Tony Sacco’s Coal Oven Pizza

Décor is modern feel to it, service is good, but pizza…
If you are hoping for crunch thin crust hot NY style pizza, then don’t go to this place.
I ordered vegi… they were uncooked, thickly sliced and place on top without any seasoning. Imagine eating vegetable without any type of seasoning or dressing which made very blend pizza. On top of that, pizza sauce was very garlicky and un-​flavorable also blend.
If you like blend pizza, try to order tony sacco. Maybe meat pizza might taste better, but I won’t try again because pizza wasn’t cheap either.

If you like the taste of chlorine, this is for you. For some reason the dough taste like it has chlorine, but wait, if you order water, it also taste like chlorine. Maybe they use too much chlorine water in the dough?
Otherwise pizza looks good and I assume made fresh, but the chlorine taste just ruins it.
Even buffet won’t save you, all you can eat chlorine pizza for a low price will not get you more business.
Also I noticed, if you get the chicken pizza, it’s way too salty. Also the chicken taste like it came from the rotisserie from Costco and was reheated.
They really need to figure this chlorine taste problem out. It could be the salt they are using.

Great prices and tasty pies. Service is fine not great not bad. Took a long time for a chicken wrap to come. The pizza came before which is odd. Nice updated décor.

Service very good. Pizza bland. Not sure I really ate a coal fired pizza, even with watching them make it. Needed to add tons of salt — get the idea? Meh.

Went for lunch with a large group from work. Service was fine, nothing spectacular. He kept trying to sell their ‘buffet’, which looked like they just threw out a few pizzas under some heat lamps or something… took a pass on that.
Opted for the Italian sandwich… it was pretty good, and a good size for lunch. A couple people with me ordered wraps, which can only be described as ginormous! They looked like 2 average size burritos.
Definitely willing to come back with a smaller group and give it another go.

Crust is good. Toppings are ok. Cheese and sauce minimal. Tastes like Tombstone made on a pizza stone. Kinda disappointed.

This is a regular sit-​down restaurant that serves beer and pizzas with interesting crust texture. Apparently it is cooked in this insanely hot coal-​fired oven for just a few minutes. Either way I liked it and the kids and husband all liked their stuff (they had a bunch of different specialty pizzas and make-​your-​own, too).
One thing I didn’t love is that it had tvs up in a couple of the corners. I expect that in a bar/​tavern, but in a pizza restaurant? Not a fan.
There is an outdoor seating area that isn’t very big but seemed nice.

My buddy and I decided to try the Randhurst area and picked Tony’s. Here’s my review:
Crust A+
Sauce B–
Cheese D
Vegetables A
Promptness A
Atmosphere A
Drink Selection C
The place is nice and welcoming. As you can see above the crust was phenomenal, but the place went cheap on the cheese. I can definitely tell when a place does not use fresh mozzarella. Considering cheese is your biggest expense, many places cut short on this but it makes all the difference. The drink selection was also small, but they had some good beers on tap. I’d recommend upgrading your cheese products and I’d be back to bump up my rating by a star.

I just came from this place and I actually like it. I do not understand why everyone rated this place so low. My pizza was not burnt at all! I’ve been wanting to try this place since they opened and actually went in to eat today because the Egg café next door had a super duper long wait and we were super duper HUNGRY!
We were seated right away, which is very good. The service is very good! I didn’t have to deal with any rude little teenagers or unhappy workers serving me.
Yeah, it seemed a little odd that it only took 5 – 10 minutes for our food to come out but I have also considered that there were a total of 6 families in the restaurant.
We ordered their garlic rolls and I think they’re pretty average. Nothing fancy about them. But I do have one complaint about them — they overdid the olive oil on them. My family and I were a little turned off that the bottom of the bowl had about 2 cups of olive oil in it.
The kid sized pizzas were pretty average. My 11yr old finished the whole kid sized pizza and was pretty full. My husband had some kind of polo frojo thingy sandwich there and he loved it. Me and the other kids had their sausage and feta cheese pizza and it was a thumbs up for us. Every slice had sausage and feta on it. They are not cheap with their ingredients.
The actual place itself was very clean. Do consider that the place is new.
I did not give 5 stars because WE had to ask for refills. It is not the restaurants fault but the fault of our server. I feel that the people you hire represent your business and that’s pretty bad for business for us to have to ask.
Do I recommend this place — eh. I myself wouldn’t rush to go here. I love my pizza and this place really didn’t cut it for me to go out of my way for.

met some friends for a casual dinner here and it was just as expected. nothing blew our minds but it also wasn’t bad. I’m still amazed that the pizzas literally take 5 – 7 minutes to bake!!! if you’re hungry and don’t necessarily want to go through the McD’s drive thru, come here. it’s just as fast but better quality and a nice atmosphere. drink specials make it a cheap night out too!

mmm, this is some tasty pizza! We usually don’t get anything fancy, just pepperoni pizza, but man is it good. The garlic rolls are also yummy! The salad isn’t anything special but the ranch dressing is good so the salad is passable if you need to get some greens in your life. The pizzas are super fast to cook so the service is pretty speedy. They have a nice patio area. Parking isn’t great because of the setup of Randhurst but its not that big of a deal. I’m not sure how good this would be as takeout because its a very thin crusted type of pizza and I’d be afraid it’d be cold and soggy if you lived more than two minutes away.

