Ryan’s Restaurant Rants (Gourmet Pizza)

A grossly over-generalized look at “trendy” pizza in the District (RedRocks Fire Brick Pizzeria, Columbia Heights, DC; Ella’s Pizzeria, Chinatown, DC; Matchbox, Chinatown, DC)

Apparently, it’s all the rage to name your restaurant some variation of “RedRock” in this area. It’s also all the rage to overcharge for really crappy pizza. Don’t believe me? Just look at Ella’s, Matchbox, and the new RedRocks pizzerias.

As a New Yorker, I understand that I can be extremely picky about my pizza. I also understand that this makes me an annoying person to have an Italian dinner with. Regardless, I believe that all pizza should contain the same characteristics: tasty and generous sauce, well-distributed and generous cheese, crispy but foldable crust, and good quality toppings. Obviously, tasty variations exist (white pizza, BBQ chicken pizza, etc.), but for a standard pie, these qualities are paramount.

So, where do these restaurants go wrong? Each has their own problems:

Ella’s Pizzeria:

I have been told that Ella’s has some great pasta dishes and dinners. This review isn’t about them though, since I’ve honestly not tried them. My beef with Ella’s is their pizza.

Sarah and I went to Ella’s not long after I relocated to DC from Manhattan, and I ordered what has always been my favorite, go-to pie: a plain pizza with meatballs.

What I received shocked me. It was a large, round cracker. A cracker with trace amounts of watery, orangey sauce. Scattered around the cracker were the occasional half a meatball and patch of mozzarella cheese. Missing were the well-distributed cheese and plentiful toppings, and the sauce definitely left something to be desired.

Ella’s might be a good after-work spot for the Chinatown crowd, but I can honestly recommend staying away from the pizza (very, very far away), or you’ll only be disappointed.

Matchbox:

It pains me to write anything bad about Matchbox. I absolutely love this establishment…just not for their pizza.

Matchbox has some of the most flavorful and delicious mini burgers. These delectable little treats are moist, tasty and served with a fabulous pile of onion straws. Matched up with a pint of Allagash White or a can of PBR, the mini burgers are a meal in themselves, and worth the trip to Chinatown alone.

Unfortunately, Matchbox’s pizza is not nearly as good as their mini burgers. The problem with Matchbox pizza isn’t the crust, or a dearth of cheese or toppings, it’s actually the sauce.

Upon receipt of a Matchbox Meat pizza (pepperoni, sausage, bacon), I found my mouth watering from what appeared to be a real New York pizza. But upon tasting, I found something lacking. The pizza was a little burnt around the edges (as expected from wood-burning oven), and the burnt crust and pepperoni were the only detectable flavors.

Thinking that maybe there wasn’t enough sauce, we requested more. When the extra sauce arrived, we liberally applied it to the pizza, only to find that there was enough sauce the whole time, it just didn’t taste like anything.

There is a silver lining to this. Since only the tomato (marinara) sauce at Matchbox is lacking, any pizza without red sauce (white pizza, chicken pesto, etc.) is perfectly delectable and totally delicious.

So, if you have a hankering for solid mini burgers, good beers and some tasty specialty pizzas that don’t have tomato sauce, I can confidently recommend Matchbox.

RedRocks Fire Brick Pizzeria:

RedRocks is a new restaurant that just opened in Columbia Heights (C Heights, bitches!). As a resident, I’m always excited when a new place opens because I love the neighborhood, want to see it thrive, and dig supporting local establishments through my habit for eating out.

I went to RedRocks late one night truly hoping to have a great experience and find another local jaunt where I can waste my money and destroy my diet. It was a damned shame when every single aspect of this establishment went bad.

For starters, Sarah and I began our meal with an order of bruschetta, an Italian standard of tomatoes and onions, tossed in dressing and served on warm, toasted Italian bread. Unfortunately, we never got to try it, since it was served to our table at the same time as our pizza and promptly sent back to the kitchen.

I was excited to try the sausage, pepper and onion pizza, which is truly one of my favorite topping combinations. The sausage, peppers and onions were delicious, but the pizza they were served on was awful.

The crust was another cracker-esque, too-thin, burnt edge, round piece of bread. The sauce was scarce and flavorless, and the cheese was nonexistent and randomly scattered around the pie, instead of evenly distributed.

The only thing worse than the pizza at RedRocks was the service. Our appetizers were late and arrived at the same time as our pizzas. What was worse, was that our terrible server tried to pass her mistake off as a positive thing by saying, “now you get to have your bruschetta AND your pizza!” Sorry sweetie, that’s not how it works.

