Central Track Contributor
I Mean, It's Pizza. What Could Go Wrong?
Pie Five Pizza Ambiance:
4447 North Central Expressway #100
Uptown
Food: 1.5 out of 4 Pies
Service: 1.5 out of 4 Pies
After the day of drinking that is the St. Patrick's Day Parade on Greenville Avenue, it just seems like everyone gets the munchies — a need for something greasy, something to make the pain go away. There are so many quick and easy options like this around Dallas. But the new location of Pie Five Pizza — a place that prides itself on having your personal pizza pie done in five minutes, creating it before your eyes and cooking it pronto — seemed like an especially good idea to me and my friends this year.
Unfortunately, as we soon learned, Pie Five's fast approach just made for a horrible experience. The pizza was just straight-up bad, and it was created by people that seemed more drunk and hungover than the St. Patty's Day revelers they were serving.
The business model itself isn't terrible. Pie Five makes nine-inch pies that cost around $6 for either one of their specialty pizza options or a build-your-own-pie choice. My eating partner during a recent visit picked out the shop's specialty margherita pizza, complete with their created-in-house garlic sauce and toppings of fresh basil, cheese and tomato. The pizza creator started off by putting the wrong sauce of the pizza, which both his co-worker and I noticed and corrected.
Maybe that's forgivable. Like I said, we fixed the problem before it became a major issue. But then the thin-crust pizza came out of the oven cooked to a crisp. It tasted and looked like paper. I figured my own thick-crust order — a simple option featuring marinara, cheese and pepperoni — would come out better. I mean, what could go wrong? Everything, turns out.
The pizza tasted almost like something out of those Snackables lunch your mom put in your He-Man lunch boxes during elementary school. It was disappointing, to say the least.
The side salads aren't much better. All dressings and croutons come in what you would find at your average airport deli counter, all tucked away in a plastic packet.
Atmosphere-wise, Pie Five kind of recalls a Chipotle. Not on the service end of things, though. The pizza creator was confused, the cashier was confused, and the customers were confused.
Maybe five minutes just isn't enough time to do pizza right. Or maybe Pie Five really is just banking on serving to a really drunk crowd night after night.
