PTA Pizza & Hoagie — Restaurant in Wake Forest

6/20/21-Called as mentioned below and had the pleasure of speaking with the gentleman who made the sandwich. He advised that a manager was not at the location, but he was in charge. I mentioned to him the points I noted below regarding the use of bare hands. Was told I "should have asked him to use gloves" and his "hands are cleaner than gloves" since he "regularly washes his hands". I know the same risks exists with bare hands compared to using gloves. However, he confirmed that at the time of me placing my order, they were cleaning, which I could tell as noted below. So, to go straight from cleaning to preparing the sandwich? What was the point in mentioning the inability to cook pizza with gloves? My order was not for a pizza. Furthermore, pizza is not considered to a ready-to-eat food and it is my understanding that the use of gloves is not required for preparation. I am told I can come in for my refund, but this wasn't about the refund for me. After expressing my concern and the response received, I have to agree with other reviews about the lack of customer service.

6/19/21-Upon reading reviews, I thought I might actually enjoy having a sandwich from PTA of Wake Forest. Unfortunately, my issue is a matter of health/safety. I am under the impression that a sandwich is considered "ready-to-eat" food and should be prepared with gloves. On the evening of July 19, 2021, I ordered a cold Italian sub/sandwich. The gentleman who made my sandwich used his bare hands. I politely expressed my concern and he advised he "had just cleaned his hands and was unable to use gloves while making pizza". This raised my suspicion because I had arrived within the last hour of business hours and seen no other customers within the building or even in the parking lot. From the looks he and the other team members were preparing to close. Furthermore, as the customer he was helping at the time, he was not actively making a pizza. As I understood I could and can very well be wrong about the matter, I took the sandwich, but sat in my car to do some research. The NC Food Code Manual has information regarding usage of bare hands and ready-to-eat foods and I was questioning (1.) whether or not a sandwich is considered "ready-to-eat" and (2.) if it is, under what circumstances would a regulatory authority grant approval of preparation of ready-to-eat foods with bare hands. After sitting in the parking lot, for a little while after exiting the building, I had become uneasy about accepting the sandwich and intended on returning with request of refund within the same night, but they had closed a few minutes early. I plan to call in the morning to inquire regular practices and see about getting a refund with the return of the sandwich as it was given, but not so much worried about the refund. I did further research when arriving home to find that a similar situation was documented during an inspection conducted on December 31, 2018. Under its Observations and Corrective Actions the REHS noted, "3-301.11;, Employee was cutting bell peppers and using bare hand contact. Cut bell peppers are also used on salads and sandwiches. Food employees may not contact exposed, ready-to-eat food with their bare hands and shall use suitable utensils such as deli tissue, spatulas, tongs, SINGLE-USE gloves, or dispensing equipment. P If the food is cooked to 165F degrees minimum temperature, bare hand contact is allowed. CDI- Education given.; Corrected During Inspection". Knowing this, I have submitted a Health and Safety General Complaint Form. I know there are a number of things that may happen behind the scenes when dining in and ordering take out from restaurants, but to actually witness this is unsettling. I realize that even if the sandwich was prepared with gloves, I would have no way of even verifying if like the gloves hadn't been used while completing other tasks in the restaurant, so it turns the matter into a customer service issue. I am sure the gentleman understood why I asked about the gloves and it would have taken just a few seconds to...

Used to LOVE this place as a kid; had it again last night for the first time in several years.

Purchased a large SUPREME (pepperoni, sausage, onions, green peppers, & mushrooms) for ~$15 dollars after a $2 discount. This is pretty much in line with the big boys which was a little disappointing. Great selection of toppings OVERALL, I feel like they barley inked out a "supreme" with these 5. A good supreme/works/deluxe should have about 3 meats and 3 - 5 veggies.

The dough is very soft and slightly undercooked. I've had doughy pizza before where there was simply a lot of dough proportionate to the toppings, but this was just overly soft dough that bordered on mushy once in my mouth. Absolute no "chew" to the dough. A little more time in the oven or a higher temperature would've probably fixed this.

The SAUCE is what so often defines the backbone of a pizza. Unfortunately, PTA's sauce was lost in the mix. There was nothing offensive or off-putting about it and I was aware that there was sauce on it, but I never really tasted it. I also think there was too much CHEESE on it, at least in proportion to both toppings and sauce. The milkiness of the mozarella really overpowered everything. Usually on pizzas with 4-5+ toppings the cheese takes a bit of a backseat, but this was definitely a very cheese-forward pie.

Toppings were of acceptable quality as far as I can tell, but again, they had trouble shining beneath all that cheese. I tasted virtually no sausage, and the pepperoni was only distinct as I approached the crust. Obviously they went skimpy on the more expensive meats and leaned more heavily on the veg.

