Spark Pizza — Restaurant in Redmond

When I last came to this spot last year, they were out of dough - but thankfully, this time they weren't. It was a relatively quick wait - only about 20 minutes on the waitlist, before I got seated I was originally going to order the Sardinian, but got semi-convinced by my server to go with their best-selling option - the Honey, Spice, and Everything Nice, which comes with pepperoni, hot honey, and basil in a tomato sauce. I also added pineapple as an extra

The best part of this pizza was easily the crust. It was super thin and just so damn soft. It had a texture that would practically pass directly through your bite - it felt amazing. I do prefer thicker crust pizzas, but when a thin crust one is done really well, like this one is, it's also fantastic. The crust is quite floppy - I tried to test it and all the toppings started to slide off - but it's paper thin without being crackly. The outside part - the cornicione - was also really good. While not the best I've ever had - it managed to not be super chewy - which is a common problem I find with a lot of other pizza places If you're looking for somewhere that really makes the dough right - this is absolutely it

Some other positives with this pizza is the tomato sauce and cheese taste really fresh. The cheese isn't as melted as I would've liked, but it tastes kind of solid - which is something you don't often see but was interesting in this case. The hot honey, when it was there, was also very good

I do have a few small issues with this pizza, though One is that the hot honey just wasn't present enough. As mentioned, when it was there, it added a ton of flavor (although had very little spice - leaning much more towards the sweetness end), but I just didn't feel it throughout the pizza. It was concentrated near the outer edge, but just not really there towards the middle & the center - which is a pity, because I loved the bites with it The pepperoni was kind of inconsistent. While some slices were perfectly cupped, others were mostly just flat and didn't taste like anything special. I also noticed that the pizza didn't come out as warm as I was expecting

This is an expensive pizza. It came out to $33 for a single person, along with tax + tip, which is a lot. Obviously, the quality is high, but is it that high? Maybe, but what is a bit ridiculous is the prices being charged for add-on toppings. I'm sorry, but there's no way it costs the restaurant anywhere close to $2 to add a few black olives, or $3 to add mushrooms or pineapple (I went with the latter). I get the meat toppings being extra, but vegetable toppings should be a max of $1 extra

Overall, this pizza isn't close to the ones I've had in Italy, when you lower the bar down to Seattle-level, it performs really well...

I've been a customer of this place for well over 3 years and have enjoyed the food, service, and atmosphere each time I've come. However, I felt the need to post a review of my recent experience as it's something that Spark should recognize as an opportunity to understand all aspects of customer experience, specifically as it pertains to perception/perspectives.

Overall, I feel that the Dine-In experience/service is above average. My issue is with the "management" when there are questions that the front line service members aren't able to address. Oftentimes, I feel that the lead staff members have no consideration for how a customer perceives the response and are quite frankly, rude. Maybe it's because of the rapid increase in popularity of this restaurant, but Spark should recognize that the small things matter and that having even 1 customer leave because of a frustrating experience can have long term effects to the business.

For example, most recently, I visited the location on a Sunday around noon, which the only day of the week that they provide the NY style pizza. This is my go to pizza around the area because I believe it's the best one within a 50 mile radius that I've had, and is the closest thing to the real NY style. I usually go there around 11-11:30 or maybe around 2pm, and the wait has historically been around 15 min.

This time, the wait was over and hour and so I asked if there was an option to get the pizza to go. The service rep apologized and informed me that that they do not offer this to go as it is only reserved for Dine In experiences. He wanted to double check and turned to someone (perhaps a lead staff?) for confirmation, to which he responded "We don't do take-out for NY style. It says so on the website and it's also on the menu. If you want it, you should come earlier since the line can be as long as down to the street."

First, I've been here many times and have never seen a line go down to the street. Second, Spark used to offer the NY Style to go, because I used to order it myself. Yes, that was a while back and they probably changed the policy but the answer I got was not ok. I think that the right answer is to just say, "I'm sorry but we just don't offer it for take out because X, Y, Z", or simply just say that "it's our policy" and leave it at that. Why would you point me to the menu or the website and tell me to read it to prove that it's written somewhere? Do you expect customers to just say "oh, well, sorry for my confusion. I guess I should have read the website before coming."?

Spark, don't treat your customers like idiots just because you're a popular place. I don't think your service staff would appreciate it if customers treated them like...

Well, they're not claiming to be authentic Italian pizza, so I'll go easy, especially since the menu sells pizza with Pineapple 🤦‍♂️. To be fair, if I'd be selling pizzas and half of my customers want pineapple and the other half eat it with ketchup and mustard, I'd probably add that to my menu too 😅

So, that leads me to this: for 95% of you who are not pizza connoisseurs and drive around your fancy Teslas, you will like the pizza. So, you can stop reading here.

For the remaining 5% of you:

I got a margherita pizza. They charge $19 for the regular cheese (whatever that means), but $8 extra ($27) if you want Mozzarella di Bufala campana.

Since I think $19 for a margherita is robbery, I surely wasn't going to spend $27 (when I know the difference in price between Fior di latte and Bufala Campana is about $2 in real life).

The Size of the pizza is very small, maybe 8" or 9", sorry, I didn't have a ruler, but check out my picture next to a water bottle. So at this point, I'm thinking about $20 for this tiny thing, it'd better be the best pizza in the Universe... It wasn't.

The tomato sauce tasted fairly legit. The cheese, was Ok. Again, maybe it would have been better with the other cheese, but at $8 extra definitely not.

The biggest problem is the dough. It needs a lot of work. First, the flavor wasn't there at all, which tells me zero fermentation. Second, the dough was either over proofed, or over worked, or over cooked, because besides having the almost zero air in the crust (see pictures), you could see the almost the dense, rubbery, texture in the crumb of the crust (see pictures). I think this also contributed to the portion of the pizza with the toppings not tasting that great either.

Also, the toppings themselves drenched the pizza, it was almost impossible to pick up a slice, even after trying to bend it. And it was exceedingly greasy.

I understand that there's a magazine that ranked them in the top 50 in the USA, but...