Emmy Squared Pizza: Plaza Midwood — Restaurant in Charlotte

I’ve been here 3 times now and it’s been getting increasingly worse each time. I don’t normally leave negative reviews.. but this time I had to.

Every time I’ve been here we end up waiting in the front for ~10 minutes, once I ultimately had to go find someone from the other room to seat us. There is no active host and it seems like the servers prefer to exclusively hang out in the back room with the bartenders. I’ve been a server for years and this is definitely a no-no. We almost left today but she finally walks up, with an attitude and just stares at us when I say “hey how are you?” After a long pause she says “just two?”. To my disappointment she ended up being our waitress.

In terms of ambience- we walked in at 1:45 (beautiful sunny Saturday), we’re craving pizza and I love Detroit style. Everywhere else in plaza midwood is packed, but it’s completely dead in here. Only two other booths have customers and when we finally got someone to seat us, she sat us right in between them. There is no music playing. The vibes were very off. We spent most of the time talking in hush tones or not talking at all because it was so awkward how quiet it was and how close we were to others, being able to hear every word of everyone’s conversation.

The first thing we do is order drinks and apps. She brings our $3 “can of coke” (as the receipt said), which was quite small, takes our food order, then disappears for at least 20-25 minutes. We are sitting there the whole time whispering about how hungry we are, wondering where our app is, and discussing how the vibes suck. After 20-25 minutes she brings out our pizzas and I ask if our appetizer is still coming. And she gives some half apology about thinking the other girl brought it out. Maybe if she came by at all in 20 minutes she would know… so we ended up canceling the appetizer bc waiting any longer for $15 mozz sticks at that point seemed unbearable. They did take it off the check but honestly it would have been better to take it off the check and still give us the mozz sticks free after waiting so long.

The food we received was not terrible, but was quite expensive. We each got our own pizza since they’re slightly bigger than personal size. I got one of the cheapest ones, The Vodka because I am vegetarian and it was the most appealing. It was good, the dough is nice, the sauce was great, and the basil nice. It was $16 and pretty small for that price but not terrible. My partner, however, did a build your own. First, he was disappointed by the lack of olives on the toppings choices. The toppings were $2-3 each so his personal pizza was $23 for 3 toppings. He was disappointed in the quality and taste and called it “slightly better than a Pizza Hut personal pizza” but agrees the bread/crust was great.

Overall we were excited to go out after being sick and locked in the house for 2 weeks but left annoyed and disappointed. Save yourself $60 for 2 pizzas and a can of coke and go literally anywhere else.

I love Detroit style pizza, but I’ll probably never be back. It’s just not worth it...

I went here for Restaurant Week and while my boyfriend and I are very forgiving when it comes to missing desserts or appetizers, Emmy’s Squared Pizza did have everything but was the worst experience we have ever had during Restaurant Week. This experience was somehow worse than the 2020 film Cats the Musical and the food was as cold as Serbia in January.

We had a reservation at 8 p.m. but when we first arrived we had to wait about 15 minutes for our table, which was fine. However, this restaurant experience slowly became a nightmare once we were seated. We were seated in the bar area where our waitress was the bartender. This was a big mistake since she was already overloaded with customers at the bar. She did promptly come over and take our orders, which definitely helped reassure us. The minutes began to tick by and suddenly the clock struck 8:50 p.m. and we were met with no apps, entrees, or desserts and a strong desire to head to Calle de Sol. We intended to give it another 10 minutes but our server came over and stated that she had messed up and put our order “on hold” so that’s why nothing was coming out.

We both felt that after our order was not “on hold” then things would go well. Well, that was false because the food was either colder than the candle at our table, like our meatballs, or burnt on the top and cold below, like my boyfriend’s pasta. The only food we actually received that was an appropriate temperature were our desserts, which was easy to accomplish since one key component was ice cream. While I was insanely hungry, it was so terrible that I just ate half of my chicken sandwich. The chicken sandwich was promising with two thighs but both were cold so I would suggest to the cooking staff at Emmy’s Squared Pizza that maybe just one warm chicken thigh would be a huge upgrade. In our seating area, we also had a full view of the door leading out of the kitchen and I was able to see that the cooking staff just kept roaming around for the lolz and they were working less than the folks at my local Wingstop.

If you want warm food or really anyone attempting a sign of life in a restaurant, then I really recommend anywhere else. For instance, if you want to try a new style of pizza crust then I would drive down to The Crust in ParkTowne Village or if you just want a hot chicken sandwich really any Chick-fil-a would happily provide you with a warm sandwich and much better customer service than we received last night. My biggest disappointment with this place is that it is a smaller franchise so unfortunately, Gordon Ramsey can’t come to this location to fix the numerous issues I experienced. Unless you want to be an idiot sandwich, then please go anywhere...

We recently had our second experience at Emmy Squared (Plaza Midwood location). To sum up both experiences into one sentence: The food is great the service is not.

Our first experience was date night. Our server dropped our check on the table 3 different times without us asking for it. We hadn’t even gotten our entire meal before the checks started arriving. We felt like we were being kicked out despite only being there less than an hour on a weeknight. We were ordering plenty (alcohol, an appetizer and two whole pizzas for two people even though we knew we only needed one) so it’s not like we were lingering and not spending money. Then when we actually wanted our check, our server completely disappeared.

We decided to go back because the food was really good and we wanted to give it another shot hoping we might have a different experience service-wise.

Our second experience this past weekend was with a group of friends. It was a Saturday and we had reservations. The restaurant was definitely busy but not slammed. We tried to be patient with the long wait for both food and drinks because it was a Saturday and we weren’t in a hurry, but our server didn’t pay any attention to us. We had to get up from our table even to ask for more water etc.

He walked by several times and despite trying to get his attention he never stopped to check on us. We were there for over two hours but we each only had one drink because 1. The first ones took a very long time to get to us and 2. We weren’t given the opportunity to order any more.

We had been finished eating for quite a while sitting with our leftovers and very empty water and beer glasses on the table and still couldn’t get anyone to come by our table so my husband got up to nicely ask the hostess to send our server over. She seemed irritated and when my husband turned to come back to our table I saw her actually roll her eyes. She and the manager both seemed irritated in general and no one apologized for anything or even spoke to us.

Having worked in the service industry myself, I understand a busy restaurant and some of the patience and understanding required as a customer, but we were an easy going table and still weren’t taken care of and made to feel unwelcome. Busy nights happen, and it’s ok to have to wait a bit longer for things, but you shouldn’t completely ignore your guests and make them feel like an inconvenience.

If you’re going to sell expensive pizza and drinks, it should come with good service. While the food is great, we don’t feel welcome there and most likely won’t be back...