Ever since this place opened up in the new Randhurst area, I’ve wanted to give it a try. OK, I wasn’t wetting my pants with excitement, but I was curious. Curious enough to want to come here when my mom asked where we should go for lunch.
There is a very small parking lot next to the building with half of the spaces marked for people picking up take-​out. Due to the limited parking, this seems more like a place to go before or after a movie and/​or some shopping — then you can just park in one place and walk around. We were fortunate to grab the last open spot, otherwise we would have been forced to park by the theater or in the distant parking garage (does anyone even park there anyway?).
Tony Sacco’s has a strange, modern sports bar mixed in with pizza joint atmosphere. I’m not quite sure where they were going with the décor — it was as if it could not decide what it wanted to be and is still stuck in that awkward teenager phrase where they’re trying to figure out who they are by being everything. Even the loud music playing over the speakers was weird like that. Yeah. So we were seated right away (outside), which was cool. The menu was concise, with typical pizza place food options, so we quickly ordered a 16″ Vegetariana pizza and some water/​soda.
While we were waiting for the food to arrive, a large family (presumably mothers and sisters) sat at the table next to us. Then the little girl cried. And her cries became a screaming cry. And then she was screaming. My mother and I were sitting there rolling our eyes and shaking our heads in disbelief. When their pizza arrived, she was still crying. At some point she stopped, but her cries pretty much brought my Tony Sacco’s experience down a bit. (No one was doing anything about her cries! Argh!)
Our pizza seemed burnt. No, no, it WAS burnt. I hate burnt pizza. So I couldn’t eat the crust. But the rest of it tasted fine. Yet, the pizza was thin. Too thin. It was so thin that you could almost see through it towards the middle of the pizza! It was too thin to hold the cheese and veggies on top and kept breaking apart and flopping over like a flaccid p… um… yeah, you know. Therefore, it was really hard to eat with our hands. Forks and knives were a must. Even my sister said the same thing when we brought home leftovers for her. We also think the veggies weren’t cooked enough. Our waitress also didn’t bring us Parmesan cheese (for my mom) and she was lax on something else too (can’t remember what it was). It wasn’t like there was a ton of people there, so a little more attention would have been good.
The best part of this meal was eating with mom. She rocks.
Our experience was OK but nothing really impressed us. I don’t even know why this place is here (what about a Giordano’s? Or Gino’s East?). The only time I would ever recommend this place is if you’re hanging out at Randhurst and looking for some pizza — because this is the only pizza place at Randhurst. There are other REAL pizza joints in Chicago that I’d rather get pizza from.

Dine in dinner on a Thursday night.
+ We were seated right away.
This is where the good thing ends.
— We ordered hummus and a large BBQ chicken pizza. We were given rotoli’s which we thought were complementary. Husband and I thought: Cool! Din’t know they gave complementary rotoli’s. Our waiter came back a few mins later to let us know our pizza was coming. I told him we were not given our hummus appetizer yet. «Oh, sorry. I’ll order that for you.» No problem, I thought. I also asked him what’s up with the rotoli’s. Were they complementary? «Oh, no. I think they gave you someone’s order.»
— In the end, we were charged for the rotoli’s.
+ We were NOT charged for the hummus. Much appreciated. However, since rotoli was someone else’s fault, I felt like we should not have been charged for them.
— We were excited to try what «coal pizza» was about. It was disappointing. There was hardly any chicken in our large chicken pizza. Nothing special or super delicous about the pizza.
— Staff were indifferent/​spaced out. They were not rude or anything. Just…“spaced out”.
WILL NOT COME BACK. Sorry, Tony Sacco’s. There are better pizza joints all over the northwest burbs area.

More like Tony’s Sac-​O-​Shit. This place blows.
Shitty burnt pizza for only $ 18.95! What a bargain! Lousy food at lousy prices being served by lousy waiters who don’t give a shit. Safe to say I’m never going back. They could offer me a $ 100 coupon and I’d tell them to shove it.
This is the Chicagoland area. Go get a real pizza from a real pizza joint. This place is fucking crap.