The onions were good - I had a little in ever bite and they retained just a touch of crispness. There was a vague earthiness from the mushrooms but I never really got any "mushroomy" bites. It was hard to tell from the cheese, but it looked like the pizza was littered with "mushroom fragments" instead of distinct slices. Even so, enough "fragments" would still have lent their flavor; whether it was lost among the cheese or not enough on there I'm not sure.

The green peppers were probably the most forward topping. Instead of the traditional 1/2 - 1/4 ring slices you normally see, these were done in a thick dice. It's not a terrible idea as it really does get that green pepper flavor across, but either the size of the chunks or the cooking time rendered the peppers just a little too undercooked. It wasn't exactly like topping a finished pizza with raw green pepper, but it was close. Some of the dices were very large and when came from a section where the pepper curved, it made for tough, chewy bite as you break down all of the undercooked skin.

A few pluses: Everything was nice and clean, there were no air bubbles in the pizza, and nothing had that funky, mass-produced / institutionalized taste to it. (Think like pizza from a cafeteria.) All of the ingredients seemed to be of standard, passable quality when compared to other chains, the flaw was simply in execution.

Maybe you had a few too many new guys on staff. Maybe the guy that made our pizza was on his way our the door. Maybe an anxious employee pulled it out of the oven too quickly, or maybe another guy thought he was doing us a favor by piling on extra EXTRA cheese. This wasn't a bad pizza, this was a shoddy pizza. It could've been good, but there wasn't enough attention to detail. It wasn't worth the $15 we spent and certainly not the $17(ish) it was priced at. If you were selling these at $5 - $7, I feel like I could be much more forgiving over the lack of fine-tuning, though the fact that the pie seemed generally undercooked would probably remain as a major complaint.

As of right now, I cannot recommend PTA and I'm not all that eager to go back any time soon. I hope, for PTA's sake, that this was simply the result of a lack of attention to detail and not par...

We placed an order online because we want to support local business. Their website tells you to download an app and order online to make things easier. So I do and 20-30 minutes later I call to check on the status. The person that picked up the phone told me that all deliveries can take up to 45 min to an hour to deliver. I ordered at 5:26 pm. I just called to check status at 5:48pm. So it shouldn’t be much longer until the food arrives. At 6:32 pm, the wife and kids are getting hungry. I call to check again. I am told that the delivery driver had just left (no apology for being late). At 6:47 pm the guy shows up. I pay him, begrudgingly (it isn’t his fault, so I tip the guy and he leaves), and we open up the box. Our Order was 1 calzone, 1 Stromboli and 2 cannolis. We got 2 lukewarm to cold calzones and 2 cannolis. I call and ask for a refund because this is ridiculous. To spend $30 for an hour and a half to get our order wrong is bad enough. To send us luke warm food is too much. The person that answered asks me to hold. She puts me on with the manager, I guess. I told him I would like to get a refund. He said that wasn’t possible. He said that was what I get for using the internet and a third party app for ordering instead of calling (For real? It’s on your site!😒) He also blamed the app and said that it’s a service based in Chicago and they take sometimes up to 15 minutes after an order was placed to get it to them from the app (It’s 2018, if you have an app, you make sure it works! When it takes 15 minutes to get an order and your in the food / food delivery business, you fire them and throw a proverbial dart at a google search for app services. I am sure you could hit a better one while blindfolded!). I told him that our food order was wrong, it was cold, and, it took an hour and a half to get here. He then says, “Sir, its like 20 something degrees outside, it isn’t going to be warm.” To which I reply, “It’s an 8 minute trip from your restaurant to my house. I was the first house your driver went to, according to the first person that answered my call. So, the only conclusion I can make is that it you sent it here luke warm.” That must have ruffled his feathers, because he said that it had just left the oven and into a hot bag when he sent it my way. So now he is blaming the hot bag technology and his driver??? That is some grade A management and leadership style right there. I shake my head, apparently in awe of this beacon of customer service I am experiencing (insert sarcasm). After all this, the manager asked what I ordered. He says he can make another two and send them out. I tell him, no, I would just like a refund of our money. He then says there is no way to refund me the money, and offers me ONE free calzone or Stromboli for the trouble... 😶. For real. Greatest. Customer. Service. Ever (insert more sarcasm). I would not be writing this review, if he had apologized and asked us how he could make it right. I would have given them another chance and held my tongue. However, when you blame the customer for using your website, and for using an app YOU have on it, you aren’t worth the money or time of day. To then give them cold food an hour and a half late, and still charge them premium price for it, I just couldn’t hold my tongue anymore. I couldn’t let someone else go through this. We will never see our thirty dollars back, but we will also never use this...