Portland Pie Company

First I’d like to say I work in a restaurant, and have been in the food service industry for 25 years. Second, I have never reviewed on Unilocal,and I always give a restaurant (or server) the benefit of the doubt when I eat out. I have been disappointed by this restaurant a couple times, and after this last trip, may not go there again. Always takes a long time to be seated, servers zooming around but no one stops to say hi and take the 20 seconds for here’s a couple menus, sit right there, be with you in a min. This happens every time we go. One time we stood there for like 10 min while the manager was trying to void a transaction for a customer, never once acknowledging us waiting. The servers mean well, but seem to be overwhelmed, forget water, wrong dressing on salads, don’t offer plates for apps, multiple times we have been there. This leads me to wonder about the management, or standards of the company. Quite often the pizza crust is black and burnt. Overall, when the food is cooked right, its not even that great. Just adequate. Their salad kinda sucks, and you can get a better sub sandwich at subway. I go back because I love pizza, and there’s not a ton of choices in Southern Maine. Tonight we sat down, the only table in our area, but we could see that our server was busy elsewhere. No problem, I am patient. Didn’t get waters we asked for. No biggie. Salad had wrong dressing. Whatever. Then the section started filling up. Mind you, we had already ordered all our dinner. Time goes by and pizza here, pizza there, no food for us. By this point we had sat there an hour, and the waitress comes and says the kitchen had some technical difficulties, I had to re-​fire your order. I said put it in a box and give us the check then. She finally brings the 2 calzones in boxes, one overcooked the other barely cooked at all. Her comment was «major fail, sorry». Nothing comped, no explanation, no attempt to remedy the situation. Actually never even came back to the table to see if we needed a card ran or change. At the time I didn’t want to throw a young girl working hard under the bus to her boss, but I spent $ 70 for dinner tonight (with tip, I can’t stiff a server that makes $ 3.75 an hour), and never actually had dinner at the restaurant, and now I’m baking my undercooked calzone at home, and its junk. I’d give this place 2 stars for the fact they have a decent beer selection, and they play surf and snowboard documentaries on flatsceens all over the restaurant. For the food and customer service… Eh? Don’t bother.

I really like this place. When they opened they really did have some issues with timing. The service is more often slow but the take out time has improved since they opened. The food however is really good. The dough flight and calzones are my favorite. The specialty pizzas are also pretty creative and tasty. If you’re looking to try a new pizza place check this place out.

If you say «it’ll be an hour» and it comes 2 hours and 5 minutes later, at least make sure it’s not cold… VERY COLD. The flavor of the cold pizza was good, thus the two stars. I still feel as if I was deceived about the wait time. Probably won’t be back.

Literally the longest wait ever. It wasn’t even busy. Our pizza was also cold by the time it got to us.

I’m going to keep my rating the same because the pizza and calzones are good, as always. And we’ve never had bad service once we’ve been seated. But when we walked in, we waited close to 10 minutes for someone to seat us and eventually had to bother a server who got someone to seat us.
On the way out we were asked if everything was okay. We pointed out the fact that no one came out to seat us and the woman who asked showed us that on the back of the «please wait to be seated» sign, it said something like «seat yourself.» We left wondering if we were supposed to have flipped the sign over when we were being ignored. Very weird.
I’m sure someone would tell us that what happened was unusual and I’ll update this review after we go back.

Recently went lunch and waited a half hour for a wrap and breadsticks. The restaurant was fairly empty– there were only 3 other tables with people. Won’t go back there for lunch.

Pretty decent! While visiting friend in Biddeford, she recommended here. We got a nice early lunch here. I was surprised that a place with a mug club had so few local brews, though they had enough for me to try a flight. What they DO have is every type of pizza imaginable. When we couldn’t decide on a single variety, our waitress told us we could get two types on the same pizza, which was a nice way to try a few without breaking the bank or overeating. We enjoyed the Aroostook County’s big pieces of chicken and smoky flavors, which were quite the contrast to our Mount Katahdin with its lovely veggies. My friend enjoyed her garlic knots and Caesar salad. Not bad at all! I’d go back.

Food is great and love the gluten free options. Service is not that attentive. Have gone multiple times on Sunday at 5, Saturday night at 7, and a couple of other times but it always takes 1 ½ to 1 ¾ hours to finish the meal. We order an app and pizza or just pizza and we haven’t been able to get out any quicker. The servers also don’t pay attention to your table unless they are delivering food or drink. Love the food, wish it was quicker especially with young kids. Will have to maybe just do take out.

Cool setting, friendly staff and tasty pizza. We will return again.

We arrived on a Thursday night around 7pm… they were busy but we sat right down. Like other review we had terrible service. App took 20mins, 1 pizza, a salad, 2 sandwiches took an hour and 10 mins to arrive… with no apology from our waitress. After the bill arrived I asked about the delay, because others around us who arrived after U.S. Got their food much faster… the answer was that they share one big oven and the take out side could have caused The delay. Go to flatbreads in Portland or Duffy’s they both had wayyyyy better service and the pizza was better too.

