Encanto Italian Grill

My wife ordered the 16 inch gluten-free mushroom pizza, as Kelly the server told us 16 inch was the only option available, so that’s all my wife could order.

This was our first visit to the Encanto Italian Grill. This restaurant is located among a narrow industrial park just north of a residential area that is about a mile or less south of 89A, just off of Robert Road. The place was at most about half full at 7:00 pm on a Saturday evening. I ordered their “All Meat” 8 inch pizza. It was delicious and cooked to perfection, though the dough was thicker than what I prefer, but that’s OK. It was still an enjoyable pizza. My wife ordered the 16 inch gluten-free mushroom pizza, as Kelly the server told us 16 inch was the only option available, so that’s all my wife could order. When the pizza came, it came burned, not just the edges but the bottom as well. When we showed the server how the bottom of the crust was burned, she asked if we wanted another, we told her, “Of course.” That seemed rather obvious to us. When she brought the “remake” she brought two smaller single 8 inch gluten-free pizzas. I asked her why she didn’t offer the smaller size as our first option. She said she didn’t know they were available. While they did not burn the center of the crusts of the 8 inch versions, they did burn the edges. This is because the gluten-free crusts cook differently than normal crusts and require different temperature and (careful) handling. This crust was very thin, and like most GF crusts, they are made of very starchy flours and will therefore burn easily. That means you’ll have to cover or protect the edges of this crust with aluminum foil to keep them from burning. When the first crust burned, the cook should have deduced; the second ones will too. Insanity is doing the same thing repeatedly, expecting different results. So we have two issues: knowing how to cook a GF pizza, and making sure burned pizzas don’t make it to a customer. This is a training issue for both the FOH and BOH (front of the house and back of the house. Note: I am a retired chef.) As far as decor, it seems this place has a hard time trying to figure out what it wants to be. If you’re expecting an Italian motif as advertised on the front of the building, don’t. The Mexican music blaring from the kitchen will be your first clue. There is as much a southwestern motif as there is anything else. The decor hanging on the walls is quite an eclectic collection, ranging from southwestern to homey to retro early American, to pseudo Italian. The food and service is what’s counts. The service was marginally OK (only because she didn’t intercept the burned pizza coming out of the kitchen), and the flavor of the pizza was very good once they cooked the second pizza a second time. I recommend the owner speak to the kitchen manager about the volume of the Mexican music coming out of the kitchen, or at least play Italian music because it is an Italian restaurant, after all. Since the flavor of the pizzas was good, we’ll give them another try, or try other dishes on our next trip to Prescott Valley.