Moon Dog Brick Oven - Wytheville, VA — Restaurant in Wytheville

Moon Dog Brick Oven is a local favorite for pizza. If you want something that is a step above chain store pizza you call on Moon Dog when in Wytheville. But, the question I’m trying to answer is, can you judge a restaurant and its quality on one dish and the service you receive? I still think you can. But I’ve noticed that most Google reviews are garbage and Moon Dog is rated at 4.4 out of 5. Is this an accurate rating? Well, let’s find out.

Moon Dog is an order at the counter and seat yourself type place. The staff is friendly and the lady taking my order, noting what I had ordered, changed it to a special that I didn’t even know they had. That’s a plus. I ordered their number 4 special, sticking with my theme of spaghetti or spaghetti and meatballs, which was a choice of pasta, a salad, bread, and a drink for $14. Today, the spaghetti and meatballs were on special for $9.

It was just past lunch when I arrived and Moon Dog was still fairly busy but it wasn’t full. When you order a salad you think it will be brought relatively quick. It was fifteen minutes before I received my salad. A little slow considering what I received.

The salad was lackluster, bland, and unimpressive. It was served with packaged salad dressing in tear open packets like you were opening a packet of mayonnaise to spread on your machine bought sandwich. It’s not what I want to see at a set down restaurant.

The salad itself was like eating a packaged salad mix you might buy at Walmart. The greens had no flavor, the tomatoes were either firm and flavorless or mushy and kind of gross. The best part of the salad was the olives and pickled banana peppers. But, it’s difficult to mess up something that comes from a jar. In retrospect, the salad was pathetic. It was like this salad was made a day before, covered with cellophane, and then served with the selected salad dressing. As Trump would say, sad!

After that, can Moon Dog recover? Will the spaghetti and meatballs hold up to scrutiny. Or will that dish stumble and fall like Icarus? At least Icarus flew too close to the sun. This first course was more like something Orcus would have prepared. Please, don’t disappoint Moon Dog!

Finally, the second course arrived, spaghetti and meatballs with tomato sauce covered in mozzarella cheese.

First off, the meatballs were buried under a mountain of thin and over cooked pasta. Why were the meatballs on the bottom under the pasta? Were they ashamed of them? The two meatballs were gray and unappealing, likely why they were buried. Shame can drive us to dark places.

As a rule, I taste each element of a dish separately. If no care is taken for a dish, it will collapse in on itself like your uncle’s third marriage. It can get ugly, quick. These two pitiful meatballs were ugly, flavorless, and slightly dry. And these balls of meat were not the only dry element on the plate.

On top of this flaccid and torrid pasta was a generous helping of tomato sauce covered in mozzarella cheese. As of this review, I have yet to find an Italian restaurant in the NRV that tosses the pasta with the sauce. A simple step that takes this simple dish to a whole new level. A simple step that prevents the pasta from drying out. A simple step that coats each glorious strand of pasta with that sauce.

And speaking of that sauce, I was blown away by the balance and flavor. Not the typical acidic and biting sauce that I have experienced in other restaurants. It’s almost like some cooks just dump a can of tomato sauce on noodles and say, “that’ll do pig.” This was a good sauce. One that I would be proud to feed to my friends.

Now if they can just fix these other issues. You know, take a little pride in...

Stopped in for lunch today. Weird system. You order, get your drink, sit down, and they bring you your food. Not much service. The pizza came without a pie server so we just used our hands. No napkins, just cheap paper towels on the table. Kind of regretted tipping at time of order since there was no service to speak of. Plates are with the drink station. We ordered a BBQ chicken pizza. Came out on a cardboard plate. Crust is thin, New York style, which I like. Crust is very good. Didn't skimp on the toppings. But, I suspect the BBQ chicken toppings came out of a can. The chicken was rubbery and the BBQ sauce was lacking any kind of real flavor. It was too sweet. The red pepper flakes I added made it tolerable. Not much cheese on the pizza either. Top part of pizza kind of under cooked. Prices were good but this is Wytheville and having moved from Richmond we find resteraunts generally less expensive. Overall it was 2 star pizza but the crust was good enough to boost it to 3. Not a lot of choice for pizza here and I despise Pizza Hut and Pappa Johns so I will go back and try a more traditional pizza to see if...

Moon Dog Brick Oven, Wytheville, VA.

I've wanted to try this place for a while and today was that day. Sadly, there won't be another.

Had the spaghetti & meatball lunch special, which came with salad, bread and drink for $6.99. Pretty good deal, I will admit.

Salad was the best part of the meal. A good heaping portion of everything and the Italian dressing brought it all together nicely.

Unfortunately, everything else was dry as a desert. And, who serves thin spaghetti at a restaurant? Bread was a smear of butter with a leaf or 2 of some seasoning that was overbaked and dry.

However, the bigger issue is inattentiveness. No tables cleaned, rather all were still topped with the dishes and food from previous diners. In the age of Covid-19, it's not reassuring to see someone spot clean a table for the next guests.

Silverware brought, but no napkins. After waiting at the counter to ask for them, and no one noticed me, I grabbed a few from behind the counter. No parmesan offered with the dish. Again, another trip to the counter.

A...