Wow, I’m really surprised by all of the negative reviews this place got.
My sister and I went here for the first time tonight (just before 6pm on a Saturday). We were greeted courteously at the door and seated immediately. I agree with the reviewer that said the inside of the restaurant was FREEZING but we sat outdoors, so it was little bother to us.
All who served our table were very pleasant, accommodating, and professional.
We first ordered a Caeser salad, which was huge (family style). Then we tried the margherita pizza. I would not call it totally authentic, but the sauce was good, with a sweetness and garlicky undertone. The cheese tasted fresh, if a bit less «melty» than I’m used to on a margherita, and the crust was a bit crispy on the outside but soft and doughy within (yum!).
As far as pricing goes, the Caeser salad was about $ 7 bucks, but enough to easily feed four people, so not uneconomical. The pizza itself was about $ 16 for a 12″, which isn’t cheap, but not uncommon for pizza. On Saturdays they also have promotional pricing for their sandwiches ($ 5). I overheard the waitress say that the sandwiches include a side salad, so sounds like a deal. It looked like they had other special pricing promotions throughout the week, too, so if you’re nervous about trying this place maybe pick a day when the item you’re interested in is «on sale.»
Maybe we just got lucky, but overall our first impression was very favorable, and we have definite plans to return here again.

Somehow, I imagined a completely different experience based on the name and exterior. Either way, it smelled really good, so we decided to try it anyway, despite it’s «warehouse» feel.
The restaurant was extremely cold. Uncomfortably cold — I wore my jacket the entire time.
The music was extremely loud and distracting. I am not «old». I am not «lame». It was fricken loud.
Our server was just kind of there. Bare minimum, no concern for us or how we felt about the space, food, or experience. I was not surprised, as the median age for the waitstaff appeared to be somewhere in the teens.
Now, the food. If you see those Rotoli things — skip it. Everyone in the place will have them. Resist the urge! If you do order them, get ready for a bowl of tasteless bread, swimming in a pool of what appears to be olive oil.
The pizza is good, but nothing I have not had before.
The restaurant is too far from home to do carry out, so I guess this is good bye.

I am not sure why Tony’s is rated so low. It is not bad pizza. The service is excellent… perfect really. The manager is attentive, but not over-​the-​top. It is clean and well-​lit. Why so few stars?
I have read some of the other reviews and they seem a little critical of this well-​run place. I would try it yourself. Go to a movie and grab a slice across the street. We will be back. Hopefully, we will see you there.

I’m giving this place three stars, but the two and a half it had at the time of this review is probably more accurate. I’m going higher because the place met my needs on this first visit there. But I observed some glaring issues that might ultimately contribute to the fall of this place.
I was there for the $ 7.95 lunch buffet that runs from 11−1PM. I came in at 12:37 and often when one goes to a buffet shortly before its ending, the selection can be sparse. Kudos to the place here — the pizza was plentiful late in the game.
But here’s what I observed:
When I walked in a sparsely staffed place that wasn’t so busy seemingly trying to keep up with serving the relatively few people that were there. I sat myself as instructed by the sign at the host stand and immediately walked over to the buffet as I feared that waiting for the server to give me «instructions» might take up time that I didn’t have.
Shortly afterward, the waiter approached me and asked if I wanted anything to drink and what kind of dressing I wanted on my salad. The selections, ranch, Italian or Caesar seemed a little lame — all relatively bland offerings. I went with ranch.
As I was eating the pizza, I noticed the droop in each piece. When I hear «coal» or «brick» oven, I think crisp crust. Other than the edge, this was anything but crisp. And the pizza itself was fair at best — nothing outstanding about it. In a Chicago pizza market, they have a tough road ahead of them.
The salad came out after I had eaten a few pieces of pizza. It was served in one of those phony wood type bowls — about 8″ across. Problem was that the amount of the salad in the bowl was appropriate for a 5″ diameter bowl. It was topped with a small tomato slice and an average sized single red onion ring. On top of the lettuce laid a ramekin holding the ranch dressing. It was absolutely one of the most unspectacular ways of serving a salad that I have ever seen. Consumption-​wise, it wasn’t that big a deal, but putting something like that in front of a customer makes it look like the place doesn’t know what they’re doing.
As I started my second helping of pizza, I was given a «rotoli» — basically a piping hot medium — thick breadstick with a knot in the middle. Served in another phony wooden salad bowl with a puddle of what appeared to be garlic butter in the bottom of the bowl. A decent piece of bread once again served as unappetizingly as possible. Somebody didn’t attend the «Food Presentation 101» class.
I ended up getting out of there in a half an hour, with two drink refills as well. So the service was fine. But the food was really pretty mediocre and how it was presented was even worse. I might go back for the quick buffet — but other than that, there’s no compelling reason to return. Too bad — given its location and the way it’s set up, it could have potential — but not if this is the way their food will be.

I received a message from the owner with a suggestion that I request my pizza «well done» or with a «crispy bottom» next time, which should be more to my liking. As I said in my original review, the soggy crust was my biggest complaint. My mouth is watering in anticpation of the next time I can stop in for a great pizza and beer.

We stopped in after a movie at the AMC across the street. Apparently, business has been booming lately! We sat outside, which was nice.
My wife ordered a salad with vinaigrette, and it was very bland – some lettuce leaves and nearly tasteless dressing. We ordered a small sausage pizza to try. I’m a big fan of wood-​fired pizza, so I figured coal-​oven sounds pretty close. The thin crust was nice and crispy, sauce was so-​so, and there was a sprinkling of cheese.
Overall, uninspiring pizza and overall experience. No plans to go back and wouldn’t recommend it.