Buon Appetito - Chantilly, VA

A colleague recommended that I try this place. They told me that the pasta sauce was great. Well Stella, maybe next time! I, of course, ordered their calzone. This establishment offers three or four varieties and, as a meat lover, I couldn't resist ordering the pepperoni and sausage.

What I learned about the calzone's here are:

1) They are cheap, running only $6.79.

2) They are made like a pizza and folded over with the toppings added to order.

3) They are very standard.

First, I would  classify the size of the calzone as medium-small. Definitely not the smallest I've had so far, but pretty small in comparison to most. This is almost what you would order if you wanted a snack lunch instead of a full lunch with pizza and breadsticks. The dish was served with a small plastic cup of marinara that was pretty good. I would describe it as a high quality spaghetti-o's sauce because it was only the sweeter and on the more "ketchup-y" side.

The dough of this calzone very not very good. It was tough because all of the moisture was baked out of it. Furthermore, the knives they provide to cut their food with are butter knives, which made it slightly frustrating. The taste of the dough was pretty good, and also on the sweet side. They did not doctor the dough up like some places do with cornmeal, cheese, or cuts in the bread. The fillings were your medium-quality pizza-place toppings, italian pizza sausage and a decent pepperoni. One thing I noticed is that they brought the heat way up on this calzone through baking it, and the cheese was molten. The ricotta was mixed well with the toppings but lost its consistency because it was baked too high, which is confirmed by the toughness of the dough that was miraculously unburned.

I can say with full confidence that this establishment makes very good food, and good pizza. If I had to try this place again, I might even get their pasta as recommended by my coworker. Their pizza looked delicious. However, I am forced to rate this calzone as a C because of the negative aspects listed, which were offset by the positives of it's price and the tastiness of it's fillings and marinara.