Barley Pizza Family Restaurant — Restaurant in Elizabeth City

Food is always spot on here! Portions are huge especially for what you pay for. Delicious! Prepared exactly as described on the menu -No surprises like some other restaurants in the area. Also, staff AND the owners are always willing to make accomodations to customers as far as menu requests if it is within their power unlike other places in the area 🙄. (I will edit this to mean they have always most importantly taken into account food allergies to my knowledge. But other situations that would vary if they could/would accommodate the situation would include: if they have the ingredients, if the restaurant not overly busy and the request will not hold up the kitchen and other orders, if the customer is willing to pay for extra costs involved, etc.) As someone who was raised in the hospitality business, the restaurant business in particular, this makes absolutely perfect sense to me.

We're treated very well here. We're getting to the point that we're getting recognized as regulars and that's a good thing. When the staff of a business and the owners treat you like family, that's a good sign of a great business!

My only complaints are on the service end of things. I, however, understand the whole picture and acknowledge the background that I come from and realize that I can be critical. I expect top notch service because I am choosing to spend my money somewhere and support a business. I could be at home preparing food for my family and myself. I always tip my server, even if service isn't up to par because I know that the industry is rigged to pay the workers bare minimum and they have to work for tips. The customer is expected to tip and the United States is whacked out of its mind for this. ALL employers should pay a fair wage and tips should be for exemplary service. Period. I say that coming from a family that owned and ran restaurants (yes, multiple, for over 80 years. Yes, I agree our businesses took advantage of this system. However, I know we paid well more than other restaurants in the area that our businesses were located in and we retained great staff, year after year. We trained them well, treated them like family. Same with our customers.)

Anyhow, I digress. Back to my points on the service. Let me start with what has gone well. Every time we visit, staff is friendly and prompt. We are seated quickly and usually our drink order is taken (and delivered) right away. When the drinks are delivered, we are asked if we would like to order appetizers. If we are not ready to order, we are given more time and never rushed. We are very Indecisive (Me, that's me, y'all. 🤣 The more time you gave me, the more time I need. The menu hasn't changed the whole time we've been visiting but I'm still making up my mind of what I'm going to order EVERY time we go to eat there. BTW - I ALWAYS order the EXACT same thin g no matter how many times I say I'm going to order something else. ALWAYS. I SWEAR.🤣 The servers they love me but they hate me, if ya know what I mean. But, I ask for everything I need at one time, don't run my server to death, stack my plates when we're done and leave a good tip.) But, again, I digress.

I would like more consistency among the serving staff. Sometimes they pre-buss the tables. For those of you that are unaware of this term, it is when they remove from the table any plates, cups, or anyting else that you are no longer using. The tables can get rather cramped for space if not pre-bussed. This brings up another point. They only have one table that seats a large party. If this table is full, you either get split between smaller tables or you have to wait to be seated. This is inconvenient four people wanting to be seated as a group.

Definitely a good place for family. Definitely a good place to eat late. Definitely a good place to fill bellies of hungry teenage twin boys. Don't ask me how I know that....

My coworkers and I went to Barleys Pizza on our lunch break. The restaurant was busy, but not packed. The hostess was busy having a ten minute conversation with one of her tables so we stood at the door. Finally another waitress came over and tried to seat us, but the hostess told her we couldn't sit at the table she took us to, so we had to wait for her to clean another table. After we sat down, we waited at least another five minutes for someone to get our drink order. When we didn't have our drinks ten minutes after ordering, we flagged down another waitress to try to see what the issue was. We literally had to beg a very rude lady (that turned out to be the owner) to take our order because we had already been there for 30 minutes and no one had offered to. The lady never smiled, didn't apologize and acted annoyed that we spoke to her. When the food took a lot longer than everyone else's in the restaurants (people that had came in after us got their food before us when we were told we ordered the quickest things in the menu) we just asked for food in a to go box. The food was brought to the table on extremely hot plates where we were told to put it in a box ourselves. We went to check out and asked who was in charge, we were told it was the very rude, unhappy woman. Still no apologies, no discount, no smile. Just a tip: if you open a restaurant in the south, you should probably have great hospitality and manners. A smile and sincere apology...

It’s not my pleasure to give this negative review about smaller portion dessert serving(NY cheese cake slice) at “Barkey’s Pizza” in Elizabeth City, but to warn others in case someone hasn’t experienced the disappointment (drive through order) or before you order drive through and pay.... you might wanna ask to see the size first which I assumed too much about it being a sizeable serving as before. I’m not able to post a photo but if you check their Facebook page you’re see my pics of the NY cheese cake slice.... highly felt cheated and I was asked if I’d like to order a second slice which I kindly declined( not for $4.00... no way).

I called and ordered a slice of NY cheese cake slice and when I got my order and opened the container I was shocked at the smaller size.... I could declare the slice had shrunk since a prior order and what I had seen in their display when the restaurant was open to the public. The slice was super frozen.

$3.99 (w/o tax) is cost. Oh my stars. I made the choice to order thinking I’d be getting a sizable amount. Now, I’ve learned from this experience to just drive to the other restaurant that I know has a larger serving of their NY style cheese cake slices and it’s made so light and creamy with Out the crust.... can you imagine that?

Well, we live...