Spizzico Italian Kitchen — Restaurant in Maryland

My family have been loyal customers since they opened. My wife has celiac's disease, and she really appreciates the options for her diet. For the last several years they have been our go to place for both of my children's birthday parties, buying ten pizzas twice a year. It had become our corner pizza joint, randomly stopping in with the kids for a quick affordable meal.

Sadly, tonight was our last visit. They got rid of their real soda. Let me tell you the reasons this stubborn customer is angry about their switch to Stubborn Soda.

No zero calorie option. The reason I can eat at my corner pizza joint guilt free is because I count my calories. Part of that involves not drinking my calories. I don't want a "low calorie" soft drink. I want a zero calorie soft drink. I drink nothing but water at home, so when I go out to a restaurant I expect either Diet Pepsi, Diet Coke, or preferably Coke Zero. I settled on a bottle they had under the counter, which meant I Iost the free refill option at a higher price.

Sugar cane. When I see the words "free trade sugar cane" all I hear is, "we hate American corn farmers". Not only are they not supporting American agriculture, but Spizzico is supporting the importation of cane sugar. Cane sugar is terrible for the environment, and importing it over American crops means a much higher carbon footprint. Why would Spizzico purposefully contribute further to global warming?

Corporations. Even if the cane sugar came from the US, it probably would have come from the giant Fanjul Bros conglomerate. Stubborn Soda isn't even some local craft soda. At least that would be a cute marketing point. Who doesn't enjoy eating or drinking some local creation? No, Stubborn Soda is made by Pepsi. So Spizzico is also now being dishonest to their customers and pretending that this new soda fountain is some special "craft brew". I am not anti-corporation by any means. After all, I drink Diet Coke. I just get disgusted when people lie about it.

So unfortunately this one change means I will not be coming back any time soon. I do promise to peek my head in the door though on my way over to George's, in the hopes that I see a real soda fountain...

I'll give the food a 3/5 stars since I've dined here before and the pizza is a better option than a fast-food pizza restaurant, but I need to highlight my most recent experience:

This restaurant can be a great choice for a relaxed mid-week dinner, but I wouldn't recommend it for busy holidays or events like Halloween or the Super Bowl. I called to order a large cheese pizza and a meatball appetizer at 4:15 PM, and was informed it would take about an hour (online ordering said 40 minutes so this is where the suspicion set in). That worked well with my schedule, so I didn’t mind. However, when I arrived at Spizzicos at 5:20 PM, I was met with a huge line stretching out the door.

After waiting over 30 minutes in line, I finally reached the counter, only to find out that my order hadn’t even been started. Frustrated, I decided to cancel it since I didn’t have time to wait. I appreciated the staff's hard work, but the communication about order status, wait times, and managing the long line was sorely lacking, especially the customers cutting the line and being ignorant to those who patiently waited.

On a busy holiday, it would make sense to pause online orders and focus on walk-ins to avoid overwhelming the kitchen. The atmosphere was chaotic, with customers arguing and staff struggling to keep up. Calling ahead and not paying immediately, made canceling easier.

In summary, Spizzicos is a decent choice for a quiet evening, but I’d suggest looking elsewhere during peak times...

Let me start off by saying, this place has fabulous pizza. When we moved to Arnold we tried many pizza places in the area hoping to find a local place to call our own and this has been our go-to time and time again. Their Detroit style pizza is our personal favorite but we haven’t had anything off the menu that we haven’t enjoyed.

With that being said, we’ve recently been really disheartened by their lack of customer service. My husband and I wrote in through their website to place a special order in advance and the prompt let us know that we would receive a response within 24 hours. Unfortunately we didn’t hear back at all. No problem, I understand people are busy and honestly hope they are so busy with business that perhaps getting back to emails is what falls by the wayside.

After waiting a few days, we decided to just call in to see if we could place the order in advance instead of trying to go through the website. The person on the other end of the phone told us that after speaking with management that they wouldn’t accommodate our order and abruptly ended the call.

Truthfully we were bummed by this experience. It made us feel like Spizzico doesn’t really value their customers or their business. In a time when many small businesses are struggling to get by, it made us feel like they don’t want our business and that they are doing so well we ought to take it elsewhere. We sure hope this is the case because that’s exactly what we’ll be doing...