Rockaway Pizzeria — Restaurant in White Oak

We live basically next to Rockaway and we were very excited to have a new place owned by locals move in.

The first time we placed an order no one answered the phone so we walked over and ordered a sicillian and a NY. After we paid for some of the pricier pizza in the burgh, we were told the sicilian was sold out and also that our order would take around 2 hours to be ready. That is info you give before the client taps their card in my opinion.

They did not, however take 2 hours, they took closer to 3. I love a small business, but I can not abide the "we are such a commodity, you're lucky if you get something" attitude. We are thrilled they are busy and succeeding, but it kinda seems it is being used as an excuse to treat people like it's a cattle call.

With multiple people in our household working in restaurant management I can say, unequivically, that the chaos is uneccesary. They are open til 9-10 depending on the night and regularly sold out of the main draw before 2-4pm. That's great! Go them! But it's not necessary to have people try to order for hours, wait half a day for a pizza or drive in at normal dinner hours to find it's sold out. Just implement exclusive online ordering. You know how many sicilians you have every day. When they're gone, they're gone and with online ordering, everyone else can see when they're gone as well and they can know ahead of time whether they can get pizza in a time frame that works for them. (In our case, we had to feed people something else which defeated the purpose of ordering out that night.)

The pizza was very good- not amazing, but very nice. We would 100% order again despite the price if we knew the experience would be better.

I hoped this review would say "Fantastic, welcome to the neighborhood!" and I hope they get things sorted and we can say that without caveats.

**EDITED to reply to management. Welp. Unfortunately the response did not acknowledge our unpleasant experience but emphasized how "extraordinarily busy" they are which confirms my precise problem with the way customers are handled. "You can't please everyone!" after leaving people waiting 3 hours for pizza and taking payment for sold out items is not an approach I can get behind. Popularity isn't a free pass for less than stellar business practices.

No one suggested that constant updates should be made during busy times or at any time or that Western Pennsylvanians would constantly check "dough status" online. That's just weird. If you switched to fully online ordering (which is what was actually suggested) you would provide the system with exactly what you had available and it would stop taking orders for an item when it sold out. No phone calls, no extra drama, no people driving 45 minutes for your incredibly popular pizza to find out it's sold out.

2pm and 4pm were not chosen arbitrarily. We tried to order at both times and were told sicilian was sold out. If that was an error or they said that because they didn't want to take phone orders or there was a failed batch... I have no idea. We were so surprised about the early sellouts we ourselves thought it must be a mistake or an unusually high order volume. In fact, the day we ordered a sicilian and were told afterwards that it was sold out, I'm pretty darn sure we ordered just after 6pm.

We wish you luck. Most of our local businesses treat their neighbors really well here. You're new to this location and there are always growing pains. Hopefully people become a priority once the kinks...

Tonight was my third and last time going to Rockaway Pizza. Living in Regent Square for 20 years, I've been waiting a long time for a top notch pizza place to open here, and to make it even better, one that does New York style. I had even driven out to their location in White Oak before I discovered that the pizza would be cold before I got back home so when I found out they were moving to my neighborhood, let's just say I was excited.

The pizza itself is some of the best New York style that I've ever had here in Pittsburgh. The crust, the sauce, the toppings, all top notch, but what has soured me on the place and why I will not be going back is that no matter how good the pizza is, it is not worth a two and half hour wait(Pizza was ordered at 6:40 and was handed to us at 9:05). No pizza is, and the attitude from the employees borders on they just don't care that you had to wait that long. Tonight's excuse, was, oh we're running a little behind, and when we asked if we could just eat the pizza there while it was still hot, the response was, sorry, we close at nine. The combination of the wait time and the callous attitude of the employees is just not worth how good the pizza might be. I can easily find pizza in town that's at least 80% as good without the ridiculous wait or the snide attitude.

I really miss Pizza Taglio

Exactly, the kind of response I expected from you. Completely disregard the main point of the review and focus on the one item you even had a chance of making a point on(The we wanted to go home at 9 but I know that's not true because I actually witnessed them deliver a pizza to table at 9:05). You lost 90% of your food during the power outage week? Guess what, I lost 100% of mine, but none of that has anything to do with the fact that waiting 2 1/2 hours for a pizza(Not once, not twice but all three times I've ordered one. I kept coming back after the first two because I was willing to give the benefit of the doubt to a place just getting up and running in new location) just isn't worth it no matter how good it might be. Hell, I wouldn't have waited that long for one from the Original Famous Ray's on 6th and 11th that I used to frequent when I lived in New York. You also failed to address the snide attitude of the employees(Including the one that told me over the phone that it would be 1:45 when I placed my order but was not even apologetic in the least when it ended up taking 2:25. It's a total lack of respect for a paying customer, and the fact that you're glad I'm not coming back. The feeling is mutual because there are ton of businesses out there that actually care about their customers, and I will make it a point to...

Pizza is delicious, but the service isn't very good. I ordered a 1 pizza mid-afternoon on a Saturday. I was told 25-30 minutes. I arrived after around 20 minutes and the guy said I was 10 minutes early.. Fine... I went back to my car for 10 minutes then came back in.. still no pizza. There were 2 guys working and a 3rd that arrived while I was there. They had 3 order slips on the board and 3 pizzas in the oven including mine. People calling in were (while I was waiting) being told 35 minutes. I've worked in several small pizza shops and it takes 10-15 min to prep and cook a pizza. You have a double-deck oven that holds about 8 large pizzas at the same time. How are you going to make someone wait that long with a total of 6 orders and a massive oven? I'll tell you how.. They don't care. These guys moved like they weren't getting paid to do a job and doing everything in slow motion. I watched them make the next pizza and it took the guy 5 minutes to toss the dough and top and get it into the oven. This should take 30-60 seconds if you actually try. I didn't get my pizza until 20 minutes past the time they quoted. They will not be around long if that's how much they care. If you're hungry order elsewhere. If you don't care how long it takes and don't mind waiting, the pizza is pretty good. Follow up: You should hire me to teach you how to run a pizza shop. You have the food right, the service sucks along with your attitude. I notice you retracted the comment where you were calling me a liar, cause I'll be posting a screenshot of my call log to your business, along with my GPS tracking info that shows that it took you 50 minutes to make a pizza. Maybe try saying sorry and try to improve, instead of calling your customer's liars. Many reviews indicate that their orders weren't ready on time. It's not just me. Follow up again: Maybe 30 seconds is an exaggeration, but it shouldn't take 5 minutes. I've uploaded a screen shot of my GPS that day. I ordered my pizza while I was shopping at Giant Eagle. From that time to when I left your shop was almost an hour. It shows that I was at your establishment for 20 minutes which means the only way my story isn't true is if I ordered from your parking lot. It's not slander when it's true and it's my opinion that you care about your business, but not the customers who pay your bills. Get over yourself! You make pizza, just like everyone else. There's no special "aging process" during prep that makes it take longer than everyone else. It's not like you hand make a batch of dough for each pizza. Everything is sitting right there for you to make a pizza and stick it...