Umbria Pizzeria

Bloomington, MN

Yesterday evening we went out to Umbria Pizzeria in Bloomington. They have several other locations around the Twin Cities. Our motivation to go was because we are looking to cater in some pasta for an upcoming party and we knew that Umbria had both catering and pasta. As the name suggests, Umbria also has pizza, which we have had several times.

Let's start with the pizza. There has been an increase and improvement in pizza options in our corner of Bloomington since we moved there a year and a half ago. At first there were a couple of the major delivery chains, Papa Murphy's, and the local Frankie's. Frankie's isn't bad, but it didn't really float our boat. (Ha ha... I just had a flash back to school lunches and pizza boats.) It's worth trying. It just wasn't our thing. Then Umbria showed up, or we just found out about it, followed by Nick-N-Willy's. Our delivery preference has now shifted to Umbria.

Umbria's pizza has a thick crust, not deep dish by any means, but thicker than most places. It's maybe a little breadier than most crusts too... if that's a thing. They have a wide range of toppings and, overall, it makes a very nice pizza. We've had a few different kinds of their gourmet pizzas. The one that stands out the most to me is their gyro pizza. It sounded interesting and possibly tasty and it turned out to be surprisingly awesome. They have some pretty good gyro meat and this Greek white sauce that really makes the pizza. We always end up getting an order of garlic cheese bread when we order pizza, partly because they always have coupons for it and partly because it's really good. It's pretty much perfect.

Back to the pasta. We decided to each order a different pasta so we could have an idea of the quality. My wife ordered the meat ravioli and I got the cheese tortellini and then we shared a bit. The pasta dishes come with a salad and a piece of garlic bread. My tortellini was in a creamy alfredo sauce. A lot of times alfredo sauce can be pretty blah, but this one actually had some parsley and a nice peppery kick to it. The pepper might be a little too much if you're eating an entire plate of it, but I was able to break it up with the garlic bread and some of my wife's ravioli. I would eat it again.

The ravioli were huge and were stuffed with what must have been pork sausage. The sausage had a little bit of a spicy kick to it, but certainly not enough spice to scare away too many Minnesotans. We both enjoyed the ravioli.

After we ate we talked briefly with the manager about catering. He did tell us that the pastas aren't limited to the menu. If we wanted to add stuff like chicken or spinach or whatever, they would do it. It would cost a little extra, but they would do it. They may even do that for you in the restaurant.

We don't really go out for pasta very often. When we do, we like to find a place that's really special, like Donatelli's. However, if we were craving some pasta that we didn't want to make or don't normally make, Umbria would certainly fill the bill.