Mamma Ramonas Pizzeria — Restaurant in California

It is too funny what the owner, Andrew Simmons posted as a retort to my original review, here. He is terribly convincing AND honest.... in how he argues with every person who dares to leave a bad review after their poor experience with Mamma Ramona... Keep reading below to notice his trend in disagreeances. Although since I've pointed this out, the owner has taken to attempts at more kindly settling with a disgruntled customer on comments here. Reverse psychology, lol!!

ORIGINAL REVIEW:

For what a nicely laid out website they have, it does not at all match the disgusting customer service I have received here throughout my having had a pizza subscription. Hands down, this place is THE shadiest restaurant I've ever conducted business with. The owner is a special kind of rude, & just a couple conversations with the imbicile lets you know he views himself with some major grandeur. When a regular customer points out a kind complaint, he speaks very unprofessionally. He denies the customer the experience they had. My friend also had a poor experience attempting to work here, where she was let go without an explanation.

I don't know about you, but when you are the recipient of a weekly pizza subscription, when something is done differently to it, you may want to politely point it out to the staff... I did. For instance, one week, they had a different type of pepperoni/sausage on top, which made this one pizza have a huge pool of grease on it. The owner's daughter pointed that out to me when I commented objectively about it, & we moved on. I was pleased that my next pizza was normal.

Then, a few weeks later, the pizza tasted abnormally salty to both my children and I. My mere mentioning of this in an email to the owner, was apparently the straw that broke the camel's back, lol. I mentioned the time about the pepperonis when the owner's response was unfriendly, & asked him to please not be so defensive about constructive criticism. I just wanted to let them know- if this was another experimental addition, it was noticably not for the better. Mr. Andrew Simmons (owner) told me they have never altered the ingredients, & I was simply wrong- even though his own daughter admitted to me about the new type of pepperoni/sausage they tried out, before. ...Always looking for cheaper ways to make it, I guess?

I was a restaurant manager for years myself, & never could I fathom the existence of such a poorly-run establishment, particularly one that's run locally in our awesome town.

Not only was a hardcore crystal meth addict hand-rolling the dough in the front window as their jaw involuntarily clattered out of control a few months ago, but since I spoke out about the saltiness- the owner cancelled my last few months of pizzas I had paid for (I believe 16 pizzas?), without refund, exclaiming that he "couldn't have me perpetually unhappy." Then, that tweaker who worked at the restaurant had also begun vandalizing my car since the day after I dared to mention the salt content- which literally had me feeling scared and coerced into not leaving Mamma Ramona the immediate review they had so earned. I still have yet to be refunded for the last few months of my 2023 paid pizzas, but I'm not holding my breath. Dirtbags will not be fair. Meanwhile, now the local chamber of commerce has words for Mamma Ramona about this- if/when they should they try to re-new their membership there.

I had a right to inquire about the salt to this establishment, for the reason of health concerns during my high risk pregnancy.

The website boasts that the recipes have not been changed in 40 years, when the new owners only took over in the past decade or so. During this last year, I noticed a particularly greasy pizza & let staff know, to be told they were trying out a new pepperoni/sausage. So, on top of the unpredictable employees- they lie on the website. They deny when incidents happen, or that there have been any, even temporary recipe alterations. Mamma Ramona is a place run by an opportunist thief.... the...

After spending the last week trying to get a refund for my subscription service and being completely ignored, I’m forced to leave a review.

I purchased the pizza subscription, which was advertised to be applicable to both the Ramona and Oceanside location. As I live near Oceanside, I planned on primarily visiting that location. I waited months for it to finally open up. The first few times we tried to redeem our pizza there, we were met with incorrect and/or extremely restrictive business hours… the Oceanside location was only open an average of 20 hours per week, and not at the times you would expect to really want a pizza. Still, after 2 unsuccessful attempts, we finally placed an order one day. We arrived to find that the location was a strange pickup counter with no one in sight. We waited for a while but no one appeared. Our time window for picking up the pizza came and passed. Finally we called and got a hold of someone, who then came out to give us our pizza. It was a strange interaction and the pizza was mediocre, but we decided it wasn’t a big deal and were still excited to use our subscription.

