Cordello's Pizza, Ventura

Cordello's Pizza

1700 E. Thompson Blvd, #E

Ventura, CA 93001

Every neighborhood I've ever lived in has had a neighborhood pizza joint, one of those places that specialize in take-out and may or may not have a few tables. They serve sandwiches, pasta and some sort of anti-pasto, and generally aren't too expensive.

For the most part, I've always felt that like potato chips, no matter how bad a pizza is, it's still a pizza. So what if a Little Ceaser's pizza and the box it came in taste about the same-it's still a pizza. The pizza taste bar is pretty low. 

The best pizzas in town are probably those served at Toppers (good salad bar, too) and Ferraro's, but both can be a bit pricey if you just want a basic pepperoni or cheese pizza. Santino's (one of my early posts, before I learned how to add pictures) is where the family goes if we want to have pizza out. But if we're having pizza in, I'm usually sent to Cordello's.

Cordello's is everything a take-out pizza place should be. Reasonably priced, quick turnaround, and they'll deliver, though I usually just pick it up. They usually have specials, and you'll see coupons around town. At differet points, I've also had their sandwiches, wings and antipasto salad, and all are pretty good.

One thing to note-Cordello's is located in a sketchy looking stripmall. It's kind of like the Avenues, and though I've never been bothered in any way, I thought I should mention it. The liquor store next door usually has an array of odds and ends if you need to kill a few minutes.

I'm not saying I'd drive a long way to pick up a Cordello's pizza. However, it'd be worth a 10 minute drive if you're staying at one of the hotel/motels in town.

Jimmy's Slice Pizza, Ventura

Jimmy's Slice Pizza

586 E. Main Street

Ventura CA 93001

Walking home from a recent doctor's appointment, I was thinking "Sandwich, Sandwich" over and over, and looking at all the restaurants to see if someone served a sandwich. Looking at the doorway of Jimmy's Slice, I saw this sign. Half sandwich, salad, drink and cookie? The perfect lunch items. And all for $6.99? Even better!

I've eaten at Jimmy's slice once before, coming in with my son right after they opened. Then, I thought the pizza slice was too small and too expensive for what it was, and with the other good family pizza places in town (with better parking and lower prices), I'd never bothered to come back again. 

This time, though, the price was right and I was on foot.

It wasn't crowded when I walked in, but it was just before noon and more people came in after. I ordered from the friendly girl at the counter ("The chocolate chip is really good!") and went to a table over by the window.

The space itself is kind of funky. A repurposed building with high ceilings, brick walls and hard wood floors, it has a large front window with counter seating overlooking Main Street and the Century 10 movie theatre. They serve beer, have a happy hour, and really on appearance I don't know why I don't eat there more.

I had a Caesar salad, which was just lettuce and Caesar dressing, but it wasn't bad, and the garlic toast was very good. The sandwich followed immediately after, and the waitress refilled my soda, even after things got busier.

The sandwich was okay-I thought it was a touch dry and overly bready, but the cost balanced out what it lacked. The pickle and pepper were both good, too.

So, for a quick, cheap lunch in downtown Ventura, it was good. Does it make me want to come back and try something else? I wouldn't be opposed, but I don't know that it would be my first choice.

Pizza Rev, Oxnard

Pizza Rev

1831 Rose Ave

Oxnard, CA 93030

The idea seems like a good one, and I've been there a half dozen times already. It's simple, get your crust, pick your toppings, and away you go.

The thing I like about Pizza Rev is that I can add three anchovies. I like the saltiness of anchovy, but I can't handle a pizza full of them. At Pizza Rev, I ask for three anchovies, spread around the pizza. Then, I add all the other things that I like. The dining room looks like the dining area for those 'fast casual' places, meaning it's totally okay to sit in the dining room by myself reading. Most pizza places, it seems, cater to the big crowds sharing a pizza pie.

The pizza is a 9 inch thin crust. You can pick your sauce-I generally go with a white sauce-and mozzarella with a touch of feta cheese. Then you can go to town on the toppings. After your choices are complete, they slide the pizza into an open flame, stone pizza oven, bringing it to your table when finished.

Of course, they have the usual, pepperoni, olives, sausage, canadian bacon, pineapple, but they also have some fun stuff, like artichokes, garlic, sun-dried tomatoes and last month's special, potatoes.

White sauce, mozzarella and feta cheese,
beef pepperoni, crispy bacon,
mushrooms, red onions, sun
dried tomato, olives, double garlic
artichoke hearts, and 3 anchovies

At $7.99, it's not bad for a small pizza with whatever you want. Add two bucks, and you can have one of the zillion soda options from the fancy soda machine.

So for me, it's great. My kids only seem to agree on canadian bacon and pineapple pizza, which is a big step up from the years of cheese and olive, but not the way I'd load a pizza up. To bring the family, it would defeat the purpose of going for pizza, which is to feed everyone for cheap. Figure $10 bucks a person, which starts to add up. And where I order all sorts of things, my kids most likely wouldn't venture beyond the basic.