The food is pretty good. Pizzas and sandwiches have great flavor, but nothing out of this world. Service is sub par. No hostess, you have to wait forever to be seated. Waitresses may have not been trained well. Appetizers were not given with side plates, refills had to be requested. Bartender guy extremely rude. Maybe they need to increase staff and training!

On a business trip this place was recommended by the hotel staff as their favorite pizza place. Ordered a traditional canzone (the «Nonesuch calzone») with a beer dough, which was excellent. I was also delighted with the house salad, which had an unexpectedly robust collection of ingredients. The environment is energetic but still comfortable and prices seemed reasonable. Next time I am in town, I will be back.

Great food, solid service — whatever kinks they had when they opened have been worked out. One of the nicer places to eat in Biddeford, too — decent atmosphere, and there is a GREAT brewpub next door (Banded Horn) to hang and get a beer while you wait. Only detractors were a lack of parking (whatever, short walk from local Public Parking) and the bright lights in the dining area — felt like someone was going to start operating soon…

The food is excellent but the service is extremely slow. The place seemed understaffed or has inexperienced staff and kitchen was really slow to get our food out to us. I will try again but I hope the service improves!

Service is definitely up and actually outstanding! Get in before the Spring offerings change. I had the BLT and a glass of Malbec… wOW! My wife had the Cape Nedick and an Alagash White and she is grinning from ear to ear!

Was concerned about the negative posts about the slow service, esp since we went on a Sat night. Happy to rept that we had excellent and timely service, and were able to get seated right away, even on a busy Sat night.
Now to the food! Sampled a pizza on their special menu — can’t remember the name, but it had garlic and olive oil base (no red sauce), asparagus, spinach, artichokes, and red peppers. Very generous on fresh toppings, and nice crust, and was delivered as requested — light on cheese.
I had the Acadia sandwich, with turkey, brie, greens, apple slices and bacon on focaccia. It was delicious. Turkey tasted and looked like real turkey, not that cold cut type turkey, and the focaccia was toasted and crunchy (like a panini). Sandwich was HUGE. Chose pasta salad as side (it comes with 1 side), which was fresh, had little or no mayo (made with olive oil?), and had onions and peppers to add some texture.
Surprisingly good.
We will return.

I checked back in again for pie on a busy weekend afternoon. The joint was almost full, but we got a table and service within 5 minutes. I was slurping an icy cold Banded Horn pilsener perfection in 10, and the piping hot zas came out exactly 19 minutes later. So 30 minutes from restaurant entrance to saucy zesty za on the table. If some people find half an hour too long to wait for a meal at a busy restaurant, then they really oughta go to the 5 corners for the McDonalds or BK lounge gourmet experience, at half the price.

Horrible staff and horrible wait time. None of them know what they’re doing and half the time they try to double charge you. They can’t get any orders right and half the time you’re waiting hours for no reason. It sucks because they have great food, but because of the staff and how that place is ran I will not be going back and spending any money there.

This place has some serious kinks to work out. Takeout for three pizzas took two hours when I was told 30 minutes — and the quality was subpar compared to the Scarborough location. Being fully honest, I find Portland Pie overrated anyway, but I was excited a location closer to us was opening because their pizza is a bit better than most spots in Saco/​Biddeford, and saves me from having to drive to Portland for Otto’s or Pizza Joint; or to Wells for Seacoast Pizza. Or, so I thought anyway.
As someone else noted, one bright spot was that Banded Horn is next door. I went back and forth three times over the 90+ minutes I waited for my pizzas. By the time I went back to check on my pizzas after the third visit next door, I jokingly told the manager they were going to have to call me a cab if I had to go back to Banded Horn a fourth time (those guys are gonna clean up with PP next door — good for them). Empty stomach, 6−7% craft brews and a super-​cramped waiting room in PP… you get the picture.
So the pizzas finally came and they took them off the bill, so they get a star for that. Got them home and they were just very poorly made — the plain cheese was overcooked, and the kids barely touched it (80% of the cheese, which was on the light side to begin with, was charred black. No pleasure in that.) The sausage/​peppers/​onions one was a step above Dominos quality. Undercooked green peppers with too much crunch, which I hate on a pizza. Roast those peppers man before you top the pizza! A mini white pizza with broccoli and ricotta (my choice) was swimming in garlic, which made for an irritating natural cologne emanating from the pores of my skin for 24 hours.
Also, the parking situation here sucks.

Highly disappointed
Waiting 15 minutes before one waitress came to us to ask what we want for drinks with 5 other staff member standing around gossiping. 15 minutes later she came took our drinks order, took another 15 to get the drinks then 15 more minutes to get our checks and another 15 to pay… somethings wrong here… I’m all set the one in Scarborough had more class. They hype to high but nothing to show, even the atmosphere and décor is that of a dumb down restaurant that was going to close soon… leave it be no need to waste your money make the drive Scarborough it’s better