By chance I had my first MOD Pizza experience at their original location in Seattle, and have been hooked since. What a great surprise when I saw one was opening right here in Santa Rosa!

•service: we were enthusiastically greeted by the front line staff as soon as we walked in. Like the concept Chipotle pioneered, you work your way down the line and create your own pizza. Established favorites are called The Classics Menu and you can tweak those as needed, too. Everyone was pleasant, likely bolstered by the recent grand opening and residual excitement. •space: obviously a brand new place, in a brand new building next to REI, so everything was shiny and clean. Lots of seating with large windows. Decor was typical MOD Pizza style. We took our food to go but while waiting we saw a lot of confusion about where to put dirty plates and dishes. There appeared to be a dish bin on a shelf under the condiments area, but nobody saw that and ended leaving their dishes near the clean dishes, or taking them directly to a worker at the counter. Room for improvement for sure. •food: we ordered a Mad Dog and Dillon James (with added pepperoni), which overall were tasty. The crust was crispy and thin but not too thin that the sauce/grease leaked through. My main gripe would be the portion sizes: I felt that the line cooks were maybe under serving portion sizes - which is totally understandable after a place opens and everyone was just trained on the exact portions they’re supposed to provide. Even then, I felt they may have been overly cautious, which ended up causing them to skimp a little.

Overall: cool chain that finally arrived in Santa Rosa that offers a better, more customizable, option to standing pizza joints. Service was friendly and the food was well worth the price, even if it did suffer from small portion sizes - which again is understandable for a chain location that just opened.