The problem with restaurants in The Villages is that MOST of them get the same stuff from the same distributors, and have the same menus with minor variations. There are a few "good" restaurants, but they're also expensive and not some place the average retiree would be able to afford on their monthly dine-out rotation. I really love Coastal del Mar. I'd really love to be able to afford to eat there more often than once every 4 months.
Pizza - nope. I'm going crap, because there is nothing good on the east side of the Villages. There's Gio's on 301 but it's not a take-out option when it's cold by the time I can get it home and why would I want to drive 30 minutes to get pizza anyway? Where I come from there was one in walking distance, no matter which town or part of town I lived in. And most of them were excellent.
There's very limited diversity. Zero Indian food. Zero Syrian or Middle-eastern food. Even the middle-eastern food truck that shows up at town square events serves their falafel sandwiches on GREEK pita, which isn't anything like syrian pita. And no one serves anything with tahini. There exists no decent meatball sub in The Villages. Sure, maybe you can get them outside the bubble but there are none within it. There is no GOOD lasagna in The Villages. Carrabbas overcooks their noodles, and Takis "lasagna" is actually pastitsio, not lasagna. Thankfully my sister in law taught me her recipe so we can have GOOD lasagna when I make a pan every 6-8 weeks. But it'd be really nice to have someone else do the dishes for a change when we're in the mood for lasagna.
The Chinese take-outs are abysmal, Koyame is the only chinese restaurant I would buy from and even they're only "decent." Their egg rolls are blech and they don't add strips of pork to their wonton soup like they should.
But hey you can get a $15 cheese burger or $28 strip steak or $25 chicken alfredo at any of 4000 restaurants that get their products from Sysco. And the same undercooked broccoli with no seasoning.
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