Turtlelini’s Pizza and Pasta

Stopped in on ⁶⁄₂₂ during the buffet. Great pizza, excellent salad, nice atmosphere, reasonable prices. Will be returning.

First of all, this place is off the beaten path. We needed something to eat other than fast food. I searched on Unilocal and found this place. We each ordered a sandwich. I specifically ordered the Sicicilian at our waitress’s recommendation. OMG! The food was flavorful and fresh! If I hadn’t ordered a salad I would have eaten the whole thing! In addition to yummy food, our waitress was amazing and so thoughtful! This place was a great find!

This food is amazing! Had it delivered to our hotel room. Took a little over a hour but was well worth the wait. Price was more then reasonable too. Highly recommend!

The pizza is pretty good and a decent value, but this place is sadly lacking ambiance. Bare melamine tabletops, vinyl chairs, tables too close together. The buffet is self-​serve and the salad bar is pretty uninspired. If I had a car full of hungry kids this might be just great, but not my choice for a quiet dinner with my spouse.

Pretty good place and glad we found it, thanks to Unilocal!Buffet was stocked. The kids loved the cheesy bread and cinnamon stick dessert. Pizzas were all good. Salad dressings were good. Price was alright for dinner. There were TVs with basketball games and cartoons, so we were all set!

Great spot — pizza was awesome and the all you can eat buffet was an unbelievable deal.

My son and I made this our regular lunch place while visiting Mammoth Cave. We absolutely loved it. They have a lunch buffet but we ordered our own individual pizzas. I got a veggie with no cheese. Usually when I do this, it is all sauce and the veggies are yucky but it’s pretty much what I can get at a pizza place. They cooked it perfect. Very tasty. The staff was super nice. The place is clean. Absolutely try this if you’re ever visiting.

Great place for salad bar and pizza. Salad bar has a decent amount of toppings but the pizza is just ok. Cheese sticks are good and so are the cinnamon sticks. Well worth the money.

When you’re driving from Lexington to Bowling Green the day after a marathon, and all you want is cheese and carbs because you’re still hungry/​recovering from the marathon, and your spouse checks Unilocal for «pizza» and finds a little place called «Turtlelini’s» located in a town called «Horse Cave» you have, in my opinion, a moral obligation to detour 10 miles off the highway to try it.
And when you do detour, finding yourself in a typical small country town, you’ll be very grateful that you followed your internal compass to come here.
For one thing, you weren’t alone in making the journey. Mike Rowe’s been here. Sally Struther’s been here. The guys from American Pickers have been here. My husband and I have been here (and we are kind of big deals). And now you will have been here.
I really want to know how Turtlelini’s got its name — I know that it’s a new iteration of the former Snappy’s (which also featured turtles in its décor and branding, but WHY?!?), but I’m dying to know if turtles swarm in the area or something.
Anyway, who cares. What you do care about is that they make all of their pizza from scratch. The ingredients are fresh. The flavor is great. The staff is friendly and super nice.
We wished we could have had the buffet, but it was only offered at lunch. Instead we ordered a regular supreme pizza. It was the perfect size for 2 people to share — 8 slices, but not super huge. More like the equivalent of 2 normal slices of pizza. The toppings were plentiful. The sauce was applied lightly — tasting more like freshly topped tomatoes than a heavy sauce. Soooo good.
You’ll be eating with the town regulars. It feels both like the best small town pizza you could ever have and a place where everyone knows your name.

