Coal Fire Pizza

The giant tower-like brick oven got me first.

Upon entering my favorite go-to takeout pizza place, I felt only the familiar sweet fragrance of plum tomatoes and the lulling chatter of the waiters scrambling to complete their orders. I watched, once again, as a giant spatula extracted sizzling pies from a charcoal oven that could only be described as a pizza furnace from heaven.

However, I had never ventured further. Ever since Coal Fire’s opening in 2016, it has set the bar for take-out pizza in the Dulles Area. With more than satisfying takeout pizzas and a signature sweet sauce that somehow makes gluttony appealing, even my parents (extreme haters of pizza) feast upon numerous slices of their cheese and pepperoni pizza. A culmination of all these positive pies has caused me to never doubt their dine-in experience.

I definitely should have doubted it.

The first glimpse of betrayal I experienced was at the door. Instead of the usual quick pizza pick-up, I had to signal for a waiter as the host area was vacant. The waiter walked over to my group with a look that resembled a lost puppy. Whether it be our boisterous group or my ever so intimidating beckon, it took the waiter a full minute to collect himself and find a table for us.

The second red flag was the emptiness. At 9:30 PM, the restaurant looked like a ghost town with a stray couple of families cast into the dark shadows of the restaurant. Music or something of the sort was playing, barely audible in the already desolate zone.

Finally, the food, once served after a regretful 40-minute wait, was unrecognizable to the pictures posted on Yelp and even my own memory. The betrayal I felt was immeasurable. Had my previous memories been shrouded in a facade of oily and cheesy misconception?

The biggest issue had to be the onion rings. In a wiry basket of oil, a pile of full-sized onions with chunks of fried batter was set upon our table. Unsliced, over fried, and soaking in grease lay the most visually unappealing onion rings I had ever seen. Nonetheless, I took a “ring” (basically an entire onion) and took a brave bite.

And for what felt like the hundredth time that night, I was surprised.

They had miraculously turned the concept of a fried onion, into a putrid vomit tasting pile of slime with an after taste that begs the question: Where did all these flavors even come from?

Nonetheless, I stayed optimistic. I even swallowed my pride in the form of soggy paper-thin fries, determined that the entrees would validate my positive affirmations. Hundreds of pies couldn’t lie. Right?

Wrong. All the qualities that separated Coal Fire from conventional chain restaurant pizza were absent that night. The once memorable, mouthwatering cheese reeked of a new shoe smell identical to the Dick’s Sporting Goods nearby. However, I do have to give them a point for accuracy as their “crispy, charcoal baked crust” definitely had a crunch and definitely tasted like charcoal!

The toppings on the pizzas were no better. Out of the three pizzas that were ordered, only the basic 1 topping mushroom pizza seemed stomachable as it didn’t consist of sporadic piles of oil and burnt crust. Keep in mind “stomachable” to me is a room temperature dry wheat sub with old turkey and questionable cheese from the school cafeteria. Another contributing factor was that the pizza had an uneven layer of unrecognizable mushrooms so uninviting, it had me wondering if they had thought our order just said “Kingdom Fungi on top”.

Another factor that rested upon the mountain of disappointment was the chicken wings. The “Coal Fire Specialty Wings” supposedly “deliciously seasoned wings, smothered with roasted onions and served with oven-baked fresh dough” was definitely not deliciously seasoned. They let out an overpowering smell and taste of thyme that almost had me leaving the restaurant for a breather. Also, the wings were not the only things that felt smothered. After a mere couple of small bites, my throat felt engulfed in a never-ending excess of juice and oil. It genuinely felt like I was going to get a stroke or heart attack from all the oil that I had consumed.

At that point, I would’ve gladly taken it.

In fact, I would have taken a Domino’s $5.99 two-topping medium pizza over anything that Coal Fire had to offer at this point. After years of being disappointed by chain pizza restaurants, I had thought that I found a hidden gem. But Coal Fire’s dine-in experience had left me feeling betrayed, like Julius Caesar in his final breaths.

Et tu Coal Fire.

Coal Fire Pizza

24560 Dulles Landing Drive

Sterling, Virginia, 20166