John M.
Yelp
**Review: Disappointing Experience - A Pizza Nightmare**
I've been a regular at this El Segundo location, visiting several times for lunch, and I've always enjoyed the Spicy Sicilian square slice. It was consistently excellent. Today, however, my experience was entirely different--and unfortunately, it was a major letdown.
After a positive history with their pizza, my wife and I decided to try a large cheese pizza for dinner. I placed the order, picked it up on my way home from Top Golf, and arrived just before it was finished. The pizza was "fresh out of the oven" when handed to me--at least that's what I was told after waiting about 10 minutes for it to be ready. The staff seemed overwhelmed and a bit stressed, but I tried to brush off the attitude of the cashier. After all, I understand that the place can get busy.
Once we got the pizza home, however, the disappointment was immediate. The pizza was easily the worst I've had in years. It was, quite honestly, inedible--stiff as cardboard. You could hold a slice horizontally and it would stay perfectly rigid, like a piece of scrap material rather than food. This happened right after picking it up--5 minutes into the drive home. Even more baffling, the pizza remained in this sorry state. Those $2 frozen Totino's pizzas you can get at the store and bake at home? Far superior.
Things didn't improve when we got home and my wife tried a slice. By that point, the pizza was so dry that even the thought of eating it felt absurd. We could only laugh at how bad it was--it was truly almost inconceivable.
I'm willing to overlook a one-time error, but this was something else. There's no way the person who boxed up that pizza didn't realize it was more of a dried-out, tasteless disc than anything resembling a pizza. It's hard to imagine how this could happen unless one of the following was true:
1. **They can't make a decent thin-crust pizza**: My previous experiences with their thick-crust pizzas were fine, but this thin-crust pizza was beyond disappointing. If this is the case, I'd strongly advise against ordering their thin-crust pizza.
2. **The pizza had been sitting around for a while**: It's possible that this pizza had been made much earlier and was simply passed off to me, which would be completely unacceptable.
3. **I was given an old, discarded pie**: Maybe the staff gave me a pizza that had been sitting around for a long time--one that wasn't picked up earlier, and just reheated or left out until it was a sad, dry shell of what it should've been.
None of these possibilities are acceptable, and after this experience, I can't see myself returning. Even if this was a one-off incident, it was so egregiously bad that it's hard to overlook. There's no excuse for a pizza that's this unappetizing to be served to a customer.
I don't typically leave negative reviews. In fact, most of my reviews are positive, and I don't bother reviewing places unless I have a good experience. But this time, I couldn't let it slide. I'd recommend you try another spot for pizza, because this one missed the mark in a big way.