We may have used it one more time (possibly not even) before the location shut down without warning or notice. It was open for probably a grand total of a couple months before they shut it down. The Google business information still shows them opening and closing every day, so they haven’t even adjusted their posted hours, leading to confusion and frustration for people who want to order pizza and see that the location is marked as open, but then can’t get a hold of anyone. They disconnected their phone.

After a few months of this, I called their Ramona location to try and get the full story. A condescending staff member told me that the Oceanside location had been closed for months and would be closed for several more months, and offered no explanation or apologies for the issue. When I asked about a refund for my subscription, she directed me to contact the company via Facebook.

I did that, and received ONE response saying that they would look into it and offer me a prorated refund based on how many pizzas I had already redeemed. Pretty sure I only redeemed one, MAYBE two pizzas, I said okay. It’s been a week now and they haven’t gotten back to me, despite me messaging all week asking for an update.

I understand that unpredictable things happen when running a business, but it’s the customer service that really determines how people will react when things go wrong. If I had received an apology for the inconvenience and a prompt refund, I would have shrugged everything off and maybe even given them another chance sometime in the future. As it stands now? I was sold a product that doesn’t exist and now the company is ignoring my attempts to receive a refund for a product they failed to provide after payment. They scammed me and many other people and seem to feel no remorse or concern for making things right. This is not how you run a business.

As of right now, I want my refund and then nothing more to do with the company and their shady business practices. If I don’t receive a refund, I’ll be going to...

UPDATE: Sophie's Pita now sells pizza and it's way better.

There are a lot of complaints about this place and a lot of the positive reviews are from people stopping on their way to Julian or reviews of the old restaurant with the same name. The pizza recipe is inconsistent, but has wavering improvement. The pizza isn't awful, but it's not exactly good either (better than 7-11, worse than Little Caesar's?) though it's absolutely terrible compared to what Mama Ramona's used to be.

The thing that sticks out to me the most is the incredible inconsistency. One week the pizza will be amazing, and I'll be very pleased with my purchase, hopeful even, then the next week it goes back to being disappointing and my hope is gone. I will definitely not be purchasing the pizza subscription again, and I definitely don't see myself returning for a la carte ordering.

Mama Ramona's used to be a sit-down local Italian restaurant, but the new owners (who also own OrangeCrate) changed the menu to pizza only and are apparently trying to automate the process - which, if true, would seem to mean fewer local jobs, but whatever. The biggest problem is the customer service. You will wait an hour (sometimes more) for a pizza and they will argue with you about it. I have never encountered this sort of wait at ANY pizzeria anywhere, small town or otherwise. They used to respond to every negative review by arguing with the customer online (or calling them a liar) and placing them on a "no-pie list" - which basically means their subscription was now void. What's that saying, "If all your customers are problematic, you're the problem?” Someone finally called them out on their behavior so they deleted and rewrote all of their responses. I guess they realized it's a bad look, especially for a restaurant trying to portray the image of a "hometown pizzeria." There have also been reports of people ordering a subscription, having their local restaurant shut down and being refused a refund. Not answering their phones, closing their restaurants on Monday and Tuesday but still accepting orders on their website, etc. I could understand growing pains at first, but these type of things have been going for years.

To summarize, the pizza is mediocre and the owners seem to be running the business somewhat unethically - or, at the very least, they're just extremely confrontational. The sad part is Ramona used to have several great pizza restaurants (Amici's being one of the best) that went out of business during the pandemic and this place just happened to be in the right place and time to fill to niche. My advice is drive 15 minutes to Poway and get Filippi's or Costco instead. If you're looking for something local that isn't a chain, there is also Ramona Lisa which is alright.

The restaurant seems to have "changed" owners over to the pizza cook since this was originally written, but I wouldn't be surprised if this was to avoid the legal fallout of ripping a bunch of people off with the pizza...