Pizza 44 — Restaurant in Burlington

Update: Got takeout from here for the first time in over a year. Remembered the "normal" pizza and went for the Sicilian style this time... So glad I did! Other spots do "traditional" style pizza better, but Pizza 44's Sicilian might be the best in the area - highly recommended. Adding a star to this review for it.

Unfortunately, I also got wings again, as I remember them being some of the best in town. This is no longer the case. Unlike the old wings, which were huge and seemed to be wood-fired or cast iron finished, these tasted like standard wings you could get from anywhere. Not a huge deal, but disappointing as they used to be awesome.

---old review--- Went the first week of their opening, again two months later, and then one last time a few years later - very expensive for mediocre pizza. Unfortunately, their food reminded my fiancée and I of a nostalgic frozen pizza, like a cross between an inexpensive local by-the-slice shop, Elio's frozen pizza, and a hot pocket (not exactly in line with flavors expected from local, house-made ingredients).

If you're moderately inebriated coming from zero gravity or queen city, I'm sure it'll taste great, but you'll pay a premium for a taste inferior to Piezano's (formerly Junior's) or Veritá. I hope they either improve their size and quality to justify the price, or lower the price significantly to match the taste. I really want to like this spot as it's the closest pizza joint to me, but the amount of oil on the top of these pizzas is enough to make the US army want to invade my apartment, and the char isn't so much 'a nice flavor note and crispy texture', but rather 'oh you left this in the oven 10 mins too long and burned the top and bottom of the pizza to a point where the dough itself just tastes and feels like burnt cardboard'. Hopefully next time I give em a shot I'll have better luck! Maybe I just keep hitting off days...

The wings, by the way, were great! Definitely better than any of the other local...

We are here twice in the past two weeks. My main observation is that the place always seems a bit "rudderless" and lacking in any cohesive shift management. The college aged employees always seem to be snacking, drinking sodas and chatting with friend while out on the dining floor. Both of my pizzas recently have been delivered to the table with a servers thumb on the tray touching the crust. The counter person taking our order took off her hat, Fixed her hair, pit the hat neck on and returned to work without washing her hands. The other person taking orders finished with the customer in front of Me, cashed out their order and then proceeded to have a four minute conversation with them while I stood in line waiting. Finally, as to the food : As a vegetarian I expect to get treated equally as anyone else and recieve value for my money when I pay for toppings. We ordered a pizza with red onions, pineapple and olives. each slice of pizza has exactly TWO slivers of red onion, TWO chunks of pineapple and TWO olives on it. really? I look to my left and see a table with two pepperoni pizzas covered with little disc's of pepperoni.

Am I purposely being short changed as a vegetarian. Surely any vegetable pizza topping costs less than half than a meat one,... two slivers of onion per slice is an astronomical amount of food costing markup.

Would your cooks put out a large $30+ dollar pizza that had only two disc's of pepperoni per slice?

Food for thought if you are the owner of this restaurant, I would love to hear your thoughts on this matter, please...

The food was good. The atmosphere not so much. My excitement to try this place for the first time was squashed as soon as I walked in and learned you have to order first and then fight to find a seat. When you are standing their with several people it's challenging to have to go stand off on the side somewhere and discuss what everyone is going to get. Then by the time you jump in line there are tons of other people who have come in ahead of you. If you jump in line too soon then you risk getting to the front when you aren't ready yet. Ugh, I just wanted to sit down with my party, order a drink and look over the menu.

When we finally got a table it had not been cleaned off yet. Dishes from the previous customers were still there and It took a long time to get the table cleaned off. There were only two people working the floor and they were busting their butts to serve all the food and bus all the tables. They need more staff for sure. They need people dedicated to cleaning off the tables and separate people serving food. If you are going to have this kind of business model where customers have to find their own tables, the tables need to be cleaned off and ready to go as fast as possible. It seemed hard on the staff tonight trying to do both. They were so busy bringing out food that the tables sat dirty for a long time. One of the plates they gave us had food on it still and the bathrooms were gross. The whole place just felt like it was understaffed and not kept up. The pizza was good, but I'm not sure it was good enough to go back and fight for a...