First time ever at Ray's. There's a location near where I work but it always looked a little too seedy. Tonight we were all set to head out for dinner at Outback Steakhouse for my birthday. I figured that the q-tips and their snowbird brethren would all be in bed by the time we got there (7:20pm) but no, the woman there asked me if I had call-ahead seating and when I said \"no, er, how long's the wait?\" she told me it would be 40-50 minutes. I basically walked out of there, pushing past some Minnesotans on the way back to my car. I'm not standing around for freakin' ANYWHERE for that long, not even a Ramsay restaurant. We wound up driving to Ray's on a whim as I just couldn't be stuffed trying to figure out anything else.\n\nGot a giant Sicilian \"monster pie\" (ie a supreme) - they kindly left a single square without any topping but cheese, for my toddler. Took about 15 minutes to cook, but that's fine because we're an uber geek family - we iPhoned, Droided and Leapstered up and next thing you know, the food was on the table. It was possibly the largest pizza I've ever seen and yep, it was square. Took a slice and went at it with knife and fork; I get real messy if I eat with my hands, especially with something this size. The bottom of it was real hard to cut - crunchy. After a couple of slices, my right index finger had a rut in it from pressing down so hard on the end of my knife, and my fork looked like Uri Geller had taken it up the wrong 'un.\n\nThe pizza was actually pretty good. Good enough for me to finish about four slices of it. It reminded me of the Chicago 7 (one of my favourite pizzas ever) from Old Chicago over at Bell and 57th. The kid actually ate more than expected, about half of his slice (which is a typical sized meal for a toddler like him, way more than half a grilled cheese sandwich). It was late so I didn't let him finish the rest although he probably would have. The wife finished two slices. We still had about half the pizza, I'm guessing almost 2 pounds of food left to take home. Everything including a free pitcher of soda for $21 including tax. Not bad at all. Considering that on my recent trip back to Australia I paid $120 (US$128) for lunch at an Indian restaurant for three adults and the kid, I'd say that a meal of this magnitude was pretty good value - quantity and a decent amount of quality too. I didn't mind that the pizza was a little crunchy on the bottom, it actually lent it a good texture. Maybe that's standard for Sicilian, maybe they overcooked it, who knows - I'm not an expert. But the wife gave it three out of five stars, which is actually above average for her, and I'll give Ray's that on Yelp as well. Bye bye one week of eating reasonably healthy, hello exercise bike.
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