Pupatella — Restaurant in Virginia

Not too long ago I was traveling on the W&OD trail and got caught just behind two runners who were having a very loud verbal argument right across the street from this restaurant. It gave me the opportunity to stop and take in the scenery while they took care of their business. That's when I noticed Pupatella; like really noticed it.

I've passed by the restaurant many times before, but in the light of the dawn and expletives flying through the air, it finally occurred to me that this was a place I would probably really enjoy visiting.

So, after a couple weeks of trying to find the right time to get out there, my family and I pulled the trigger and went. There were no fights happening on the trail this time, but there seemed to be a very large youth hockey dinner happening at the restaurant that took up almost all of the outdoor seating; which was an equally entertaining thing to witness.

We walked into the restaurant and were greeted by a host of hostesses; like 3 standing by the desk. With the amount of people standing there, I half expected to carried to my seat and have my drink order delivered to me on the way. But, on the contrary, we walked up and stood there in awkward silence for a few seconds. Finally, one of the hosts said, "Hi, how are you doing today?" To which I replied, "Good." To which he replied, "Good."

We then sat and stared at each other for awhile until he finally asked, "Are you dining in or taking out?" And we were led to our seats. Definitely not a huge deal, but definitely was just a weird initial experience.

We took our seats and we were starved, to say the least. We quickly browsed the menu, figured out what we wanted and eagerly waited to give our order to the waiter.

And we waited some more....

And we waited for a little bit more...

And some more...

We waited for about 15-20 minutes before our waiter even came by to take our drink order. It was so long that we literally thought we had to get up, go to the kitchen and place our order there.

In fairness, the wait could possibility be attributed to the massive amount of young hockey players stampeding around the restaurant, but it was just odd to receive absolutely no service for so long.

Finally though, our waiter did come and we put in our food order as quickly as we could. After about 10 minutes (maybe even quicker) our pizzas came out piping hot.

Let me say, the pizza made up for all the sins of the service. I have not had pizza that good in a long time. The crust was perfectly done and clearly wood-fired. The sauce had a nice blend of sweetness and herbs and the meat toppings were generous and fresh. We devoured our food within minutes.

Our waiter checked briefly on us once and we never saw him again. Not even for a drink refill.

My wife and I both ordered individual pizzas and it was just enough to leave us wanting more, but not needing it. The price was about $14-15 a pizza, if I'm remembering correctly.

After we finished our meal, we waited for a bit longer to get our check and we left.

Overall, Pupatella is a fantastic pizza place from a food perspective, but it really lacked on providing an enjoyable dine-in experience. We'll be coming back, for sure, and I'd recommend going to this place for the food alone. However, it's worth recognizing that the service, at least when I was there,...

This is definitely not what I expected from an establishment with 4.2 stars on Google. This experience was awful. I wanted a good pizza to celebrate my birthday and thought we had made a good choice. I was so wrong and regretted it so much within the first 15 minutes. Red flag right at the start.. seated at a dirty table with a slow, almost empty, dining space. So we had to wait until they cleaned everything up. To start, we ordered the bruschetta and fried mozzarella balls. The bruschetta lacked flavor. The bread wasn't grilled or toasted and there wasn't much garlic, therefore it didn't taste right. The mozzarella balls were crispy on the outside but not melty on the inside, meaning they weren't fried at the proper temperature. My husband ordered the Caivano and added red onion. When it came, it had red pepper on it. The gentleman who brought it to the table just said "oh, it said red pepper" and walked away when we brought it to his attention that it should be red onion NOT red pepper. I observed him walking to another employee to tell them the issue then walked to our waiter to tell him to "ask if he wants something else". The waiter did ask if we wanted something else and my husband explained he wanted red onion, the waiter responded with "that's on me ". When the waiter didn't ask to replace the order with what was requested (which any respectful, trained establishment would have done), my husband said it was fine and stomached the red pepper (he dislikes, by the way) so we didn't have to wait any longer. I ordered the mushroom pizza, with no modifications. It was way undercooked and had a hair stuck in the crust. With the way they handled my husband's order, and the fact they hadn't come back to check on us for 15 minutes, I didn't say anything about it. They also need to clean their oven with the amount of burnt substance on the crust, considering both crusts were undercooked. The majority of the wait staff were on their phones a lot during our visit, this may include a manager. I observed one staff on a personal call, one joking about it being "such a busy night" (it wasn't busy), and one staff member taking a spoonful of ice cream for no obvious reason other than they wanted it. With an almost empty dining space during dinner hour in Reston, being "so busy" aka dead, is not something to joke about. When we received the bill, my husband's pizza plus his extra topping was included, which we did not expect. We never want a "free meal", just the correct meal, but we also never want to pay the full price for a meal we didn't want. They removed the charge for adding red pepper (supposed to be red onion) and that was all. Honestly, this place is a mess. Just from observing , it looks poorly managed and trained. No business thrives being like this. Ownership needs to take responsibility, which includes training their employees and being directly involved. There's a lot of potential with this location so hopefully something changes. Overall, we are very disappointed and do not expect to return,...

I don’t know how this place did it but they provided a perfect place experience. From the moment my family and i walked into the restaurant until the second we walked out. We sat down and the person waiting us came right to our table and got our drinks got my children menus and before we could even think they started great conversation to find out our preferences (kids and all) after we got the drinks and pizza in Kevin, the manager invited my kids to go see how the pizza that we just ordered was being made. We went to go and speak to the cooks. The manager taught us a little Spanish to properly communicate with the kitchen staff they seemed happy to be making the pizzas. We got a front row seat to our food that we were about to get and my children love that the manager also did magic for my kids while we were in there And also informed us about everything that we were about to eat ingredient wise where it came from and what it was so there was no confusion and I appreciated that as my kids are very picky and my wife. This was our first time in this place and it will definitely not be the last they treated us like family like we had been there before and we had a usual or something like that. This place had great cheese on their pizza as well. I loved the leopard spots on my pizza and gave it a little bit more flavor. I got pepperoni and we also ordered two plain cheese pieces, but they were not plain at all. They were flavorful tasted like some type of olive oil or something was in the pizza and it was fresh. The whole experience we had was a 10 out of 10 food customer service. The actual atmosphere was great every person in the staff that was there spoke to us and felt like please go give them a try if you have not before we will definitely be back soon and might even make it our regular family spot as we just moved to the neighborhood not...