Piece Out Del Ray — Restaurant in Alexandria

Well. It absolutely sucked and the entire experience was trash. Was so excited after almost a year of waiting for the new space to open and saw that they had a pop up on the 28th that we could go to. Went in and the space was definitely bigger but the aesthetic was like 3 different half baked ideas that came clashing together all at once, but not in a good way. Truly though, I didnt care, we love coming here for the pizza. When we walked through the doors there were zero employees in sight and no sign or flyer to indicate how this whole thing was working, so we sat ourselves figuring since it was a pop up, maybe they only had a few people working that night and they were in the back. After 20 minutes of seeing no one and sitting there aimlessly staring at the menu, this guy (who im assuming works there?) comes up to us to tell us that they aren’t doing service and we could order at the bar. I was irritated because we would’ve come in and done that and not wasted 20 minutes of our time sitting around doing nothing. You would think they would have advertised this better and said on any of their socials or their website to come in and order at the bar or at the very least put up a small sign for people when they walked in or better yet, printed this info on their menus, but of course they couldn’t be bothered to do that. We get up to the bar and after being blatantly ignored by the bartender multiple times, finally caught his attention and asked to order 2 pizzas. We were then told ‘sorry no pizza, just sold the last one’ as if the pizzas were in the freezer waiting to be popped into the oven like a Digornio. Mind you, it isn’t even late, this is about 8:10-8:15ish and the pop up literally had no confirmed closing time and was advertised as an event open to the public. Why announce a public event when you don’t even plan to serve food to people coming in? How is your space in a “testing” phase when you don’t even have employees to help you run it, let alone test it, which was a huge problem in the old space…being understaffed. We received better service from the lone bartender last year serving people at the bar and 5 tables at once than we did that night. This is a pizza place so please tell me how you run out of pizza, your main item? We left immediately after that as there was no point to be there. The whole night was just one big let down, disappointing and a waste of time. Sick of rude unthoughtful uncaring people at restaurants. If we had known this little “pop up” was organized by people who couldn’t care less about their customers, we would’ve skipped going altogether. If this is a snippet of how this place will be run when it fully opens, we won’t be...

First, I feel really bad for the poor lone server tonight. And the bartender. And the guy running orders from the back. And that other dude who I think was helping the bartender. This establishment bit off more than they could chew offering BOGO pizzas on the first nice evening of the year.

I put in the pickup order online, then called to ask them to update my price for the BOGO Tuesday deal (per their website--why not just have a code?). I arrived a few min before the order was scheduled to be ready. Everyone was so busy running around and wouldn't look at anyone who walked in to claim pickup orders. I wandered back outside and had to call and say I was there for whenever my order was ready (several others milled about inside, waiting to be recognized). Others waiting reported waiting 20, 30, then 40 minutes extra for their orders to come out. In the end, I waited 50 minutes past my expected order time, and even once I got my text, I still had to wait 5 mode min. Poor server. With tables in and out, she barely had time to check order statuses between cleaning tables.

Sadly, it was not worth the wait. The Cheese pizza was fine, the frito misto was pretty good. I was so hangry by the time I got home, compounded by my family texting me for updates and having to take a town hall from my phone, that my expectations were decently high. Alas, there are several pizza places in our area that have their take-out service much better...

We visited the area a few days ago and ate here for the gluten-free options based on what we saw on the “Find Me Gluten Free” app. No gluten-related adverse effects afterward.

The food and service overall were good. Our server was a bit slow getting to us after being seated and the manager/owner cleared our plates and facilitated our checkout. We saw a couple employees constantly on the go but the restaurant wasn’t at capacity.

The only thing keeping this from being at least a 4-star review: Each table is given a glass serving bottle for everyone to pour themselves water. We observed that when guests left, their serving bottle was brought back to the kitchen to be filled and given to new guests at another table. Water left over from a previous table was not dumped out, so new guests were getting water mixed with water served to previous guests. These bottles were never washed in between, so new guests were also getting whatever was put on or in those bottles from previous guests. We saw this happen with at least a...