Tony’s Pizzeria – Manassas, VA

I went here on a recommendation from a friend’s wife’s coworker. The webpage of the establishment makes it look like a five star restaurant. Upon arrival, I realized that it was in a strip-mall in the middle of a busy city. Now, looks don’t usually have any correlation with the taste, because good taste can come from anywhere. Upon entering, the restaurant’s fare was displayed wonderfully for all to see in multi-level glass casing. This turned out to be an awesome answer to my question. The menu board showed that Tony’s offered both calzones and strombolis. I asked the clerk what the difference was, and he said that calzone’s were more “doughy” and contained ricotta in them as well as mozzarella, whereas the strombolis had more filling and less dough and only mozzarella. I saw a chicken and broccoli stromboli and, counting both a calzone and a stromboli as the same, I went ahead and ordered it. The price came out to only $5.75 for this stromboli, and I would classify it as a medium size, maybe even slightly larger! When it arrived, I dug in and the first thing I noticed was that it was watery. They did not drain the water from the chicken or the steamed broccoli so there was a “soup” going on inside of the dough. There was very little mozzarella, only enough to bind the broccoli and chicken together. The chicken and the broccoli were not seasoned with anything, just cooked in their own juices. The dish was largely without flavor and strange to eat because the dough was very nicely done (and beautifully done in a braiding pattern) on the outside, but mushy on the inside. This was one time I fully regretted not getting the ham and pepperoni calzone. Suffice to say, I did not enjoy my food at Tony’s and, due to the distance, I probably won’t be back again. But it’s hard to argue with that price and the pizza and bruschetta looked good, so there’s a very high chance that I ordered the one thing that they couldn’t make very well. I give this dish a D+ because it was not very good, but it was soooo cheap.