Good pizza can be hard to find out in the burbs. You’re besieged with crap pizza chains that want to force feed oily circles covered with some sort of unholy cheese blend that’s guaranteed to make you feel like garbage within a few hours of eating the pizza.
Luckily in recent years, there has been somewhat of a pizza revolution taking over the burbs with better options popping up left and right. In Howard County, one of the best places to get good quality pizza is Coal Fire, which has a few other locations around Maryland and Virginia. I guess it’s also a chain, but it’s much less of a chain than the other big pizza chains that are ubiquitous in the counties. Coal Fire uses the simple principle of good fresh ingredients to deliver a product that is delicious and satisfying. Their ace in the hole is their 900 degree coal fired (duh) pizza oven. Combined with their fresh in-house prepared dough, the oven pumps out delicious pizzas that are molten hot.
Prior to be sentenced to a year long sentence to fat boy prison, I decided to make one of my last visits to Coal Fire. I had to say good bye. To their sweet sweet delicious pizza and onion rings.
The Coal Fire menu is primarily pizza, but they do offer some appetizers, salads, sandwiches, and other dishes if you’re not in the pizza mood. Their other food is solid, but come on you came here to eat pizza, don’t waste your time with the other stuff. But I would be remiss if I didn’t talk about their world beating onion rings, they’re more onion straws than rings, but I don’t care. They are amazing, I could eat these things every day, they’re one of the best things you can get in all of Howard County. They’re addictive… The rings appear to be a spiralized onion coated in a thin batter, the rings are then served with a remoulade that has a touch of horseradish in it I think. It’s heavenly.
Moving on to the pizza at Coal Fire you have the option of getting your own personal pizza, a medium, or a large. The large is usually enough for 2 to 3 people depending on how hungry and ravenous you are. You then get to choose from a few pizza sauces, but the best sauce to choose from is their signature sauce which has a touch of spice to it. From there you can choose from a ton of fresh toppings, personally I always go pepperoni and sausage because why not? Coal Fire’s pizza crust is thin and flavorful, the oven builds a great flavor into the crust. Combined with their great sauce and toppings, the pizza at Coal Fire is one of the number one things I crave when I’m jonesing for pizza.
Overall: Coal Fire doesn’t quite reach the level of pizza in the city like Verde, but if you don’t feel like trekking to the city, it’s the perfect place for pizza.
Grade : A