The best pizza buffet within 150 miles as far as I can tell, and an amazing restaurant without it! They serve beer, wine, moonshine, and (best) fountain Ski straight from the tap. It’s Italian food the way Americans experienced it, and have loved it for a hundred years, and a love letter to that concept.
The buffet was delectable. Crispy-​crusted thin slices of heaven, over-​topped with gargantuan chunks of ham, greasy pieces of bacon and pepperoni, perfectly melty mozz cheese stringing from every bite, and ricotta oozing from under the meat & what-​must-​be-​san-​marzano-​tomato-​sauce layers in what I need to reiterate is a BUFFET.
How the hell does this sauce taste this good on a buffet? Why is there so much meat on the meat pizza I can’t see the cheese? How are they making all these homemade high-​quality ingredients in the middle of nowhere. Why did I wake up here in a chair at 5PM when I walked in at 12:30 PM hungry?
These are all questions you will ask yourself after you’ve been to this establishment.
The answers you will only find by going there again and again. I will continue to monitor the awesomeness of this restaurant. With your help, perhaps we can find these answers together.

Staff extremely nice and helpful.
Went on a Monday and they had a buffet, pizzas came out every 5 – 7 minutes (specialty pizzas) and had dessert pizzas for like $ 8. Food was fantastic, thoroughly enjoyed it. Would go back if we ever visited mammoth cave area again.

Great food. Nice people. Clean bathrooms (this says a lot about a place!). Awesome prices. This place beats local pizza shops in big cities, hands down. I would give it 6 stars if I could.

Went here for dinner tonight. We ordered a large ham, mushroom and banana pepper pizza with pepperonis on the side. We had a beer with it. Everything was fresh and tasted great. They were super busy as it was Heritage Days but took care of us in a speedy manner.

My husband and I showed up an hour before closing time on a Friday night. We were on a road trip, and we had just checked into our local hotel. The buffet was being picked up, and we were offered what was left at a reduced rate. We opted for a fresh pizza from the menu and ordered a ‘Capone,’ which, quite simply, was great. The cannoli I had after was quite tasty as well.
The atmosphere is modest but clean. The staff was very friendly, the salad bar looked good and fresh, and the beer was cold. The menu had many tempting items to choose from, and we will definitely return if in the area again.

The place is clean. There was no crowds there. But I felt food was average. Pizza was not cooked well and lacked flavor. The salad bar looked pretty slim with plain lettuce and a few toppings.
Small negative. If you leave multiple TVs on with the sound up… the two TVs on the same channel created a bad echo effect. Not everyone wants to watch TV ALL THE TIME.
Again there were positives: easy parking, friendly lady in the front, clean inside and clean bathrooms. And in the city of Horse Cave, there may not be many better options.
p. s. Not much in the way of pasta… if you call the place Turtlelinis. it would be awesome to serve Tortelini.

So I walked in and got the pizza buffet. It looked like it would be a nasty sbarros type experience. The pizza being under a heat lamp. My first bite was shocking. Fresh and chewy with loads of sauce. Probably the best pizza Buffett I have ever had. So if you are in a hurry but still want good fresh pizza this is the place to be!

Skipped the 1-​star fast-​food places at the Horse Cave exit on I-​65 and were pleasantly surprised that this gem of a pizza & pasta joint was so good. $ 8 per person dinner buffet satisfied young & old in our party of 6 people. The buffet had several types of pizza, spaghetti, lasagna and a well-​stocked salad bar. Very family oriented with 3 TVs to keep the young-​ones occupied. Very clean restrooms.
Now, a word about the service: Southern hospitality and kindness exists in Horse Cave, Kentucky. These waitresses worked hard, always had a smile, AND brought my son 2 slices of pizza when the cheese pizza came out of the kitchen when the buffet had run out. That sweet lady noticed my son had left the buffet table with an empty plate!
Whoever owns this restaurant in Horse Cave is doing a lot of things right.

We had the lunch buffet. It featured a wide variety of pizzas that were freshly prepared and delicious. The salad bar was adequate. The servers were very friendly. When I’m in this area again, I will definitely eat here.

The unassuming outside masks the flavorful pizza inside. I had the luncheon buffet, which contained at least 8 different kinds of pizza and a decent salad bar.
If I’m in this neck of the woods again, I will surely eat here.

Super tiny wings. We were hungry and tired, this place had to do