Are two bad calzones worth a blog post?

Not really. But those two calzones were just the beginning of a ridiculously annoying experience with Rocco’s NY Pizza at 2064 North Decatur Road, Decatur, GA, and ultimately I just had to share and warn the world about this place.

Yesterday afternoon, I ordered two supreme calzones and 10 BBQ chicken wings from this joint, using GrubHub. $25.19 total, inclusive of the tip.

I waited over an hour, which isn’t in itself unreasonable. I was famished by the time the food arrived and got ready to watch the latest Breaking Bad while munching on a tasty calzone. Figured I’d eat the second as lunch today, and have the wings around for snacks.

I opened the first calzone. It was burnt. Probably about a sixth of the crust was black. Not dark brown. Black.

I opened the second, and it was worse. A good fifth of the crust was black, and the ingredients visible through the holes looked wilted and overcooked.

I thought about calling and complaining, but I was, as I said, famished, and going through the process of getting good customer service takes time. Plus, you never know if the cook, whose work you’re complaining about, might spit in the food or something the second time around. So I decided to go ahead and eat what I could of the calzones and accept the loss.

Breaking Bad! Oh my, look, Walt is up to something.

And I’m eating my calzone…and goddamnit, it tastes terrible. The innards taste charred. And this is the less burnt of the two. I try a few more bites, but no. It’s inedible.

I’m gonna have to call. So I pause the show, look the number up, and call. Dude answers, I ask to speak to the manager. He asks if he can tell the manager who’s calling. I tell him I’m a customer. He stammers a bit, asks what I’m calling about. I say it’s a problem with some food.

He looks at his shoes or something, then says the manager isn’t available at the moment. But I can explain the issue to him and maybe he can take care of it. So I tell him about the burnt calzones. He tells me to hold, then hangs up on me.

I wait a few minutes, because I want to deal with this even less now. But I call back, and another guy gets on the phone. I explain that I had been being helped by someone else but got cut off. This guy asks what the problem was. I say it was a couple of burnt calzones. He says, “Man, I cooked those calzones. Those calzones weren’t burned.”

I tell him the calzones are definitely burnt. He starts to get belligerent, telling me essentially that I’m full of it. Which I most definitely am not, since I didn’t eat enough of their food to be full of it.

Then the first guy, apparently hearing this guy starting to berate me, takes the phone and says sorry about that. Let’s see what we can do for you. Then he puts me on hold and hangs up on me.

Now I’m actively getting pissed off. They won’t let me speak to a manager (who really may not be there, to be fair), one guy keeps hanging up on me, and one guy told me I was lying.

I call back. The first guy answers. He says look, bring the calzones in so we can see them and I’ll give you a new calzone. I tell him it was delivery. (As it happens, my truck went in the shop yesterday so I’m without transportation, which was why I was ordering dinner in the first place). They insist they need to see the burnt food or they can’t do anything.

I tell him never mind, I’ll just review their fine establishment online and we’ll call it even. And I hung up.

I figured I’d write the review this morning, but by the time I got up I really didn’t feel like putting any more energy into the whole matter and was just going to release the frustration and accept the wasted twenty-five bucks. And, of course, never ever give them my business again.

But then I decided to have some BBQ wings (with Ranch dressing) for breakfast. I opened the wings. Not only did they not have a container of Ranch dressing (which isn’t that bad, since I don’t actually use it)…

They had no BBQ sauce.