According to Wiseguy Pizza lore, Turkish immigrant Nuri Erol visited 200 pizzerias and consulted with 100 New York pizza critics1, tweaking his pizza recipe before opening Wiseguy in 2012. When Erol opened the first Wiseguy Pizza in Chinatown/Penn Quarter, he had no idea it would be acquired by the Thompson Hospitality Group2 ten years later.
When Thompson purchased Wiseguy, it had two DC sites and two Virginia sites. Currently, Wiseguy has eight restaurants, including one in Virginia Beach and one in Fort Lauderdale. The other six sites sit in the DMV. Erol remains affiliated with Wiseguy, focused on maintaining quality control.
DishingPizza recently visited the Wiseguy Dupont location, an unassuming small English basement3 storefront on 19th Street. Without the ginormous pizza ovens and sumptuous pizza displays, this space could easily pass for a Subway4. The first thing one sees inside the shop is an uninspired neon sign, Feed Me Pizza and Tell Me I’m Pretty, which feels like the result of a Thompson focus group about slogans that hip urbanites dig. While DishingPizza had hoped for a more run-down interior, it doesn’t begrudge Erol selling out to a conglomerate. It’s a terrific immigrant success story.
Wiseguy has an eclectic variety of stock pizzas, twelve of which were displayed for slice sales. Like M & N’s Pizza in Bethesda, Wiseguy offers a plethora of uncommon toppings, including Indian paneer, Korean chicken, and Nashville hot chicken. Wiseguy also sells Grandma-style and Sicilian square pizzas, which weren’t on display at the Dupont location. Sticking with its lowest common denominator approach, DishingPizza ordered two cheese slices. Even hot, the slices looked unimpressive, like reheated leftovers.
DishingPizza has been fooled by disappointing pizzas that looked delicious. Seldom, however, does pizza look bad but taste great — such was the case with these Wiseguy Pizza cheese slices. The crust is marvelous – firm, but chewy, salty but not briny, lightly charred but not incinerated. Wiseguy Pizza attributes its crust to Erol’s heavily workshopped dough recipe and its 550-degree ovens with pizza stones instead of steel decks.
The Wisconsin cheese and flavorful tomato sauce held up their ends of the bargain, making for a beautiful pizza composition. No single ingredient overwhelmed the others, and each was terrific on its own.
Philosophically, a slice joint, especially one named Wiseguy, shouldn’t be backed by a billion-dollar corporation like Thompson. But Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, and Kant weren’t pizza guys, so philosophers don’t have a horse in this race. Wiseguy Pizza proudly advertises itself as a slice shop, which is cause for celebration in the upscale DMV, where pizza by-the-slice is a dying breed. Would DishingPizza prefer a Mom & Pop over a corporate juggernaut? Absolutely, but Wiseguy makes a terrific pie — the moral imperative be damned.
Wiseguy Pizza
Dupont- 1205 19th St NW, Washington, DC 20036
Rosslyn – 1735 North Lynn St, Arlington, VA 22209
Navy Yard – 202 M St SE Washington, DC 20003
Chinatown – 300 Massachusetts Ave NW #1, Washington, DC 20001
Pentagon – 710 12th St S, Arlington, VA 22202
Herndon – 1142 Elden St Herndon, VA 20170
Atlantic Park – 1875 Arctic Ave Virginia Beach, VA 23451
Las Olas – 401 E Las Olas Blvd Ste 170, Fort Lauderdale, FL 33301
Type: New York
Pizza quality: 🍕🍕🍕
Overall experience: ⭐⭐
Slice: $4.99
Slice price per square inch: $0.16
Slice greed factor: 🤑🤑
Pie (18″ round): $23.99
Pie price per square inch: $0.09
- In New York, everyone is a pizza critic. ↩︎
- Thompson Hospitality Group is a Reston, Virginia-based company with an impressive conglomeration of restaurants. ↩︎
- The style of basement featuring street-level windows to provide better light and ventilation than traditional, dank basements originated in 19th-century London. Providing partially submerged lower-level living space, English basements were exported to cities like Washington, DC, to maximize urban housing space. ↩︎
- In fact, the space previously housed Starbucks, Yafa Grille, and the New Orleans Po’Boy Shop. Under the polished, corporate Wiseguy surface lies the residual grease of takeout joints past. ↩︎