Carolina’s Coal Fired Pizza & Pasta recently opened up in Delray Beach Florida. Some would consider this the closest place to home cooking, since after all, it is actually located in a house! Scott and I decided to go there the other day and try it out. The restaurant is charming to walk up to. As you go onto the extended porch you can view the menu. Once you walk inside you are immediately greeted by a bubbly hostess.

Carolina’s smelled absolutely amazing when we walked through the door. There was this haunting aroma of fresh pizza throughout the whole place. We couldn’t wait to dig in. We ordered a plain pie from the attractive looking waitress from Italy. Until the pizza actually arrived, we weren’t sure she even understood what we ordered. Luckily she got it right. We both enjoyed our first bite of the pie. Personally, I didn’t like the fresh basil on top of the pizza, but remember I like my pizza totally plain so I can get the actual taste without anything to hide the poor quality. Scott didn’t find anything initially wrong either.

It was only after we were eating the pizza, that we realized as it got colder it started to taste less and less as good. The cheese started to harden, and became quite thick instead of gooey. One of the common downfalls to coal/wood fired pizza is that they cool down as quickly as they heat up. Other places having similar ovens are Red Rock Pizza in Boca Raton, Coal Mine Pizza in Boca Raton and Steve’s Wood Fired Pizza in Boca Raton.

Once the pizza cooled down, the cheese became almost chewy and thick. The good original taste, slowly seemed to fade into a not so delicious tasting pizza.

Overall, the atmosphere at Carolina’s Pizza is great. There are tv’s all over the walls and the decor is real comfortable. My suggestions to Carolina’s Pizza would be to use a less spicy sauce. Since there is little cheese on your pies, the sauce is something that we tasted the most. Therefore it should be a nice sweet tasting sauce that is memorable. The only thing memorable about the sauce was how spicy and acid like it was. When it comes to the cheese, I would try to slice the fresh mozz. thinner in anticipation of it hardening up. This way when it ultimately hardens up, it isn’t so chewy and thick. I will give Carolina’s Pizza in Delray Beach 6 out of 8 slices. Another helpful thing would be to find at least a few staff members who speak English! I read another review from a local guy who thinks this pizza is as good as some of the best places in NY, and I must encourage him to rethink this! Perhaps he has been out of New York too long to remember!