Blaze Pizza

We stumbled on this unassuming restaurant in an unassuming strip mall in unassuming town in mid-Maryland. But we found gold! Blaze prepares pizza to order with dough made in-house that same morning and fresh ingredients. The crust is thin while still able to hold up the toppings. They have pizzas for the cheese lovers and for those (like me) that prefer more sauce, there are plenty of options. They have meat and they have veg. And most surprising was their super-fresh and delicious salad which can compete against any restaurant. If you are not super hungry, do like I did and get a half pizza and salad combo.

On top of everything, all of the packaging and utensils are made with sustainable materials.

I have had better pizza, yes, but this is near the top of my list.

I recently ordered takeout from Blaze Pizza along with a coworker for lunch, and unfortunately, the experience left much to be desired.

The ordering process was smooth, and when I got there, I was informed that our food would be ready in 5 minutes. A brief wait wasn't an issue, and I appreciated the transparency about the wait time.

Upon receiving the order, I noticed that the boxes were sealed with stickers to prevent them from being opened. It seemed like a good measure to ensure the integrity of the food during transit.

However, when I got back to work and opened my box, I was disappointed to find a plain pepperoni pizza instead of the customized one I had ordered. It was a letdown, especially considering the effort I put into selecting specific toppings.

To address the issue, I reached out to corporate via email, explaining the situation and expressing my disappointment. Unfortunately, it has been two weeks, and I have yet to receive a response. The lack of communication and resolution from corporate has only added to my disappointment.

Ordered blaze for carry out and got an 11-inch build-your-own pizza.

My creation featured spicy sauce, mozzarella, parmesan, pepperoni, sausage, green onions, red peppers, and more. The best part? The pizza had a thin crust, and the crust was wonderfully crunchy.

While I enjoyed the spicy sauce, I couldn't help but wish it was a tad spicier. A little more heat would have taken this pizza to the next level.

One minor concern was the carryout process. Orders were placed on a rack next to the soda fountain, and there wasn't anyone there to ensure you received your order. It felt a bit too trusting, and I worry that anyone can walk in and take an order that's not theirs.

Today is Pi Day and Blaze was sorely outmatched by their own promotion. This location was slow at one point they stopped taking orders. This is a college town and the semester is in full swing. You know that there is going to be an influx of customers and yet they were completely unprepared. The other issue is that it would have helped to have someone wipe down the prep area. I'm going to think long and hard about going back at anytime.

Blaze pizza is a thin crust build your own pizza. All the ingredients tasted clean and it's a pizza I can eat without guilt.

The crust had good taste, texture, and was cooked perfectly. Although on one of my pizzas it lost some integrity and got soggy. I live 10 minutes aways and took my pizza home and it had little puddles. Only one of my pizzas had that problem and I'm guessing it was because it was the fresh mozzarella (balls and more wet). I would recommend avoiding that if you are not going to eat it in the store. Overall crust was good but could have been more crispy/ crunchy for a flat bread pizza.

The red spicy red sauce was delicious and had great flavor and good spicy level. It wasn't too spicy to satisfy a spice lover but not too spicy for someone with low tolerance. Overall delicious and left a light tingle

While the employee was putting spinach on my pizza, she looked up and asked if I still wanted it because some of the spinach's looked old/ crinkled, although not rotten.

The meatball was a meat that stood out to me, it was delicious.

They are not stingy on toppings like other build your own food places. The employee took time to generously place pepperonis all around the pizza. It was about $12 each which may seem high but is fair if you like a lot of toppings and the ingredients are high quality.

The ambiance was a little awkward, no music playing, workers weren't talking, and not too many customers at the time I went. The restaurant was clean but isn't an aesthetic place to eat. Although service wasn't slow, the employees were moving slow although I understand it may have been a long day.

The places to park nearby have parking meters, so it isn't free parking although you might not get caught for a quick order.

I love this place!!! So good every time!!! Totally recommend!!! I especially love the workers.

I came here multiple times as a student and then a few times as an alumni. Blaze is a personal made-to-order pizzeria. In the past they had $3.14 pies on Pi day, which had students lining up outside all throughout the day.

