SourJoe's Pizzeria — Restaurant in Concord

$26 and 20 minutes late (50 mins total) for a third of a low quality pie (they didn’t give me the whole pie, I got a 140 sq inch sliver, less than a 14 inch pie! A standard/large is 18 inches AKA nearly 2x the pizza at 254 sq in!).

I’m a Brooklyn Italian whose cousins owned a pizza joint in Queens, until they made so much money that they bought the rest of the strip mall and retired, so I like to think I have some experience with pizza. When I say they gave me a third of a pie I mean it literally. Instead of the regular pie I ordered, they did some weird pan pizza amalgam of a regular made like a grandma, no crispy crust, sweet sauce, then cut it and gave a rectangular strip of one edge, roughly a third the size of an XL grandma. This feeds 1.5 people. Since this isn’t a real pizza, they couldn’t even use a real pizza box, so they order these rectangular cardboard shipping boxes—as I’m writing this, my partner came home, saw the box, and asked if it was the Lego I ordered.

Anyways, when I ordered, I asked about sizes, they said “full sized” and said it would be 5 slices. I thought they were just going to weirdly cut it into 5 big slices… you learn to accept weird pizza practices outside of NY. But in NY, even with inflation, I can get twice as much pizza, better pizza, for $22. They said 15 to 20 minutes, but I asked if they could prepare it for a half hour instead due to my schedule. Since it took over 50 minutes, it seems they started making it around the time it was supposed to be done. They were friendly, but made no acknowledgement nor apology. I never brought it up and was jovial in return because I didn’t have time to politely cancel my order and ask for my money back (I was on a time crunch) and because I suspected that they were probably underpaid. I know I’m a NY Italian, but I’m not truly picky about pizza. I like digiorno or dominos as a snack food. But I wanted to support local and try out the places in my new neighborhood. Look at where it got me.

If I was perishing from starvation and this was the only place within 20 miles, I would ask for their phone and order another pizza, since it would be ready sooner, and if that failed, I would eat gravel to put the taste of this pizza out of my imagination. It’s not the worst I’ve eaten, but it was poor and, even if it was good, the size was nowhere near the price. As a side note, on top of being sweet and not crispy, as I take another bite now, it had a sour aftertaste. I will say, this did not happen with the rest of my slice. But at least they lived up to one word...

Kudos to the owner operated SourJoe's. The pizza is absolutely amazing. Believe me, I'm a bit of a pizza snob. All of the things that makes this place stand out are presumably because this joint is owner operated. It should be an example to restaurateurs that unless you run the place yourself, you gotta at least give a slice of the profit to the chef. This place gives me the impression that the owner loves pizza and real bread so much that he opened a restaurant (with hours that fit his ideal schedule) just to share the food with little ol Concord.

Well for what's it's worth... wanted to say thank you! I'm not going to compare this to any other pizza place nearby cause it truly is in a class...

They make sour dough pizza. It was really good. You can get it by the slice or a full pie. I had a slice.of pepperoni. The crush was nice and crunchy and the slice had lots of cheese. They have a variety of pies for slices. Cheese, pepperoni, buffalo chicken, vodka, mushroom, and a weekly which had a bunch of toppings. Slices are $5 to$6. One slice was sufficient for me for lunch. I was there on a Friday for lunch and it was very busy. A steady line of 4 to 5 people and all seating filled. There are maybe 8 tables so limited seating when it's busy. Definitely worth a visit if you're in...