Santinos, here in town, for instance, offers a family special (the best pizza deal in town) that has an extra large pizza, four salads and and drinks for just under $30, and Pizza Man Dan's has large specialty pizzas for about $22.

But, if you want something exotic that you don't have to share, Pizza Rev is a great choice, and when I feel like a pizza just the way I want it-with three anchovies-that's where I go.

They also serve salads, a dessert pizza, and have a kid's size meal.

They currently have seven locations around So Cal, with fourteen more about to open around the country soon. The Oxnard location opened a few months ago, and I think the chain has been around for just a few years.

Bollini's and Dim Sum Express, Monterey Park (and Twoheys and Fosselmans, too)

Bollini's Pizzeria Napoletana

2315 S. Garfield Avenue

Monterey Park, CA 

Dim Sum Express

326 N. Garfield Avenue

Monterey Park, CA

My daughter and I were south for a water polo tournament, and when lunch time came, she wanted noodles.

Monterey Park should have been easy to find noodles in, and we pulled into a strip mall that had some sort of Asian restaurant, but there was a long line for it, and she was hungry, so we tried Bollini's instead.

I like eating with my daughter. She is getting to an age where she is both a bit adventurous in her eating and has a good appetite. I knew walking in the door that this wasn't Pizza Hut, and though the food was going to be a bit more than I wanted to spend, it smelled really good. 

A giant, wood burning pizza oven greeted us at the door, and the idea of a pizza certainly was appealing. Looking at the lunch menu, though, I thought their panini sandwiches also looked interesting. My daughter, bless her heart, was thinking the opposite of me, and we agreed to split our food, allowing both of us to have both pizza and panini.

As we sat down, our waiter immediately put an appetizer in front of us, a bread and pesto dish with a spicy reddish sauce. "It adds a little something to the pizza," he said as he walked away. I tried it on the bread, and it had a mild, flavorful heat to it, which I didn't really expect in an Italian restaurant.

I had a small pizza, named the 'Lulu,' thin crust with sauce, cheese, bacon, basil, garlic and pineapple, and my daughter went with the roast beef panini with au jous and three leaf salad.

The order came quickly and I found it to be quite tasty. The thin crust pizza was excellent, with the flavor blending together atop the thin, almost crispy crust. I really enjoyed the bacon (not Canadian bacon) the was just shy of crispy, and the contrast the of the garlic and basil with the pineapple. My daughter's panini was also good, filled with tender roast beef and melted cheese. The gorgonzola dressing that topped the salad added a bit of tartness that made the salad seem lighter than it would have with ranch or blue cheese. There was enough left over for my daughter's dinner as well.

We headed to Fosselman's, an institution in the San Gabriel Valley that is as good as everyone says it is. I had the sweet corn, which was creamy and sweet, but not overly so, with little corn kernels. It had a hint of corn flavoring, but it certainly wasn't like canned cream corn. My daughter had lemon custard, which though lemony, wasn't tart like a sherbet but instead rather creamy and refreshing. Fosselman's isn't as heavy as, say, Ben and Jerry's, but certainly with a higher cream content than Baskin-Robbins or Rite Aid. Where Baskin-Robins and Rite Aid seem very sweet, Fosselman's has more flavor. It really is worth a stop when you are near, but since there are a wealth of comments on the internet, I don't feel I have to add more.

Over the course of two days, I must have driven by Dim Sum Express a half a dozen times, and each time it had a line. Since it was in a place that was most likely a donut house in a previous life, I figured that it couldn't be too expensive, and since I had blown the food budget at Bollini's, Dim Sum Express was a place that we were definitely going to go.

It seemed a little sketchy walking up Sunday morning, but there was, like every time I had passed it for two days, a short line. We got to the window and took and order sheet. Looking it over, and looking at the pictures on the window, we ordered pot stickers, steamed BBQ pork buns, egg rolls and baked pineapple cream buns, along with a strawberry icy and a passion fruit icy that came in under $12. Not bad for a light lunch.

Looking inside the window, it seemed clean and busy. The phone rang the entire time, with the cashier taking orders in English, and I guess, Chinese.

Our food came up quickly, and though I wouldn't make a special trip from Ventura, it was tasty and filling. I thought the pot stickers were very good, not too greasy, and the pork buns blended the sweetness of the roll with the bite of BBQ pork. The icys were a good size for $1.75, and if I had been paying attention, I'd have paid the additional quarter for tapioca.

Along with the Dim Sum, there were several fast food items listed in the $7 range, something that I'll try when I'm in the area again.


My inlaws are big fans of Twoheys, another San Gabriel Valley institution. Everything on the menu is good, but their buttermilk made onion rings, and the home-made potato chips are excellent. They usually make a very good hot fudge sundae as well, but on this particular Sunday, the sundae was more fudge and whip cream than ice cream. My Father-in-Law said that Twohey's was about to be sold, though, so I don't know what the future will bring for them. Hopefully, the new owners won't mess with the formula too much.

There's plenty of info on both Fosselman's and Twohey's, so I didn't dedicate much space to them. They are good, though.

