We just left Salerno's on the Fox a couple of hours ago, and I can confidently say this was our…read morefirst and last visit.
We decided to give it a try because, for once, we figured we'd stay somewhat local instead of making our usual 45 minute drive into Chicago for dinner. Lesson learned.
First, our waitress Jasmin was nice and did her job. I want to make that clear because the customer service issue at the end was not really with her.
We ordered a small veggie pizza with sausage and pepperoni on HALF because my wife doesn't eat sausage or pepperoni. Pretty straightforward request. We were told about 25 minutes for the pizza. It was closer to 35, but honestly, no big deal. We ordered a Caesar salad, bread and a few beers while we waited.
We also ordered the baked cavatelli to share. The pasta itself had a good texture, but the sauce was nothing special. I probably should have asked what exactly it was baked with because I wasn't expecting the runny ricotta that came with it.
Eventually the pizza and pasta arrived together. Jasmin even pointed out the half of the pizza that supposedly didn't have meat.
Plot twist: there was no meatless half.
The entire pizza had sausage and pepperoni. We literally went through every slice looking for this mysterious vegetarian half. Apparently it existed only in spirit.
The small pizza had six slices. I was hungry and had already waited 35 minutes, so I ate three slices, exactly half of the pizza. My wife ate the pasta because she couldn't eat her half of the pizza. I wasn't interested in sitting there hungry for another 35 minutes waiting for them to start over. We ordered everything to share, so at least one of us might as well eat the pizza.
We told Jasmin, she agreed it was made incorrectly and said she would let the kitchen know. Rather than extending dinner another 35 minutes for Pizza Attempt #2, we asked for a small cheese pizza to go. We figured my wife could eat it when we got home and that would resolve the whole thing.
Then the bill arrived.
There was a charge for the cheese pizza.
I told Jasmin I thought there must have been a misunderstanding because we assumed the cheese pizza was replacing the half of the original pizza my wife couldn't eat. She explained that management wouldn't do that because we had "clearly eaten" the other pizza.
Well, yes. I ate three slices. Exactly half of a six slice pizza. The half that was supposed to have sausage and pepperoni in the first place.
My wife's half was the half they got wrong.
I jokingly told Jasmin that had I known the rules of this pizza negotiation beforehand, I would have gladly surrendered the remaining three slices and asked management to replace them with half a cheese pizza. Apparently I should have preserved the evidence.
Jasmin told us that if it were up to her, she would have just given us the replacement pizza, but management made the decision not to.
The best part? We never actually met a manager.
Nobody came to our table. Nobody asked what happened. Nobody apologized. Nobody tried to fix it. Management apparently reviewed the Great Pizza Case of 2026 from an undisclosed location and determined that because I ate exactly my half of their incorrectly made pizza, my wife could either pay for another pizza or go without.
We chose go without.
We took the leftover pasta home, left the remaining half of the incorrect pizza sitting there and walked out without the cheese pizza. We still tipped Jasmin well because I'm not going to punish the waitress for a decision she didn't make.
As for the food itself, the pizza was incredibly bland. The sauce had almost no flavor. We passed Pal Joey's, Riverview Pizza and Ella's on the way there, all places we've eaten at and enjoyed, and afterward we were wondering why we didn't just stop at one of them. I hate to say it, but Pizza Hut has more flavor in its sauce.
Then, apparently determined to make one more bad decision tonight, I read the recent Yelp reviews AFTER dinner. Those probably should have been our warning not to step foot in the place.
Mistakes happen. If they had made the pizza wrong, apologized and simply replaced the half my wife couldn't eat, I probably wouldn't even be writing this review two hours later. Instead, management somehow managed to turn three slices of a small pizza into the most memorable part of the evening.
Unfortunately, the food wasn't nearly as memorable.
This was our first and absolutely our last visit to Salerno's on the Fox. Between the bland food and management's handling of something that should have been incredibly easy to fix, there's no reason for us to ever come back.
And just to be clear, I wouldn't eat here again even if management offered me a free cheese pizza.
Although apparently that's not something I need to worry about.