When we complained about the terrible pizza and the lack of sauce and cheese, we were brought a cold ramekin of sauce and another of (obviously) uncooked mozzarella to place on our pizza. When we complained that the extra sauce was cold, we were brought out another ramekin of warm sauce, but it tasted strangely like Ragu. When I made a joke about being a New Yorker, our server said (and I can’t make this up!), “I used to live in NY and I think NY pizza tastes like shit.”

As you could imagine, an Italian boy from New York being told that some of the best pizza in the World is “shit” by an Asian girl from DC does not sit well.

Overall, Redrocks served us crap pizza with cold sauce and unmelted cheese and couldn’t even make up for it with friendly, apologetic or amiable staff. No manager ever came to our table, despite our many problems, and our server just didn’t care.

What’s bad: I got my hopes up for quality pizza just blocks from my house, just to have them come crashing down. What’s worse: I know being one of the only pizza places in my restaurant-starved neighborhood will help this hackneyed restaurant thrive.

Should be avoided:

Ella’s Pizzeria:
Address: 901 F Street NW Washington DC 20004
Cost: $10-$20 per person
Dress: Casual
Bar: Yes
Date Spot: If you like bad pizza…

Should check it out:

Matchbox
Address: 713 H St NW, Washington, D.C. 20001
Cost: $10-$20 per person
Dress: Casual
Bar: Yes
Date Spot: Damn straight…even the word “sliders” sounds sexy

Should be condemned:

RedRocks
Address: 1036 Park Road, NW, Washington, DC
Cost: $10-$20 per person
Dress: Casual
Bar: Yes
Date Spot: If you hate your date…and yourself

Redrock Canyon Grill (Silver Spring, MD)

Working in downtown Silver Spring, I’ve had the opportunity to dine at Redrock twice; once for business, and one time that was supposed to be for pleasure.

The first time I ate at this Midwest-based, upscale chain restaurant was my first day at my new job. Trying to keep it cheap for my boss, I ordered only lunch and stayed away from appetizers and dessert.

I ordered the chicken pot pie, which was average at best. The crust was flavorless, and so was the filling. The chicken, which was meat pulled from their “famous” rotisserie chicken, was good, but overall, the seasoning was lacking and the meal fell flat.

With a former Silver Spring resident, and friend of Sarah’s, visiting town, we found ourselves with another opportunity to try Redrock Canyon’s food. Honestly, I welcomed the chance to try a larger sample of the menu.

Unfortunately, I left wishing we had tried one of the many other fine restaurants in Silver Spring.

The beer selection at Redrock Canyon Grill is complete but not exceptional. As a beer lover, my skin crawls when restaurants try to pass Blue Moon and Stella off as premium or gourmet beers. Both are good, but neither is spectacular…and a six pack of both can be bought for less than $10 at a Giant supermarket.

We began our dinner with the Fiesta Eggrolls, a southwestern style eggroll with chicken, spinach, corn, black beans and two kinds of cheese. The eggrolls were tasty, with just the right amount of crispiness. The “campfire” sauce served for dipping was also very good, with just the perfect amount of heat. Unfortunately, these eggrolls would remain the only good part of our meal.

For a main course, I ordered the Persimmon Hill Meatloaf Stack. The meatloaf, a combination of beef and pork sausage topped with a tomato-based sauce, was dry and overall uninspired. The flavor of the sausage in the meatloaf was lost, and when coupled with the tomato sauce, which was horribly overpowering, the meatloaf’s flavor was lost altogether.

The side dishes served with the meatloaf were tasty, and included red-skinned, garlic mashed potatoes and mixed vegetables. It was the unexpected discovery of a black, long, gelatinous mass in the mashed potatoes that left me uneasy and a bit disgusted. The manager of the Redrock Canyon Grill assured me that it was a piece of wood (something they use in multiple cooking techniques) that had fallen into the potatoes…I was not necessarily convinced.

Moving on from dinner, Sarah and I decided to give dessert a try. We ordered the apple blossom pastry; an apple, wrapped in pastry, topped with an apricot and caramel glaze, and served with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. The concept of the dessert was great, and the flavor wonderful, but someone forgot to cook it. The pastry was raw and gooey, instead of warm and crispy, and it had to be kissed goodbye and sent back to the kitchen.

Overall, Redrock Canyon Grill has some great ideas, but seriously lacks on execution. Unidentifiable, gelatinous masses should not be found in the mashed potatoes, desserts shouldn’t be raw, and management should show some serious concern for the quality of the product coming out of the kitchen. Comping entire meals due to unacceptably poor quality is not, after all, a way to keep customers...or make any money.

Redrock Canyon Grill

Address: 928 Ellsworth Drive, Silver Spring, Maryland
Cost: $15-$30 per person
Dress: Casual
Bar: Yes
Date Spot: Only if she likes “surprises” in her ‘taters