Willie's Barber Shop and Gino's Pizzeria, Santa Barbara

Willie's Barber Shop

12 W Figueroa St # A
Santa Barbara, CA 93101

Just so that I have something to post this week, I'd like to take a few minutes to talk about my barber, Gil, the son of Willie, the proprietor of Willie's Barber Shop in Santa Barbara. I happened across their shop 7 or 8 years ago, when my kids were at Zoo Camp in Santa Barbara, and I've been coming back on a regular basis ever since.

According to Gil, the shop has been there almost forever, with his dad being the second owner, and he's be there for 50 years. Gil generally cuts my hair, but Willie will once in a while. Both are talkers, and there's something charming to that, listening and chatting about sports and other current events. I've been taking my son there for a long time now, so they've watched him grow-and know his name, but not mine. Actually, I don't think I've ever introduced myself.

Gil remembers who I am though, so that's good. Basically, I go in, get my usual haircut of what's left of my hair, talk about stuff, and feel manly. Not a bad thing, and it's usually just about $20. The shop probably hasn't changed much at all since it opened, and I like that. It looks like a barber shop.

I wrote a Yelp review of it about a year ago, and said pretty much the same thing.

Gino's Pizzeria

12 W Figueroa

Santa Barbara, CA 93101

Today, I went to Gino's Pizzeria, which is right next door, for lunch after. They had a pizza, salad and soda combo for $5.50, which was pretty good-and great for the price. A big, thin sliced pizza served on a paper plate with a fresh ice berg lettuce salad and soda in a can, it's certainly enough for a light lunch. Then my son and I added Garlic Knots, which are small bread dough balls covered with garlic, olive oil and salt, and served with both a white sauce (similar to ranch dressing) and red sauce (cold pizza sauce), a dozen of which went for another $5. Lunch for two for under $20, which works will for me. And on an added note, the coke I had was ice cold, which I really appreciate.

Both places are regular haunts for me.

My picture of the outside didn't come out very well. I'll add some later.

The Blind Onion, Sparks, Nevada

 The Blind Onion

824 Victorian Ave.

Sparks, NV

Yes, I know, the site is called "Rick's Ventura," and my mission is to talk about things in Ventura, yeah, yeah, yeah, but I'm not in Ventura today. I'm in Sparks at a conference, and I was tired of eating hotel food. Strolling through Victoria Square brought me to the Blind Onion. Someone was sitting in the window, eating their pizza, and I thought it looked pretty good.

It's a tiny space with a handful of tables and a bar. A wide variety of beer were available, as well as other cocktails. The friendly girl at the counter asked if I needed a menu, which I took and quickly scanned.

Since I'm not kissing anyone on this trip, I saw something called the "Breath Buster," a pizza that featured both onions and garlic, along with pepperoni, mozzarella, linguica and red sauce, and knew that was the order. A small with a soda set me back $9, pretty reasonable for the size pizza I got.

I filled my fountain drink with Dr. Pepper and sat down at one of the tables. Interestingly, there was a large bottle of honey at each table. The Blind Onion serves neither hot tea nor biscuits, so I was left to wonder.

The counter girl brought my pizza over in about ten minutes, but left before I asked about the honey. Still, being the smart guy that I am, I tried just a touch on my pizza. The contrast between that  and the pepperoni, garlic and onion was really quite good.  When the girl came back to check on me, I asked, and she said that many people like to use it on their braided crust. She continued that the crust is made with a touch of brown sugar, and the honey brought that out.

What I discovered through experimentation was that too much honey overpowered the pizza, but just a touch really brought out the flavor. The braided crust was really good, with or without the honey, too, and on the whole is was a good pie.

The Blind Onion has a handful of shops around this part of Nevada, as well one store in Oregon and two in Washington. If in the area, certainly worth a visit.

Santino's Pizza, Ventura

I love the old school Italian pizzerias, with the red checked table clothes and the Chianti bottle candle holders that you can sometimes find in the older parts of LA. You know, like what Buca di Beppo wants to be but isn't quite. Ventura has a couple of old Italian restaurants, like Ferraro's and the Spaghetti Factory, (both of which I'll get to in another post) but yesterday we headed out to Santinos. A 30 year old family run pizzeria located next to Ventura college, we went because of the "Family Special," a large, one topping pizza with four small salads, all for $25.95, but discovered that the special isn't offered Friday or Saturday. We ordered that anyway, for the additional $5 or so dollars. They have a fresh salad bar, and while we ate that we could see the pizza chef twirling the dough. He didn't throw it in the air, which is what I was waiting for, and as far as I'm concerned, the mark of a good pizza maker. Still, he did spin the pizza with some skill.

We went with the white topping, which I found to taste like a garlicy ranch dressing, and with the very pleasant wait staff and quick order-to-table time, it was a good family pizza night. I think the best pizza in town is still Toppers, but this was good, fresh and fast. The kids liked it, so we'd go back again.

There's also a bar that serves the full restaurant menu, a banquet room (where my daughter had her AYSO banquet last year) and a small game room. Would I drive out of my way for it? No. If it was suggested, would I go? Yes.