Giovanni's - Lake Mary

Myself and an old friend went to this establishment on his recommendation. On the menu, they had a classic calzone, a vegetarian calzone, and something called the "Special" calzone. I, of course, went with the special calzone - the price of which was $12.99. When it arrived, I saw that it was a large calzone, not medium large as usual, but just flat large. The calzone was oven baked in a regular oven. The dough was burnt, and crispy. This turned out to be my least favorite part of the dish, because it flaked away as you tried to cut it and burnt (or overdone) dough is always chewy. However, the insides of the pocket were very good. Mr. Giovanni threw in everything and the kitchen sink. It had pepperoni, meatball, ham, mushrooms, green peppers, onion, sausage, ricotta cheese, and mozzarella cheese. Usually, when we see this many ingredients in a calzone, we don't get the ricotta. This time, we did. All of these standard pizza-topping ingredients came together to form a very delicious medley. The calzone was cooked quite nicely inside. This lends to my theory about the difficulty of cooking a good calzone. Had the outside not been burnt, the insides may not have reached sufficient temperature to cook well. Calzones are hard because they are a trade-off in many ways. Unfortunately, the dough and the price detracted quite heavily from the overall quality of it, leaving me only to be able to score it as high as a C+. I wouldn't go here and get it again, but if I found myself back at Giovanni's in an unplanned way, I might be interested to try the other calzone.