3 and a half stars. 

I finally had my first ever Valley Oregano's experience tonight. You'd think I'd have gone to the one on Camelback ages ago, because, well, I live minutes away from it, but no, it was the Tempe location which sucked me in. 

Ok, not necessarily sucked me in. I drove my ass all the way out there to meet some friends for dinner, but still. 

Wait was an hour which kind of bit. We were tempted to just go to Thai Basil instead but as I never had Oregano's we persisted and stayed put. Once seated, we ordered things that I won't be eating anything close to resembling for the rest of the week: the spinach salad (ok, maybe I'd eat that), the cheesy bread, a large thin crust pesto pizza, and the pizokie for dessert. I'm a huge deep dish fan (I know, I know, thin crust is how real Italian pizza is) so I'm going to reserve major potential star wattage for when I actually have one of those. 

I thought the pesto thin crust was pretty decent - didn't blow me out of the water but it was good. The salad was flavorful and the cheesy bread was decent, but the pizokie dessert thing was awesome. Maybe it's because I I haven't had one of these since BJ's back in college (which is a longtime ago), but it was pretty damn delicious. Scene was pretty much college-y, loud, and full of "like, I was all"s, but duh, what else is it going to be.

All in all, almost all stuff not good for me but whatever. Now that I've finally had my Oregano's experience I can go on with my life. Nothing like a local pizza chain holding you back.