Niko's Pizza LLC, San Pedro

I’ve had a mix of very positive and rather negative experiences with my three visits to this restaurant. Let’s start with the positive: on my second visit, I ordered up a “Mechanic” pizza (basically all of the Italian meats) and was absolutely delighted both with the food and service. It may not be my No.1 pizza (sorry, that distinction belongs to Sammy’s Pizza in Duluth, MN), but it is in my top 10 list now. Very nice all around experience! Now for the negative. Actually, my first visit wasn’t so much negative as “didn’t happen”. I came in just after noon, and the place was super busy – as would be expected. The problem was that it was not at all clear if I should seat myself or wait for someone to seat me. With no clear idea of what to do, I ended up turning around and walking out, going instead to the nearby Whale and Ale. Now, this is not intended so much as a “ding” but merely a suggestion that putting up a sign of some sort for incoming customers to clue them in on what to do might be helpful. It is to be noted that when they are not so busy the waitresses are extremely attentive and will take care of you right away. But when they are busy, they need to do a better job of letting prospective customers know what to do. The real negative occurred today on my third visit. I decided this time to order a sandwich from them. Ordinarily I would have gone to the Downtown Subs and More, but since Nikos put them out of business, I decided I would try here. So I order an Italian to go and specified “no mayo” Well, I imagine you can guess what happened... and I compounded matters by walking all the way back to my office to discover that my request had been totally ignored (as opposed to spot checking the sandwich before leaving – my bad). So I trudge all the way back and have them remake it. While they did leave off the mayo this time, they also left off the provolone cheese! At this point I just ate it, but I was very disappointed by this experience. In spite of this, I do overall recommend this restaurant. That said, I would not ever order a sandwich, unless you are content with exactly what is specified on the menu. Otherwise, it is far too much trouble to get what you want. I was really irked to not be able to have my very simple request fulfilled. In this sense, at least, Nikos has lost “half a customer” in that I will order only pizza from them, and never come in for sandwiches (I’ll go find a Subway or Togos where they don’t screw up your order quite as easily.)