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Business & Tech

Pizza Joint Struggles To Establish Identity

Filo's Pizza & Pasta on Redmond Ridge is donating its Sunday sales to a good cause, but the food does less to impress.

Lief Moi has an admirable vision for Filo's Pizza & Pasta, a new casual eatery that opened on Redmond Ridge in late January.

Moi's restaurant has taken over the space that used to be occupied by the unremarkable Coyote Creek Pizza Co., but he sees Filo's as more than a place where someone can grab a bite. He’s donating all proceeds from Sunday sales to the Redmond Little League scholarship fund, which helps pay league fees for families who can’t afford them.

“I just wanted to give something back to the community,” he said.

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Moi has been involved in little league baseball for much of his life, he said, and his son was even on the Redmond team that went to the Little League World Series in 2004. With tough economic times making it difficult for some to participate, Moi wants to help make things a little easier, and he’s currently looking to get other Redmond restaurants and businesses to participate in donating as well.

Moi’s intentions are commendable, but Filo's is very much a restaurant still struggling to establish its identity, both in terms of food and atmosphere. The interior remains almost identical to what it was during Coyote Creek’s tenure, and the vaguely Southwestern tones don’t really jibe with what Filo's seems to be going for.

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The restaurant was busy at 6 p.m. on a Saturday night, and if all the tables were not occupied at our arrival, they certainly were by the end of the meal. The cordial, if a little timid, service waned as the restaurant grew busier, but only to the detriment of a few empty water glasses.

The menu is mainly divided between pizza, pasta and grinders, but a few appetizers and salads are also available. Soft drinks are the only beverages available for the time being. A row of beer taps was visible behind a counter, but the restaurant doesn’t have its liquor license yet. Moi said he anticipates it will be two or three more weeks before that happens.

The pizza menu includes six specialty pizzas ($11.99 small, $17.99 medium, $21.99 large), as well as a create-your-own menu with additional charges per topping. The Mustang features pepperoni, salami, Canadian bacon, sausage and black olives, and the small size is certainly sufficient for two people with moderate appetites.

The pizza is Filo's strongest offering, and the Mustang had generous portions of each of the toppings, with the slightly sweet and spicy sausage standing out for its bold flavors. Crust fans are likely to be disappointed with the mostly flavorless and slightly soft crust that makes up the pizza’s base, but the pies are definitely a step up from your average Domino’s or Pizza Hut offering.

Pasta options include fettuccine ($10.50), tortellini ($10.50) and baked lasagna ($10.50). Saturday’s special was beef ravioli ($13.50), and the dish came smothered in a creamy tomato-based sauce that tended to overpower all other tastes with an unfortunate metallic tinge, like some component of it had spent too long in a can. The ravioli itself was overcooked, and resulted in a disappointingly mushy consistency.

The R and R grinder ($8.25) features chicken, tomatoes, onions, mushrooms, olives and artichoke hearts, but for all those ingredients, the overwhelming taste of the sandwich was bread, with a layer of bland texture in between the halves.

Pasta and grinders are served with a side salad — an uninspiring bed of iceberg lettuce with some shredded mozzarella, a few sliced black olives and a mound of dressing. (The menu also promises a tomato wedge and pepperoncini, but both were absent here.)

Moi said the menu is still in the experimental stage, and he plans to add around 20 additional items in the near future, along with a kids’ menu. For now, Filo's presents a selection of fairly underwhelming choices, but there’s no questioning the restaurant's good intentions.

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