Pomodoro – Fairfax, VA

I first tried to go here before I went to Tony’s NY Pizza, but it happened to be closed for renovations on the day I chose. So, this time, I called ahead of time and was informed that they were open. I made the 10 mile trip from my house and found the restaurant to be a kind of “cafeteria” style place, one where you order your food in a line and they call your number to come pick it up. The cashier, who I assumed to be the owner/manager, was very nice and fronted me 7 cents instead of breaking a dollar into 92 cents for my change. I wanted to tip him or the establishment, but there was no tip jar. There were also no servers, so I wasn’t sure about leaving a tip on the table. I ordered the Ham Calzone this time around. It didn’t take too long to arrive, perhaps 5-10 minutes. When I got it, I realized that it was on the smaller sizes of the calzones that I have eaten so far; pretty comparable to the size I was served at Tony’s. I would call this one a “small” calzone in comparison to the ones I’ve already eaten. As soon as I started eating it, I realized that the dough used was super-tough. It was a very thick style of bread, made with a decent amount of butter/oil and sugar. I could smell the sweetness of it. It reminded me a lot of that thick European bread that you can get for 50 cents a loaf hot and fresh on the street in Ukraine. That sounds all well and good, but it was very tough, and puffy. Since the Calzone was kind of small, the puffy bread took up quite the percentage of the meal. In fact, I would say the bread was about 50-60% of the entire entrée. Did I mention that it was tough to cut through and chew? It was. Pomodoro did not skimp on the ricotta cheese though. They put in the healthiest helping of it that they could. As you pulled the Calzone apart, you could tell that it was mixed with the mozzarella cheese pretty well. One huge detractor from this Calzone was the ham. I know in previous postings that I have complained about the ham being too salty and overpowering the dish, but this ham was very nearly uncured and had almost no flavor whatsoever. There was no salt to mix with the sweetness of the ricotta and that was just kind of sad. I don’t think it would have made any difference on the dish whatsoever if the ham was simply left out. The dish was served with a nice portion of a pretty good marinara sauce; one that wasn’t spicy but didn’t taste particularly fake or canned either. Maybe it was, but I liked it all the same. The price of this calzone was $7.25, so it wasn’t particularly expensive. An interesting thing I noticed was that the appetizer of calamari costs more, at $9.50, than this main dish. The issues with this Calzone come from some of the standard potholes that I think boutique pizza parlors probably fall into. In general, their specialty is their pizza, and calzones are an afterthought. They often use the same dough, and same ingredients that they would on their pizzas. In fact, I know their pizzas would be tasty based on what kind of dough they use, but I just don’t think it worked well here in this format. I give this Calzone an D- because it was on the small side, too bready, and there was no ham flavor at all. The only bonus comes from the fact that I think the employees are great and the atmosphere of the restaurant is better than most.