Restaurant Review - Matchbox American Kitchen

There are a lot of smaller local chains that are around these days. Restauranteurs are getting much better with getting a concept up and running and having the process worked out much more quickly in the past. This allows them to try and stay around with economies of scale and to return some of the money to investor much more quickly. Matchbox American kitchen fits into that mold. With not more than a handful of locations, they are prevalent enough to be accessible, yet somewhat special. At least that's the goal.

Matchbox fits right into the mold of too many new restaurants. Exposed steel, reclaimed wood, very hipster chic. I get why, it looks clean and nice, and is less expensive than other designs. However, at this point, it's not a really good way to separate yourself visually from the swaths of other restaurants selling new age 'pub fare' or bar food. This particular location located in Rockville, MD was fine, but it didn't seem too inviting overall. For comparison, I would look to Iron Rooster which is very similar but has more down home colors that bring it some warmth as opposed to the red of Matchbox.


Outside of the decor, the menu is standard fare and my wife started with cream of crab soup. The soup was nice in it's flavor and the amount of crab. No complaints. However it did come out lukewarm, for her that's fine but if I had ordered it I would want it to be actually a hot bowl. I ordered a double pepperoni brick oven pizza. My wife ordered a burger which came with a ridiculous mountain of onion straws. The onions were good though, nice flavor and texture but in my mind the presentation was crazy overdone. I don't need that many onion straws, it seems like it could be very wasteful. They also put a little bit too much arugula on the burger itself. My pizza was somewhat disappointing. The pepperoni was very good. It definitely was the star of the show because the sauce was boring and the crust was bland as well. Regarding the preparation, the crust wasn't as crispy as I would like it to be in the middle.


Matchbox might have had an off day in terms of preparation. That happens. However I don't know if the food itself warrants giving them a second chance. While it wasn't bad, it wasn't groundbreaking either. For my pizza I would prefer to go to Blaze or somewhere like that which is less expensive but tastes better to me. The soup was good, but lukewarm and the burger, while presented nice, and decent flavor, doesn't do enough to warrant a repeated visit. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose and other times...it just is. This was one of those times. The one thing that does still interest me, is the opportunity to try their short ribs....I am there for that.


Rating: 3/5

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Restaurant Review- MOD Pizza

So there is yet another new spot in the local area for on demand Artisan pizzas and it was one I was looking forward to seeing once this trend really began to flesh itself out. MOD pizza. One of the things I have been watching closely was the proximity of these chains to one another and it seems that there is little overlap for most of them but it is starting to make me think of the numerous sub shops that exist locally. But hey, I'm willing to continue giving these places a try as they pop up.

First up, there is a menu which is pretty good and does have a lot of signature selections with a top ten of pie flavors that they offer. The design is more of the rustic reclaimed wood and dark hard grays, blacks and silver. The chairs all look like they were left over from Shake Shack. Mod does offer one major thing that most pizza places don't offer, milkshakes. The layout also has a much better setup for the pizza turner who uses a small metal paddle for the 11 inch pizzas and not a massive one which is blocked by the counter at some of the other places. In many of them I think they put more of a premium on the customer seeing the pizza than they need to.

I ordered a "Mad Dog" pizza which is the classic red sauce, meatballs, sausage and pepperoni. I opted to not get the sausage because I'm not a big fan of sausage honestly. I also ordered cinnamon strips and dipping sauce. The pizza itself is pretty good, the meatballs went a little heavy but maybe thats because the location is new and they were alright but i wasn't blown away by their taste. The sauce is pretty good but it does have a little bit of a spice to it. The pepperoni's were perfect. Aged well with a good spice to them and the cheese blend was fresh and top notch. At the end of the day, the crust of course tells the tale and the MOD crust is pretty good. I still think that bagby pizza is a little better but that's a local place which you're not going to catch everywhere. It bubbled up nicely and had a good crunch and didn't completely fall apart as I ate it.

The dessert I purchased, the cinnamon strips was a 5 inch pizza crust with butter and cinnamon on it, Simple right. The strips themselves could have been put into the oven a tad bit longer to get some more crispness- that would have made it perfect. However, this was all before I tasted the syrup/sauce of creamy cinnamon sugar goodness that was extra delicious. That dipping sauce is a highlight and it might be worth a visit on it's own I enjoyed it so much.


Taken altogether the pizza was excellent as was the dessert which definitely puts the entire experience up a couple of notches. This particular location is pretty new outside of the Columbia Mall which probably affected the staff and their relative inexperience with some aspects of the menu. However as they get some more practice, things should get better.




Rating:4.5/5

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