Joe Squared Pizza, huh?

So, what do you do when you have a broken fridge, no food in the house, two hungry warriors, and one food Groupon? You use the Groupon and yay lovely food! Luckily yesterday Groupon had a great deal for one 16in pizza and one 2-liter soda from Joe Squared pizza for $14. I have always wanted to try them out, but never had the time to go to their North Avenue location. Now they have a new location in Power Plant Live and our Groupon was set for this one; perfect opportunity to try some good pizza. Well that's what I thought anway.

I don’t know who crowned Joe Squared the best pizza in Maryland, but I feel like I need to ask them where they have been getting their pizza from. This was a sad sad foodie moment for me, because I truly was excited to try their pizza only to find that it was not worth the hype. This sad story starts with us ordering our items over the phone and driving down to pick them up. The ordering process was painless; the girl took the Groupon with no issues. We ordered their meatballs and spaghetti pizza, mozzarella balls, and sausage and carrot risotto. I was a little sad with the lack of any sweets on their menu, but honestly when you go to a spot like this you’re more interested in the alcohol and hot chicks waitressing then you are the food. No I mean you HAVE to be interested in something else because this pizza was uninspiring. I’m going to take this review slow just so you can get a feel of how mad kid I am over this.

I will start with the spaghetti and meatball pizza which is one their signature pizzas. It’s a thin crust square pizza with red sauce, oregano, meatballs, onion, roasted red peppers, spaghetti, parmigiano, romano, asiago and mozzarella cheeses. With all of this on it you would think this pizza would have some kind of taste to it, but it was bland. This was probably due to the spaghetti to sauce ratio. They had too much pasta and not enough sauce or season to counteract the blandness of the pasta. I’m sure the “meatballs” was supposed to help with that, but their meatballs were just ground hamburger sprinkled lightly across the pie. I mean come on if you’re going to try something different and call it a signature item then that signature item should be spot on every time. This made me wish I would have just ordered Papa John’s and called it a night.

The mozzarella balls were just as tasteless as the pizza. It comes with a generous amount of red sauce to coat them on, but it really does not save the taste. The star of this whole meal was the sausage and carrot risotto. This small little tube of creamy goodness SAVED this meal for me, and is the only reason I will ever grace Joe Squared doors again. It was cooked perfectly with a nice creamy smoked Gouda and tasty amount of sausage that kept my tummy so happy.

All in all I am underwhelmed by this place, and I have GOT to ask why anyone would vote this best pizza in Maryland. Zella’s Pizzaria is not too far from Power Plant Live, you can hop on the orange circulator to get to it. Their piazza is AWESOME and oh so under talked about; probably because of the location of their venue or maybe because they don’t pander too much to the drunken college crowd? (Yes they do have a bar that serves alcohol, but you don’t have to put with the asses that I had to put up with just trying to get into Joe Squared. Plus Zella’s has dessert, you can’t beat dessert.) I don’t know what it is, but you have to be drinking something funny to think this pizza is the top anything in this city let alone all of Maryland. Thanks guys… thanks for wasting my Saturday. ::sadface::