PETE TITTL: Round Table a slice of heaven
| Saturday, May 28 2011 06:00 PM
Last Updated Saturday, May 28 2011 06:00 PM
ROUND TABLE PIZZA
4200 Gosford Road
397-1111
Hours: 11 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. Sunday to Thursday and 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday.
Prices: Appetizers $3.99 to $14.99, salad $1.99 to $6.99, sandwiches $5.99, lunch combos $6.99 to $7.99, family meal deals $18.99 to $28.99, chicken and wedges $3.99 to $19.99, large pizzas $21.99 to $22.99. Child's meal (10 and under) $4.99.
Payment: MasterCard, Visa, American Express, Discover accepted. Personal checks not accepted.
Dress: Casual.
Amenities: Wheelchair accessible; beer and wine served; some vegetarian options.
Food: Three stars
Atmosphere: Three stars
Service: Three stars
Value: Three and a half stars
Next week: Jumpin' Joe's Fish Shack
Dining Out
CORRECTION
In last Sunday's review of the Belvedere Room at the Padre Hotel, I praised the restaurant for not charging a corkage fee when I brought my own bottle of wine to dinner. That apparently was a server error. The restaurant's policy is to charge $20 a bottle if the wine is not on the restaurant's list. If the bottle you bring is on the wine list, you must buy that particular vintage from the restaurant. I apologize for the error.
-- Pete Tittl
BEST BURGER
Pete is on a quest to round up the best burgers in town. What's your favorite and why? Email Pete at ptittl@bakersfield.com
The chain vs. independent competition in the restaurant business is bad enough, but it's kicked up a notch when it comes to pizza parlors. The independents mostly get steamrolled by the huge TV ad budgets of the chains. In recent years, Bakersfield has lost one of its small chains, Papa O's.
Round Table, a chain currently going through bankruptcy, is making a play in Bakersfield, first taking over another chain store, Shakey's, on White Lane, and now a restaurant on Gosford that was last a race-theme pizza parlor, 4200. It's noteworthy mostly for one of the best lunch buffet values in town, a spread that goes for only $5.99 on weekdays and $6.99 on weekends (when, I guess, they presume people will linger and naturally eat more). The buffet is open from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., and we timed our visit for 1:30 p.m. This was a test. Would the late-arriving customers get a pathetic, picked-over buffet as we did on a previous visit to the same location when it was named something else?
Not at all. In fact they were putting new pizzas, wedges and chicken out to the very end. It probably helped that there were a few other latecomers, some of them lingering near the buffet holding empty plates and looking longingly toward the kitchen. But for little more than the price of a Happy Meal, you could get a real feast, whether you arrive early or near the end.
The fried chicken with its simple, unseasoned flour coating was crisp and fresh. We've been lacking good fried chicken options since the Pantry closed, but this is worth checking out. The wedges, while not up to Rusty's standards, were acceptable. And the sheer variety of pizza (all helpfully cut into very thin slices so you can sample many without feeling like a pig) was impressive. I figured we could sample virtually all of the Round Table specialty pizzas. Those we tried during this lunch visit included cheese, pepperoni, pepperoni and sausage, veggie combo, the chicken and garlic, the barbecue chicken and the Maui Zaui (Hawaiian). The only ones left off were a couple with artichoke hearts (veggie and meat combo variety). Since there was a decent crowd, nothing was dried out.
I have to give the salad bar a lot of praise, too, though the dressings were not up to the standard set by the vegetables. In both variety and freshness, the vegetables were exemplary (zucchini, broccoli, spinach, lettuce, baby carrots -- all tasting farm fresh). Great veggies like that cry out for customized dressing options other than a brackish Italian or a too-familiar ranch.
(The salad bar is also a good deal at night for $3.49 with a meal).
The garlic parmesan breadstick twists were included on the buffet as were some cinnamon rolls and a regrettable streusel creation that is just not worth consuming on any level.
On a dinner visit we tried another specialty pizza, the Italian garlic supreme ($22.99), this time with pan-style thick crust, which wasn't available at the lunch buffet. It had a lot of visible fresh- chopped garlic on top of the thick layer of cheese and announced its presence when brought to the table. Wonderful. The toppings seemed a bit light however: pepperoni, sausage, chopped Roma tomatoes and fresh mushrooms. Green onions were left off. I would've loved some olives and maybe white onions, too. Far too simple a creation for all that garlic.
Service was fine, though they were slow to bus the tables in one whole section of the dining room at the buffet. At our dinner visit, the crew -- a positive young group -- seemed to be all over offering plates, forks and keeping the place looking presentable. One warning: My companion got a glass of white wine ($2.45), which turned out to be some chablis out of a jug that looked as clear as water. Better to go for the Newcastle Brown Ale, which is available on tap with the usual American beers.
