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A North Canton Italian Delight!
Spring 2024
Still revising this post, please excuse minor mistakes until fixed sorry!
Wow we were sleeping on Mama G's! Do NOT pass this place up.
Incredible food! We had a pretty great meal at Mama G's and I think a couple things led to a more positive experience than what we had at Bugsy's. The parking lot was pretty full when we pulled in for dinner at 6pm. We chose to eat outside as it was one of the first and nicest spring days. Unfortunately, our outdoor table was dusty. "Its outside" is an excuse, please wipe your tables down on sunny days every shift. The patio could have more space between tables if one table were to be removed. Again like bugsy's just because seating earns so much $ per year it doesn't mean you have to overcrowd.
Apps:
We ordered some garlic bread, a side salad and Andrew ordered the Italian Wedding Soup one of his many favorite dishes. I do wish I had ordered more salads because little hands and forks reached into my salad for croutons and bites. The mall salad was indeed delicious and a very simple iceberg lettuce drenched in what seems to be a homemade ranch-very rich. My daughters love the croutons like eager geese being fed at the park. (If you feed geese feed them frozen peas by the way not bread, its better for them and still cheap fun) Whatever I don't need the carbs anyway right?
That salad lasted exactly a minute on the table with all those hungry hands. I do love the crunch of iceberg lettuce although I do acknowledge it provides no nutritional value, and overall none of this is helping anyone's diet anyway. If you come in expecting romaine, arugula, baby spinach you may want to order a different salad.
Andrew's soup. To me Italian Wedding soup looks gross with the floating (spinach?) and I'm not much of a soup person anyway. I do need to put my big girl pants on and try it because I'm 32, its time to grow up and constantly try new things. Andrew loves this soup and often orders it when we get Italian food. He loved the chicken in the soup and the addition of what we guessed to be pork mini meatballs in the soup.
Service
Our waitress was young but she was really holding the place down, she made sure we weren't forgotten outside (a common fear of mine when sitting outside at restaurants, uh refill please?) and wait time was not bad at all even at dinner rush!
Dinners:
I ordered the
Baked Ziti
Meat sauce and three cheeses tossed with ziti pasta
baked to perfection with two meatballs
I am not a ricotta loving person but baked ziti is an exception. This is the best damn baked ziti and I did add on the meatball to my annoyance of an upcharge. I prefer restaurants just give me the full experience for one price. My dish alone with the upcharge came to about $16 and that hurts because that means I can't afford to eat here often. It was worth every penny and I highly reccomend ordering the meatball with it! The meatball was cooked perfectly, the texture was finely minced, and meatball perfectly seasoned. The pasta sauce? Borderline orgasmic, better than the other Italian places we've reviewed, sorry!
Andrew ordered
Aglio E Olio
Sauce of olive oil, garlic, margarine and parsley, with choice of pasta
whole chunks of garlic are in it and tossed with angel hair pasta. His only criticism was that there wasn't enough sauce which was garlic oil or garlic cream sauce. Still both of our plates were bare at the end of the meal!
As for the kids we don't recall seeing much of a kid's menu. (On their website it appears they are developing a kid's menu) Both our girls are meatball fanatics. They could eat meatballs only and skip the pasta entirely in a meal. In hindsight I should have ordered 4-6 meatballs and just cut them up and split among two plates for the girls. What we did instead was order the meatball sub and just told Lily to eat the meatballs out of that and she'd be full, don't worry about the bread. We ordered a 10 inch pizza for Sabrina and the table to share. Sabrina decided she didn't want that after it arrived and she got a portion of my meatball and had garlic bread.
We all had a slice of the pizza because we wanted to sample it as it was our first time here and clearly Sabrina wasn't going to eat it at all. Unfortunately something is just bitter in that pizza and none of us liked it. 😢 It's too bad because it is clearly a beautiful pizza. Crust, sauce, cheese, pepperoni all looked great but the flavor was weird. I am a tough critic but I hate to annoy wait staff and I will not complain about something I've ordered unless it is absolutely inedible. Andrew is usually on board with that stance, if you have ever worked retail or in a restaurant you understand how people can be.
MAMA G’s Classic Pizza with pepperoni
Marinara and provolone cheese
Meatball Sub
Delicious homemade meatballs, whole or chopped.
Topped with our house style meat sauce and melted cheese
Overall we really can't complain. We spent about the same that we did at Bugsy's we experienced a lot of great flavors and I am the personality type that I will order the same thing every time and not stray from it. Andrew is the type to order a different dish every time. I think Mama G's can keep pushing for greatness and be a self critic to catch those little mistakes.
Of course on the way out the door Andrew asked about their cannolis, bought one and he is such a snob about proper cannolis:
He loved it, the cannoli passed his test! Sabrina even had a bite!
What gives us the right to write a review?
What gives us the right to write a review?
We own and run this website for one. We want people to stop going to chains and shop local as much as possible. We do want local businesses to hold themselves to the highest standard that they can. Reviews help them achieve and help average people spend their money more wisely. We're a couple of foodies who love dining out and we've watched WAAAAY too much Gordon Ramsey, Jon Taffer and Robert Irvine likely fake reality TV. Those shows do all have something in common though: Silverheads means the food is bland that is absolutely true, large menu means food costs are high and that is passed along to the customer, when things are truly bad for the owner an accountant is brought in on the show.
Gab works for an accountant during the day and sees many businesses struggling but equally the same owners not pushing themselves by annoying their accountants (you should) and watching their accounts like a hawk. A big misconception Gab had of the accounting industry was that accountants make the decision for the owners. No! Accountants get the accurate picture of what is going on [as long as you the owner participate, believe me we encounter too many owners that PAY for our service and DON'T give us what we need to do the job!]. Accountants can give advice for what to do next but ultimately the decision is on the owner. Accountants help the owner make an informed decision.
Gab's best advice for local businesses, get tech savvy, track everything, know what sells and what doesn't CONSTANTLY. Set the bar for a successful product and revise the non-best sellers. Annoy your accountant, track your money, ask for reports. Be present online and on social media it is NOT going away!
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