By Rick Rodriguez Special to OnMilwaukee.com Published Dec 04, 2013 at 3:36 PM

In my last job, I spent some time on Milwaukee's Northwest Side and drove past a few businesses that looked to have some history. One of them was Mama's Pizza and Italian Cuisine.

Opened in 1958 as Mama Mia’s, the restaurant has survived and prospered despite changes in ownership and presumably changes in the neighborhood. Current owner Tony Pipito acquired the restaurant in 1977 and shortened the name to Mama’s Pizza.

Pipito kept a few popular recipes, such as a familiar garlic bread found at Mama Mia’s and Barbiere’s, but later brought Chef Giovanni Crivello from Pipito’s former Oconomowoc restaurant Porticello to expand and redesign the menu. Crivello still runs the kitchen and seems to have the spirit to run it for another 30 years.

Since 1977, Pipito has acquired the adjacent building suites to expand, adding Papa’s Pub with a dining room and converting the original space into a banquet hall.

Recently, a breakfast menu was added and is served every Saturday and Sunday from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. under a separate entity called Mia’s Café, which shares the same space.

Mama’s menu is generous with options, featuring pastas, sandwiches, Italian specialties, soups, salads, pizza, broasted chicken, fish, shrimp, ribs and appetizers, such as the combination basket filled with fried eggplant strips, ground beef filled fried ravioli, mozzarella sticks and fried mushrooms.

Pipito explained that he tries to focus on family dining. In fact, Mama's makes lasagnas and freezes them for families to purchase for college students to take to school and still get a taste of "home cooking."

Each day, Mama’s offers a different lunch and dinner special. Specials include pastas, while dinner specials range from all-you-can-eat spaghetti on Tuesdays to a Saturday night BBQ ribs dinner.

The pizzas are made on thin crust and come in an 11-inch small, a 14-inch large, and an 18-inch Big Mama pizza. Cheese pizzas range from $14 to $21.95 with combination pizzas ranging from $15.95 to $24.75.

My friend and I dined on a Sunday and took advantage of the Family Night Special, which was a large pizza with three toppings, two orders of garlic bread and a pitcher of soda for $26.99.

As I mentioned earlier, the garlic bread was very similar to the style found at Mama Mia’s and Barbiere’s. However, I thought this garlic bread was a little denser than the others. Pipito told me that Mama’s bakes its bread fresh daily.

The pizza crust was perfectly crisp and reminded me of the crust at Barbiere’s with light and flaky layers. The pizza was cut with pie slices, and each slice was strong enough to hold the generous amount of toppings without flopping over.

Mama’s makes its own Italian sausage in-house. It had a nice heat that complemented the spicy pepperoni, which is made locally by Pipito’s cousin Jeff Scardina.

The pizza sauce was among the thickest I’ve had on a pizza. Mama’s starts with a canned paste and adds its own seasoning blend to it, which is very common. The large, plump mushrooms also come from a can.

We sat in the dining room from Papa’s Pub. There were a few other tables with diners, which I was impressed to see so early on a Sunday with no Packers game. Some were ordering lunch, while a few others sat at the bar and watched their omelets being made fresh for them. 

I’m always looking for more options for breakfast and brunch, and I think I’ll add Mia’s Café to my list to visit.

Chef Crivello specializes in omelets and offers 10 options, including the Sicilian, filled with eggplant, zucchini, artichoke and mozzarella cheese with a side of house-made marinara, and the Godfather, filled with sausage, ham, pepperoni, peppers, garlic, green olives, black olives, mozzarella and provolone cheese.

You could hear the passion in the voices of Pipito and Crivello when they talked about their food and growth of the business. So if you find yourself on the northwest part of Milwaukee, stop in for a bite and say hello.

Also, just a reminder that going forward, new pizza blogs will post on the first Wednesday of the month. Don’t forget to check back!

Rick Rodriguez Special to OnMilwaukee.com
I was born and raised in Milwaukee, and I plan to stay in Milwaukee forever. I'm the oldest of three children and grew up in the Riverwest neighborhood. My family still lives in the same Riverwest house since 1971.

I graduated from Rufus King High School and the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater with a business degree.

My true passion for Milwaukee probably started after I joined the Young Professionals of Milwaukee (now called FUEL Milwaukee) which just celebrated its one year anniversary at the time. The events that I attended, and sometimes organized, really opened my eyes to what Milwaukee had to offer, as well as its potential for the future. So for the past, present, and future FUEL Milwaukee corporate sponsors out there, that organization does produce results (editorial)!

I love all of the Milwaukee Sports teams, professional and amateur. I love the Milwaukee arts scene and all of the festivals. I love that you can find a free concert in the summer just about every day of the week. I love the various neighborhoods around the Milwaukee area and the unique characteristics that they offer. I love the people who take the time to tell us about those unique characteristics. I have to hold my breath and count to ten when someone tells me that there is nothing to do in Milwaukee. Then I prove them wrong.

Most of all, I love the Milwaukee dining scene. I love how it continues to evolve with modern dishes and new trends while the classic restaurants continue to remind us that great food doesn't have to be "fancy schmancy." However, I also love the chefs that create the "fancy schmancy" dishes and continue to challenge themselves and Milwaukee diners with dishes we've never seen before.

Our media provides attention to the new restaurants, which is great, but I don't like seeing the older great restaurants close their doors (Don Quijote, African Hut) because they've been forgotten, so I try to do my part to let Milwaukeeans know that they're still out there, too. I do that through social media, online reviews, and a dinner club I run for my friends, where we visit restaurants they haven't heard of before or try ethnic cuisine they haven't had before.

My dream is that one day I can mention a great experience in Milwaukee and not have someone respond with "have you been to Chicago?" I don't like those people very much.