Blaze pizzas are round and have thin crusts. So if that is the kind of pizza you like, Blaze has you covered. They also have plenty of available toppings. Basically how it works is you choose the toppings you want on your pizza and then they put it in the fire oven afterwards. Within a few mins your personal pizza is hot and ready to eat. It is a nice way to get a quick, fresh, hot meal on a budget.

If you like them enough to come multiple times, they do have an app as well which you can earn rewards.

But with the amount of pizza options in College Park, Blaze is not one I go out of my way to go to. Service is pretty bad. There was a time when I was the only one in the shop and I was waiting for at least 5mins while they made online orders. There were multiple employees there so I don't see why they would not take care of their walk in customers there and then.

There used to be a competing personal pizza place called Lotsa but unfortunately closed after the pandemic. I personally liked Lotsa better than Blaze.

Since it is located near UMD campus, parking is metered and very limited. Best to grab and go if you have a car. There is a good amount of seating indoors, but most like to eat their pizza at the outside tables or somewhere else on campus.

I ordered a pizza with pepperoni sausage bacon chicken pineapple onion roasted garlic and balsamic sauce. BAKED WELL DONE. SO GOOD

Came to this location of Blaze for the first time for dinner on a Friday night. I ordered a two-for-two, with a half build-your-own pizza and a half build-your-own side salad, and hubby ordered a high rise crust build-your-own pizza.

What's hot
- Quality. Pretty good, especially their high crust. All their ingredients are pretty fresh, which adds to the flavor of their food.
- Menu. Pretty good variety and options. For example, there's vegan cheese, in addition to bleu cheese, ricotta, mozzarella, and others. In terms of veggies, there's roasted garlic, broccoli, roasted peppers, artichokes, kalamata olives, and a variety of pizza meats.
- Price. Pretty reasonable, especially given the quality and portions. A high rise crust is an additional $2.50, which is good value for money. An order for 1 person can be less than $20, which is pretty good.

What's not
- Service. Terrible. There were 6 staff there and it was obvious they weren't well-coordinated with a system and methods to get the job done. Hubby and I have been to other Blaze locations, which were run efficiently and effectively. This location is definitely not effective and efficient. This staff moved at a glacial pace and you could see they weren't very aware of the basics, such as getting the crusts prepared for the orders; who was going to prepare which order; and even the price of their menu. For example, hubby ordered a high rise crust build-your-own pizza. The only thing that cost extra is that it's a high rise crust. However, when I told the cashier of our order, he said the price isn't the same. Look at the menu, dude, because it is. With regards to their speed, my order was finished first. By the time I was halfway eating my food, my husband's order was finished. By the time my husband's pizza went into their fire oven, their manager came out to help. By the time their manager came out, the customer line wasn't moving.
- Atmosphere. There's music playing loudly, which makes it very difficult to hear any of their staff. I repeatedly asked each person working on my order to repeat themselves multiple times, because they didn't speak loud enough over the music. My husband had to do the same. Either the music needs to be turned down or the staff need to be instructed to raise their voice to be heard over the loud music. Not cool and definitely not service friendly.
- Layout. Their tables are bolted to the ground, so if you want to push some tables together, like my husband and I did in order to sit next to each other, you can't. Their tables are not wide enough for 2 people to sit next to each other. The layout is surprisingly not customer friendly.
- Parking. There is a small parking lot, but everything is metered parking, which makes no sense, because it's such a small lot. Not to mention, we ended up spending more time there, because the service was so terrible.

Final answer
Food is delicious, but I will not be returning to this location and would not recommend this location, because of the terrible service.

Inside is spacious with a lot of seating but the place still seemed disorganized. The workers are a bit cold and the topping bar was dirty as well. Parking isn't free but service was very fast.

The green stripe specialty pizza was delicious with a plentiful of toppings. You can also get unlimited toppings for 10.95.

Personally I think &pizza is better, especially with all their bogos and 5$ deals.. but blaze is still nice to grab a bite.