Fittingly, the one-year-old downtown Takoma Park Red Hound Pizza is housed in a wedge-shaped space not much larger than a jumbo pizza slice. Yet, they’re churning out some of the most imaginative and delicious pizzas in town. Good things come in small packages.
Red Hound pizza, baked in a 12″ x 12″ square, fits neatly into its square box, stamped with — what else — a red hound. Although physics produces circular dough when it’s spun in the air, the round pizza/square box, wasted space thing has confounded takeout pizza customers since medieval times. The Red Hound square shape is quietly contrarian, like the rest of the pizza.
A tangy, sourdough-ish, spongy crust, unlike anything else around, is the pizza’s first surprise. A rich, flavorful sauce that avoids typical onion and garlic seasoning is the pizza’s second surprise. The final surprise is a generous, but restrained application of excellent mozzarella. Altogether, these individual elements make a dynamite pizza. Furthermore, although no pizza should be considered healthy, a Red Hound pizza’s locally sourced and seasonal ingredients give it a not-unhealthy vibe.
Red Hound’s cheapest pizza, a Margarita, goes for $28. Priced at $0.19 per square inch, Red Hound is astonishingly expensive. Just down the block, the more pedestrian Pizza Movers sells a frequently discounted 18″ cheese pizza for $19.00 ($0.07 per square inch). Is Red Hound more than twice as good as Pizza Movers? Yes!
The Red Hound pizza will feed two adults for two meals — $7 per meal. Dishing Pizza’s point is that even Mercedes-priced pizza is still affordable. But Red Hound is not one’s everyday eating kind of pizza — it’s special occasion pizza for times that demand the exceptional.
Of interest: In the off-season, when fresh basil is unavailable, Red Hound substitutes rosemary on their Margarita pizza. When a Turin, Italy-based Dishing Pizza friend with a pizza superiority complex was informed about this development, he gagged on his Chianti. He remarked that this atrocity is nearly as bad as the American proclivity for pineapple on pizza.1
1 For the record, Dishing Pizza thinks rosemary is an interesting and acceptable substitution when basil is unavailable, but agrees about pineapple on pizza.
Red Hound Pizza
7050 Carroll Avenue, Unit 101, Takoma Park, MD
Style: Roman-esque
Pizza Quality: 🍕🍕🍕🍕
Overall experience: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Slice: $4.50
Price per square inch: $0.25
Slice greed factor: 🤑
Pie (12″ square): $28
Price per square inch: $0.19