Mary's Pizza Shack in Santa Rosa, CA: A Review

Mary's Pizza Shack is a small Northern California chain named after former owner Mary Fazio. I say "former" as, sadly, she passed away a few years ago. This was just about when I was arriving in the Bay Area, so I didn't get a chance to see what it was that made people rave about the place and swear their pizza loyalty to it. As it is now, I really don't find it much better than a Domino's or Papa John's - just more expensive, and with a longer wait for your food.

This review is for the location at Piner and Marlowe, in the Rosewood Village shopping center, but I'd imagine the food is pretty much the same at all locations, it being a chain and all. Business seems to be moderate on weekday afternoons here, but slammed on evenings and weekends. As to why that is, after sampling the food, I still have no idea.

Their pizza crust is supposed to be some big deal, but I have no idea why. It appears to just be made from generic ingredients, nothing special in it, no particular flavor. The "regular" crust is also very much on the thin side. Now, when the crust is thin, you really can't leave the pizza sitting in the oven for even a little bit too long, or the bottom chars substantially and then you get a charcoal taste to it. Well, as busy as this place is, they seem to inevitably leave pizzas sitting in too long, so the crust just tastes like burninated Domino's thin crust honestly.

They're also charging "artisan" pizza prices, but the ingredients and composition are nothing special. The smallest, least expensive pizza is a cheese "bambino", which is 9 inches in diameter. This is roughly the size of a "personal pizza" at Pizza Hut or Domino's, the ones they charge $4 or $5 for with toppings. Here it's $6.95 plain. The "small" is smaller than anyone else's "small" size but costs more at $10.95 plain. The ingredient prices are at least semi-reasonable at 1.15 for the "regular" stuff and 2.10 for items like chicken and spinach, but they're all generic Dominos-caliber.

There's a range of soups, salads, and dinner pastas and entrees, but from what I've sampled, they just reinforce the impression that this chain is trying to basically be the Marie Callender's of pizza. The pastas taste like they might actually have been microwaved yet they charge nearly $13 to $15 for the dinners.

I'm sure back in the 1960s and 1970s, when Mary's was actually a shack serving up true home-cooked meals, it was something special. I really don't get the appeal now, though. It just gives off the vibe (and the food has the quality level) of a typical corporate chain diner full of a lot of advertising B.S. and puffery, and using as many cost-cutting measures as they can get away with. And yet the parking lot is packed to the brim every night with portly middle-aged white folks looking for Dat Comfort Food. Go figure. Honestly, the new Domino's is better and less expensive now, and they'll deliver to my door in half the time it takes to pick up a pizza here.