not that good. I’ve eaten here plenty of time because I work in the area so in a way forced to if having a busy day because the immediate area lacks other places to eat.
I used to really like the Spinach Alfredo slice but now it’s tasteless and drowned with a flavorless sauce making it hard to eat and not worth the trouble.
The chicken cutlet slice is horrible just from glancing at it. Gaudy strips of unevenly cut chicken make it a joke and the chicken isn’t tenderized so you are getting fatty pieces on a slice of Pizza. It’s disgusting.
Last but not least the service is really bad, 1^st off you can’t get 2 seconds to look at what you want they say 3 times and stare at you «what can I get for you?» «What can I get for you?» How bout a second to look which slice is the least gross looking today.
Now the main day guy or part owner I believe his name is Alex. He is on average a nice man but he allows High School kids to run crazy inside the place and actually eggs them on not realizing this is annoying to other customers. I’ve seen fights arguments and just yelling. He does nothing but ask them if they have a basketball game this weekend. 1 time 3 kids just say at my table and I had to kick them out because the guy has no control of his business.
Maybe he should take more time worrying about the correct temperature on a slice of Pizza, flavor of sauces and actually cutting up the toppings so they are edible and a little less time trying to be friends with HS kids who don’t even buy anything.
Avoid this place if you can. It also has flies and is very unsanitary. HAS A B RATING. Could clean the place, oh that’s right how would he have a chance to talk to the HS kids.