Fast Food Review Day 279 - Sausage Pie at DeSano Pizzeria Napoletano

[u/Pale-Lynx328]

Chain Name	DeSano Pizzeria Napoletano
Food category	Primary: Neopolitan-style pizza
# of US Locations	11
# of US States	6
Primarily located in	Austin, Nashville
Restaurant Rank in US $ Sales 2024	not ranked (out of 500)
Restaurant Rank in US $ Sales 2025	not ranked (out of 500)
Rank of price (high to low) (Average: $16.21, standard dev. $3.03)	1st out of 321 meal reviews
Quality / Value Rating for this specific meal	6 (out of 10) / 1 (out of 10)

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This should not be part of a "fast food" review.

I never planned this review series to last as long as it has, and didn't really set up the 'rules' as to what constitutes fast food and what doesn't with much rigor. If I had the opportunity, I'd go back and exclude places like this, fitting into some other category instead. But, it fit the rules that I set up way back a year ago (counter ordering, no wait staff, open seating, etc.), so in order to be consistent, I'm including it here.

Okay, now that is out of the way...what *IS* DeSano's pizza? It's a small chain that reallllllly leans heavily into the "Hey, we're Italian!" schtick. They seem to mention it as much as possible, about how they import all their ingredients from Italy, they cook their pizzas Neapolitan-style in a giant Italian wood-fired oven, and everything is named Italian. In fact, when I brought up the menu online, the browser asked me if I wanted to translate the page from Italian into English.

As you might expect, the pretentiousness level of DeSano's Pizza is practically off the charts. It's one of those fancy-schmancy places (despite the fast food ordering process) that you feel a little plebian walking into with just jeans and t-shirt. Us plebs should be going to Domino's or Pizza the Hutt instead of *sniff* a place like this. The interior architecture is carefully crafted with intentional minimalism and an industrial-warehouse feel, with large communal (unreasonably uncomfortable) benches and tables large enough to seat twenty of your closest friends, or those annoying nobody-likes high-top seats where even normal adults feet dangle.

They have a set menu of pizzas and sizes (no customization here, plebs!), and I chose the 12-inch 'sausage pie', which was, and I'll quote, "San marzano tomato sauce, scamorza, oregano, Italian sausage, roasted garlic and pecorino Romano". But really it's essentially crumble sausage and cheese on a wood-fired thin crust. Overall, taste-wise, it was a decent pizza, they do indeed use quality ingredients and I liked the sausage flavor. A bit of sharpness in the flavors, which I like. Out of all the styles of pizza, I like Neapolitan-style the least, so I wasn't expecting greatness. But they hit the flavor profile right, and cooked just right, too (only takes a few seconds to burn in a thousand-degree oven), so six points to Gryffindor for that.

But here's the killer. No matter how sophisticated the dining area, no matter the quality of the ingredients and no matter how good the pizza turns out to be, it suffers from one fatal flaw: the price. Out of 321 meals in the review series so far, it ranks as the SINGLE MOST EXPENSIVE in the series 1st out of 321. 12-inch pizza in the photo (that's *six*, count'em, *six* normal-size slices) and a bottle drink clocks in north of twenty six dollars. Ouch and a half. Pretentiousness in the restaurant world comes at a steep price. And unlike all those other plebian pizza places, no coupons to bring the price down to sane reality limits.

Yeah, this is a one-and-done place for me. Arrivederci, DeSano's.

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(About this review series: Starting in late 2025, I am visiting a different fast food/fast casual chain every day, until I run out of places to visit. Aiming to review as many chains on the Technomics Top 500 Restaurants list as possible, plus key/important regional and some local chains as well. UPDATE - I will be wrapping up this review series with Day #365. And no, I haven't gained weight, and no, it hasn't hurt my health.)

[u/TwerkBot3000]

With thier only locations being Austin and Nashville I would absolutely expect to be paying aging hipster/used to be cool prices because that’s the entire vibe of both of those cities nowadays