&pizza — Restaurant in Virginia

What a nice surprise &pizza is! My wife and kids and I happened to be passing by and decided to take a chance on it, and I'm happy we did. Not everything was perfect, but there was a lot of good to be had.

&pizza is a chain, though not one I'd tried before, though my wife thinks she might have eaten at one in an airport in Dallas. Regardless, it's a chain that manages to feel like a local, hipstery pizza place, for better and worse. The food stands out. It's really, really good. It's not Richmond's best pizza by any stretch, but it's better than average. The real value here is toppings. In the Chipotle model, your toppings are unlimited and free with the price of your pizza, assembled right in front of you.. And they're incredibly fresh. My Italian sausage tasted like it had been stuffed that morning, and my wife's roasted red peppers were bright red, as though nobody had ever so much as mentioned a freezer around them. There's a deep selection of toppings and drizzles, too. My son wanted a Hawaiian pizza, and while they didn't have any ham in stock, the kind staff member showed him pepperoni, salami, and bacon as substitutes. (He chose the salami and ate nearly the whole pizza.)

The crust is odd and could be improved greatly by simply pre-baking it a bit before assembling the pizza. It's tasty, but their aim seems to be a middle ground between chewy and crispy that unfortunately doesn't manage to achieve either one. The dough is spread thin, almost certainly to help it bake faster. This made the crust around the edge pleasantly crispy, but the middle of the pizza was soggy and unable to support the weight of the pizza. It didn't taste bad, but it made it more difficult to eat.

I want to mention the menus. They present their menu on electronic billboards above the pizza making station. While I like this concept as a way to save paper and, in the pandemic age, reduce physical contact, it ended up being almost unusable. They had several screens, but two of them were dedicated to advertising their pickup service and rewards program. The other screens showed various specials and menu items, but flashed through them so quickly that you had to wait for several cycles to read everything. Also, the pricing is not mentioned except for the make-your-own pizza. The garlic knots (which are AMAZING), cookies, and drinks have no prices listed anywhere, or if they're listed, they're obscure. The prices are a bit steep for the portion size. For the same price, you could get a much larger pie from another pizza place, but not with the unlimited toppings.

An oddity is the soda machine. There are no sodas there that you've heard of. Instead of Coke, Pepsi, and the like, they have five artisanal sodas such as Ginger Berry Lemonade and Pear Fig Elixir.

The restaurant is not the most kid-friendly with the exception of offering pizza (which nearly every kid likes, anyway). There are no high chairs or boosters, no kids menu or advertised kids portions. A kid can eat here just fine, but it's not apparent that kids were ever really thought about in the conception of the place.

A final note is that handicap access is limited. The main seating area is too tightly packed for a wheelchair, but there are a few tables around the perimeter with enough space.

&pizza is a really good lunch option, and it becomes a great value if you like to pile on toppings. I'm giving it four stars because the good greatly outweighs the bad, but there is definitely room to make improvements. I don't think addressing the improvements would make them a five-star restaurant, but it would make a big difference in the...

Honestly, this place shouldn’t even get one star. I ordered pizza and was given an estimated time of 5:25 for delivery. At 5:21, I was told it’s on the way. We tried calling the delivery driver around 5:45 but the number was out of service. After trying to call the store, we found the number to text for info.

So, they resubmitted my order. I ended up getting my cold pizza at 6:21. I asked if I would be compensated for the inconvenience and that message was ignored.

I do like the pizza but this cost me too much time, money and aggravation.

Added to respond to &pizza: There is no way that the pizza we received at 6:21 was a fresh pizza. It was cold...not warm but cold. The first driver contacted me with questions about where I had ordered food from as he was trying to find our order in his car. He would not have delivered the pizza to the wrong house or been confused as to which house is ours as I noted that our house was pink and there are not a lot of pink houses. I also got a message that the second order had been canceled by Door Dash. The original pizza took an hour to get to my house. My husband has Diabetes and couldn’t wait to eat so our meal was all messed up.

I actually hadn’t realized that Door Dash was responsible for delivery. Honestly, had I been told by you all that there was a mix up with your delivery service and had gotten fresh hot pizza, I’d have understood . Or had I been offered replacement pizzas in the future, I’d have gladly given you all another chance. My husband sadly wants nothing to do with ordering from your...

This spot is my new favorite pizza spot! They have not only a really good crust, nice size pizza... but best of all... Vegan options! I cant express how annoying it is that the normal chain restaurants dont carry vegan options like these. But..that's okay because &Pizza's got our back! First lets start with the buy 1 get 1 pizza deal I had as a first timer. But wait theres more... they had some great already created pizzas with cute catchy names. Like the one named after our Madame Vice President Kamala...then going down the line creating my pizza there were such great options...vegan sausage, spicy chick peas, spinach, mushrooms, vegan cheese... and more... There are a couple different sauces to choose from... I tried one with spicey sauce (has a lil kick to it) and a regular one. Both were good. The pizza I created had spicy sauce, spicy chick peas, mushrooms, and spinach. It was just the right amount of everything. The lil kick of heat was perfect enough to taste and made me need a drink to cool my mouth just a bit. The 2nd pizza was regular sauce, and vegan sausage. It was simple but delicious. The crust made the pizzas extra good. I was so happy to try this place out and now feel like theres finally some good vegan pizza close to my house that doesnt taste bland. I'm excited to go back and create another pizza but I got to wait since I'm doing low carbs right now. See ya soon &Pizza. Side note, I bought this cute lil mango drink and was all geeked to try it until I read the label and saw its ingredients saying it was 90% sugar. ...