86% like? like what, exactly?. i am baffled why this place gets decent reviews, so i'm going to be very detailed as to what was (horribly) wrong with the pizza, the service, and the cleanliness of giuseppi's.
let me begin by saying that i'm not affiliated in any way with any of the pizza shops in maryland (or elsewhere). i visited giuseppi's while on a trip back home to rockville for christmas, and brought my dad and wife there hoping for some good pizza. i had every reason to want this to be a good experience.
we arrived at about 7:00 pm on a thursday and ordered two 12" pizzas, one pineapple and the other spinach, onion, and sausage. the place wasn't crowded, so the experience wouldn't be altered by pressure.
the decor was bright (which i like), with curvy wall edges and a playful tile pattern on the floor. several families dining... but it struck me that almost all the diners were latino. noticing that, i looked behind the counter to see several latino cooks and an asian cashier. that doesn't have to mean anything, but i find the best chinese restaurants have chinese cooks and diners; the best indian places have indian cooks and diners, etc., so this gave me pause.
i decided to wash up in the rest room. it was dirty. i'm not a neat freak by any means, but rest room cleanliness is another earmark of an operation that takes pride in its work. returning to the restaurant, i noticed the knee-rail surrounding the entire wall of the restaurant was absolutely filthy with black grease. this did not pique my appetite.
then the pizza arrived. we were all hungry and in a good mood, and wanted to like it. but the first signal came when i opened one box to find that they had used frozen spinach on the pizza. how does one do this and create a taste that is sweet instead of bitter? how does one do this and expect that the crust will not become soggy? clearly these things didn't matter to the pizza cooks at guiseppi's. both pizza crusts were bone-hard on the bottom few millimeters, above which the crust was entirely soggy. the hard part of the crust was so hard that plastic knives would require about 20-25 passes at full force to cut through it. my wife and 79-year-old father immediately began to scrape the toppings off their slices and leave the crust uneaten. we didn't have time to wait for the pizzas to be redone. i wish i had taken a picture.
then i noticed the taste. whoever said this was tasty pizza apparently has never had such. there is no salt in the crust; there were no spices in the sauce. none. no basil, no oregano, no real hint of garlic or (as with some artful pizza places) rosemary. the pie was as bland as any poor pizza i've ever had. most frozen pizzas have more flavor. and most, as bad as they are, would have been a welcome exchange for this. three bites in, my wife said "my pizza is better than this, and i'm not very good at pizza."
when it was time to leave, my dad thought it would help these guys to get some feedback so they could improve. he told them about the crust being knife-defyingly hard on the bottom and uncooked above that, and suggested that perhaps the pizza was baked too quickly.
the reaction from the employee at the counter who seemed to be running things? "okay."
"okay."
that's it.
not a "i'm sorry you had a bad experience. i would have loved to make those pizzas over for you. oh, you didn't have time? here's a coupon for next time and a dessert to take with you."
just "okay." apparently these folks don't care if a customer, in effect, is saying "i'll never return here, but i'd like to give you some feedback so you don't lose all your other customers."
earlier as my dad stubbornly chewed while scraping the cheese from the alternately bone-hard and batter-gooey mess that was the crust, he asked, "is this the worst pizza you've ever had?"
"i'm 43," i said. "i try my best to forget the bad pizza i've had, but this has to be up there with the very worst of them." but we found that it doesn't take a 43-year-old who has tasted decent pizza to identify bad pizza when he tries it. arriving home with the leftovers that we optimistically boxed, we found that our ravenous teenage sons, after a brief taste, wouldn't eat these awful pies either.