Mamma Lucia may offer excellent $20 pasta dishes and $17 salads, but Dishing Pizza wouldn’t know, having only ever eaten their pizza. This casual local dining chain, with seven locations in Maryland and DC, has been serving customers since 1992, appealing to both pizza zealots like Dishing Pizza and better-rounded diners.
The Good, the Bad, and the Greasy
The pizza is good, not exceptional. The crust is chewy, the mild tomato sauce is fresh, and the cheese is generous, if a bit salty. In a chi-chi world where $15 pizzas cooked in brick ovens, wood fires, and coal fires are the norm, a good, solid New York-style pizza sold by the slice is worth celebrating, not criticizing. The huge slices are easy to eat without performing a foldover, which should only be permissible to native New Yorkers. If Dishing Pizza had to eat only Mamma Lucia pizza forever, Dishing Pizza would miss out on some joy, but Dishing Pizza would survive.
The bad of Mamma Lucia pizza is a double-edged sword. The slices are cut so large (a 20″ pizza is cut into eight slices) that two are excessive, and one is too little. Responsible pizza lovers would save a piece of the second slice for later, but Dishing Pizza is a pizza maniac, unbound by the strictures of polite society. That said, the $4.00 slices are a deal at a mere $0.10 / square inch.
Back to the cheese. It’s greasy. Really greasy. If you blotted the pizza with a Bounty paper towel, you could wring out the excess a few times. Sadly, most of us lack the foresight to travel to Mamma Lucia with a sponge, and if we choose to blot, we’ll make an orange mess of the less absorbent paper napkins they provide.
Mamma Lucia
Various locations, mostly in Montgomery County, MD
Style: New York
Pizza quality: 🍕🍕🍕
Overall experience: ⭐⭐⭐
Slice: $4.00
Slice price per sq inch = $0.10
Slice greed factor: 🤑
Pie price: $28
Pie price per sq inch = $0.09