Gusto Italiano has a wide variety of authentic Italian food to appease your taste. Located on the Ponsonby Road in Auckland, Gusto Italiano has a lot of competition for your money. Even opposite you have a gelato ice cream place, oh heaven.
So we arrived, it was a freezing night, so no-one was outside. Plus it was only 7 pm, and we were the only ones in there at that point. Alarm bells started to ring. Was this a bad place to eat, or was it just too early for people to eat? We were soon welcomed by more and more people, so we knew it wasn’t because everyone was killed off with food poisoning.
So we ordered a round of garlic bread, which was very oily and burnt on the edges. It was not a great garlic bread, to be honest. Then I had a Boscaiola pizza (tomato base, Italian mozzarella, cooked ham and mushroom), and a Contadina (tomato base, Italian scamorza cheese, rosemary, Italian bacon, and onion).
So my pizza, the base didn’t have any real flavour to it. It was just a plain pizza dough. However, the cooked ham and the mushroom was ok. Tina was not to keen on her pizza either. She said that she felt the pizza was cooked under a gas flame and not a pizza oven. Although it said Rosemary, Tina stated that it was only a hint. The pizzas saving grace was the very salty bacon, which gave the pizza some much-needed seasoning.
It certainly didn’t scream traditional Italian where it should be all about the bread and minimal toppings. The decor and the menu itself looked very dated as if neither had been changed in a very long time. Their website says Gusto means “taste and enjoyment”, but sadly there was not too much Gusto for us at Gusto Italiano.
