Pi Pizzeria and Wine Bar-- Adams Morgan

We have been bad bloggers lately. Many apologies for neglecting our poor pizza blog for the last few months. We do have a good excuse though-- we have a little one on the way! Consequently, I haven't been in the mood for pizza like I usually am. But, now with one month to go, we figured it was time to venture out for some pie-- so why not try Pi?

Gary and I went out with friends Steph, the Chef, and Jenn. I got a gift certificate for Pi off of restaurant.com, so I figured we were golden-- not so, as it turns out. (More on that later.)

It was sort of a weird experience from the start. I called for a reservation at 5:30 p.m., and the person on the phone said that they "already had a reservation at that time." Uhhh, you can't have more than one? After putting me on hold, she came back and said that she could take the reservation. Ooooooooooookay.

We actually got there a few minutes late, but when Steph and Chef got to Pi at 5:30, they weren't even open yet! (They are scheduled to open at 5:00.) They finally got someone to open the door for them. The oddest part was that we were the only people there for our whole stay, except for a few folks at the bar. What happened to the other reservation?

Also, if you go to Pi, make sure upon your arrival that you find the right entrance. We all arrived separately and we all walked up the steps to the door. Doesn't open. The door is to your left, but it looks like a window, not a door. It took us all a while to realize this.

Anyway, we all got settled in at a round table near the window, and it was actually a pretty nice spot. We decided to split three pizzas between the five of us: a voce e notte (smoked mozzarella, eggplant, red pepper, onion), a malafemmena (mozzarella, hot sausage, olives, red peppers), and a Margherita.

This is where the mini-drama comes in: apparently Pi is under new ownership, and they no longer accept restaurant.com gift certificates. So why are they still selling gift certificates on the web site? This is a mystery. After going back and forth about this for a while, and me being a salty pregnant lady, and our server making a bunch of phone calls, they decided to honor the gift certificate. But-- if you plan to go, be aware.

Now, on to the pizza. Ours were the first pizzas of the night, which can sometimes make for a rather floppy pie. All three pizzas arrived at the same time, which was good.

First bite was the vocce a notte. Gary thought it lacked flavor and was pretty bland, but I could taste a smokiness to the mozzarella and eggplant that I liked.

The Margherita was decent, good amount of tomatoes and cheese. This was the best pizza of the bunch, Gary declared.

Since the malfemmena had sausage on it, I will bow out on this review and yield to Gary: "This pie had a real bite to it, courtesy of the spicy sausage. This was welcome after eating the flavorless vocce a notte, but it kind of dominated the rest of the pizza."

On to the crust: it was thin and crunchy on all three pies, and I thought they were good enough. Gary was not a fan. He thought it was like store-bought Elio's crust, just really bland.

Overall, we thought Pi's pizzas were pretty standard, nothing to write home about--but plenty to write a blog about. To be fair, I think Steph, Chef, and Jenn enjoyed the pizzas more than we did. Their ratings were more in the 3ish range, but ours were:

Liza's Rating: 2.5 stars
Gary's Rating: 2 stars