With sky-high rents and fierce competition, downtown Bethesda has a real-time Darwinian restaurant scene.1 Even good restaurants unable to adapt are regularly forced to close when outclassed by better ones.
Pizzeria Da Marco has been a downtown Bethesda fixture since 2011. With a cavernous dining room and ample patio space, Da Marco seats up to 130 guests, making it more formidable than a quaint pizza joint. Da Marco’s modern wood/metal/glass space lacks the playfulness or shabby charm of other nearby pizzerias. However, the buttoned-up denizens of the 20814 zip code2 probably feel right at home in this handsome, traditional setting.
There’s nothing wrong with Da Marco pizza. Their pizzaiolo (pizza chef) is clearly talented. The Da Marco crust is thin and nicely charred yet lacks the sogginess of lesser wood-fired Neopolitan pizzas, even on reheating. When sogginess in the middle seems more the rule than the exception, the difficulty of producing a good crust in a wood-fired oven shouldn’t be minimized. The San Marzano tomato sauce is fresh and unadulterated. The mozzarella is also good.
So what’s the problem? Da Marco pizza lacks soul.
What does it mean for a pizza to have soul? DishingPizza regularly ponders this existential question. For a pizza to have soul, it must have something that sets it apart from the pack besides mere competence. Some wood-fired Neopolitan competitors have a magical, tangy crust. Other pizzas have unique tomato sauce. Da Marco pizza has high-quality ingredients, expertly executed, but it has a me-too flavor, lacking anything that brings the magic.
Soulful pizza isn’t necessarily good, and soulless pizza isn’t necessarily bad. However, terrific pizza must have a soul. So, sadly, Da Marco pizza isn’t terrific.3
Pizzeria Da Marco and a few other restaurants on the edge of downtown Bethesda have held on much longer than expected in this restaurant survival of the fittest. One possible reason for Da Marco’s longevity may be that it’s one of only two4 wood-fired pizzerias in downtown Bethesda. Perhaps it’s because of the lower rent on the outskirts, perhaps it’s because parking is easier, perhaps because there are fewer competitors just steps away.
Pizzeria Da Marco deserves respect for focusing on its single storefront for 15 years without expanding. Furthermore, it must have been immensely challenging for this large, sit-down restaurant to survive through COVID-19.
Pizzeria Da Marco is tenacious. Now, if they could just inject some whimsy into their perfectly acceptable pies…
Pizzeria Da Marco
8008 Woodmont Ave, Bethesda, MD 20814
Style: Neopolitan wood-fired
Pizza Quality: 🍕🍕🍕
Overall experience: ⭐⭐
Pie (12″): $17.50
Price per square inch: $0.15
- In a species, natural selection is a slow process, sometimes unfolding over millennia. Restaurants, however, come and go much more quickly. ↩︎
- With a per capita income of $107,000, the 20814 zipcode is lousy with rich people who dig cold, modern architecture and reject whimsy, shabbiness, and distressed wood. ↩︎
- This is an example of logical deduction using what’s called modus tollens (denying the consequent). ↩︎
- The other is Alatri Bros., yet to be reviewed by DishingPizza. ↩︎