“I did not order actual hair with my angel hair pasta…”

By all accounts, I should have loved Joe Squared in Baltimore. A thin-crust pizza place that uses a ton of locally-sourced ingredients in a cool historic building I used to pass on the way to college, complete with a killer beer menu and an awesome soundtrack? Sounds good so far.  The Baltimore City Paper loves the place. Solidly positive Yelp! reviews. 4 1/2 stars on Trip Advisor. Lots of my Charm City friends telling me to eat there when I’m in town. So I did, and it was the Single Worst Meal I’ve Had in 2013 (so far, by far).

Joe Squared has two locations in Baltimore: one at the Power Plant Live entertainment complex, and the original on North Avenue by the Maryland Institute College of Art. The original Joe Squared feels like a typical dive Baltimore bar and grill – an area up front for live music and a carpet that was last cleaned in the Reagan Administration – while simultaneously looking like a gourmet pizza place in an artistic neighborhood. Local artists use the walls to peddle their wares; in this case, bold portraiture of local people in aggressive colors and facial expressions. The beer and liquor list is impressive, and the wait staff are appropriately tattooed.  The menu touts their commitment to local ingredients and suppliers, and that appeals to a Baltimore kid like me. The list of pizzas on the menu is mouth-watering. My wife ordered a Margarita pizza with prosciutto, and I was eager to try the Spaghetti and Meatballs pizza, but was not in the mood for roasted red peppers. The server told me the restaurant would be glad to remove the peppers, and to try the house-made marinara sauce on the pie, as that’s exactly how he orders it. Sounded good to me!

This miniature Era of Good Feelings ended once we received our pizzas ten minutes later. My wife’s pizza came out as ordered with chunks of prosciutto, but not a whole lot of toppings overall. Barely any cheese or sauce, but, it did taste good and was clearly made with good ingredients. My pizza, however, was just lousy with wilted red peppers with plenty of rib attached, giving a bitterness I was not wanting. Nor was there any sign of the marinara sauce that I’d been promised – in fact, my 12-inch pie had barely a tablespoon of sauce on it that I could see. I sure couldn’t taste it. The dough was tasteless, but that Sunday-Mass/Kosher-for-Passover matzo quality does highlight the quality of the meatballs on the dish. Normally, I’d have complained about the botched order, but Mrs. Five and I had tickets for a Major Social Event that I was not inclined to miss. And, this is my Mike Gundy Year, so I can put on my big boy pants and pick some red peppers off a pizza.

What I couldn’t do was remove the hair from the pie. Well, correction : hairS. I’ve worked in restaurants before, and I know how furious some diners can be when it comes to hair in food. I try to keep my own cooking relatively hairless, but, I’ve grown up with furry pets my whole life. Hair happens. My family used to have Chow Chows – big wooly dogs that would shed in a Finnish blizzard – so I grew up with fur. No matter how much I groomed my beloved Buddy L. Jones, he’d shed. So, when I see a random hair in my meal, I can tune it out and eat around it. Heck, hair’s usually cleaner than the hands used to make the food. Besides, like I said earlier, Mike Gundy Year, big boy pants. But two hairs, and possibly a third (it might have been the second hair’s other half)? My mouth was reeling from the effect of getting cooked hair in my mouth. I didn’t dare tell my wife for she’d have lost her appetite as well, and there are some gory details a Good Husband ™ should suffer in silence, sparing the better half’s delicate sensibilities. Inside, I was squealing like the front row of a Justin Bieber concert, but outside, only a couple of facial tics belied my anguish. Mrs. Five noticed my looks, and I simply said “tell you later” and she could have chalked it up to sour peppers. I should have corralled a manager, but, like I said earlier, Major Social Event, had to go. We boxed our pizzas up and went to Camden Yards to watch the game. A few innings in, a spicy Roma sausage saved the day and wiped away the faint, lingering taste of “product.”

I went to the pizza box in the refrigerator on Monday to try the leftovers. The Margarita slices were acceptable, though the thin dry crust does not lend itself well to reheating. My slices, however…well, I went to take a bite, and, wisely stopping,  decided to examine what laid below the toppings. There, under the cheese, was a long, crinkly, greasy dark brown hair. Too short to be my wife’s; too long to be mine, and I don’t believe either of our hairdos are sentient enough to fly off our heads and burrow themselves in a pizza. That was it – I was officially done with Joe Squared. Many food bloggers are content to rip a place over a small service gaffe during a single visit, or to write up a scathing Yelp! review over a perceived slight. I HAD been willing to give Joe Squared the benefit of the doubt – maybe I had just gotten the wrong pizza on the wrong day, and, beneath the taste of AquaNet, I could tell the ingredients were quality. But *multiple* hairs – that tells me something worse than just a bad night or a bad pie – that tells me that somebody in that kitchen flat-out doesn’t give a DAMN. Like I said, I’ve worked in restaurants in a myriad of roles, including server, bartender, manager, lowly line cook up to a grill master. When you’re cooking in a high-volume kitchen, you wear a baseball cap. You tie your hair back. You wear a poofy chef’s hat. You get one of those clear plastic thingies that people with facial hair wear at Costco. You do *something* to ensure a consistency of quality in your food preparation. You sure should notice when your pizza looks like a beloved TV movie critic from the 1980s. I don’t know if I got a “joke” pizza or a “revenge” pizza that you sometimes hear of restaurants pulling on new employees or angry customers – this scene from the movie “Waiting” comes to mind (WARNING – not for the squeamish or people who really hate Dane Cook, which is to say “most”). But this was my first time there, and I’m as pleasant as cold lemonade on a hot Alabama day to restaurant folks, so I can only hope I got the absolutely worst wrong order in the history of wrong orders, or, I just encountered a kitchen that doesn’t care. Either way, that will also be my last time at Joe Haired, or, at least until Rogaine stops working.

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Joe Haired earns a total of 1 WHAMMY! which is not good. The part of me that still thinks I’m a 27-year old hipster gave WHAMMYS! for the devotion to local art, the dive-bar feel, and the cool bands coming through town. The part of me that still thinks I’m a 35-year old foodie gives WHAMMYS! for the great beer selection, good menu and the commitment to local food producers. However, the 40-year old part of me that actually IS a 40-year old me thinks one of the Joes should :

1) shampoo the smelly, dirty rug. For the amount of money the place charges for a pizza, the least a diner should expect is a clean carpet. I’ve seen cleaner establishments on Baltimore’s infamous Block, and they ain’t clean, son.

2) find an artist who’s portrait work doesn’t show so many angry faces. The last thing I need when eating is RAW ARTISTIC ANGER EMOTION!!!! shoved down my gullet. Evil, possessed red eyes staring me down… I’m near the River Patapsco, not the River Styx.

3) caps for the cooks, or, at the least, only hire bald ones.

-RAY

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