Donatos

http://www.donatos.com/

We went to Donatos Pizza at Shadeland and 75th St. last night for dinner. I find the layout Donatos kind of confusing and overwhelming.  We walk in and were immediately greeted by a guy.  We said hi, and started staring at the menu board.  It was set up like a fast food restaurant, but the print was kind of small and hard to read.  The guy finally realized I was trying to read and interpret the menu and offered me a paper menu. That actually helped me out a lot.  I had on my really strong glasses, and should have been able to see and read the menu.  The guy was still standing there and waiting for us to order, while I was trying to read through all of the specialty pizzas listed on the menu.  I finally gave up and ordered my regular: bacon, Roma tomato, mushroom pizza on a hand tossed crust.  By this time, I was so hungry I couldn't think straight or make any rational decisions anyway, so, I may as well stick with the normal toppings.  I also ordered the garlic cheese bread with tomato sauce as an appetizer.

This is said paper menu.

To be honest, I've never been impressed with Donatos pizza. My boss always orders it on the rare occasions when he buys us pizza for lunch.  He always orders either completely veggie or completely meat loaded thin crust.  Obviously, not what I would order for myself.  I'm not a big fan of pepperoni on pizza.  After being on a low salt/no salt diet for over a year, it is way too salty after being cooked and causes me heartburn!  I love pepperoni by itself when it hasn't been cooked.  I could sit and eat a whole package!  But I digress, and I don't normally do that.

Trash can  containing all of the paper products and condiments.

After we ordered, we went and filled our cups with Pepsi products and sat down. I had Dr. Pepper for my beverage.  We all know I love my Pepsi products!  Then, I went to where the plates, napkins, forks, straws, red pepper, and Parmesan were located and loaded up.  They were right above the trash can, which kind of grosses me out a little bit.  We chose a table and sat down. 

We waited about five minutes for the garlic cheese bread to come out.  It was a sub bun with butter, garlic and a three cheese mix on it. The sauce for the cheese bread had a really good flavor to it. It was very savory with a good Italian seasoning to it.

When they brought the pizza out to us, they had accidentally already put it in a box.  The guy apologized when he brought it out to us. I said, it was OK because there would probably be left overs to take home any way. 

I liked the thick crust much better than their thin crust pizza.  The crust has a bit of garlic on it.  I still saved the extra sauce from the cheese bread to dip it in.  The bacon had some odd size chunks, but it had an OK flavor.  It wasn't too salty.  The tomatoes were nice fresh Roma tomatoes.  I just wish they had put more on the pizza.  There was barely a slice of tomato per slice of pizza.  The mushrooms were very light in color, almost see through, and very light in flavor.  The cheese could have been a little more flavorful.  Maybe we should have gotten the three cheese blend. The sauce was the worst part.  It seemed like there wasn't enough!  I couldn't taste it.  Good think I had saved the sauce from the cheese bread.  In general, this pizza could have used more tomatoes and more sauce. 

The toppings also kept sliding off of the slice of pizza, but I couldn't eat it with the plastic fork.  The fork would not cut through the crust very easily.  For the price of the pizza, I am not very impressed with having to use paper plates and plastic where when eating inside of the restaurant.  It's set up like a fast food joint for pizza, but costs too much for fast food.  Also, loud rap music was playing the whole time we were there.  I actually like rap music, but I thought it doesn't exactly create a great pizza restaurant atmosphere.  They do have a free meeting room/ party room, I'm sure with the purchase of food.  I give Donatos 2 and a quarter pizza pies out of four.  I wouldn't exactly recommend this as one of my favorite pizzas.