Max's pizza located downtown in the Luckie Marietta district boasts the only coal oven pie in Atlanta.
The restaurant is cool but it's in a kinda touristy area. I got the feeling people from conventions and hotels downtown are the folks eating here. We ordered a bottle of wine and the waitress had a real difficult time opening the bottle. I think she was new.
I was hungry and boy did we order some food. The pies are big. 16" is like an extra large pie. I wanted to see what the coal fired oven was all about so I ordered up a classic pie, their margherita, to see if I could distinguish any coal fired flavor. We also ordered another one of their specialty pies, a sausage, goat cheese motz, roasted red onion and basil. Mmm, don't those ingredient go well together? Gotta give some props to Max's for putting this combo together. Just reading it on the menu made my mouth water.
The margherita was solid. Not special. That could be attributed to my lack of interest in the dough. The dough was short on flavor and not charred enough. I wonder what kinda temps that coal oven is workin' with? If an oven isn't hot enough it can be difficult to char the dough correctly without over cooking the toppings.
The sausage, goat cheese motz, roasted red onion and basil pie was very good. The dough was underwhelming like the other pie but what it lacked in dough it made up in an insane topping selection.
Max's pizza sauce is good, the ingredients fresh and the service fast. Overall I think it's just good. I'm not going out of my way to eat here if you know what I'm saying.
