Ray’s Pizza

Sometimes the kids are in the car. They are hungry. You are hungry. Pizza is the food group that hits the spot. We’ve spotted in a few times to satisfy the need the food and the craving for dinner. Recently Ray’s New York pizza is morphing into Pizza and Cedars Mediterranean offering an expanded menu.
On our recent visit, we ordered, shared and devoured the Caesar salad and large pizza (half cheese and half with mushroom and spinach). The dough is decent, thin crust — could have used another couple of minutes in the oven for a crisper bite but the waitress could tell we were hungry and rushed our order to us. She was spot-​on with making sure we were taken of.
Overall, the food was good. Service friendly and timely. For a neighborhood pizza place it is okay. It fits the need but doesn’t have me thinking ‘can’t wait’ for our next visit. I’m still looking for that neighborhood spot that uses Nonna’s secret recipe for the sauce and that perfect dough and crust.
You know, the kind of place that you like so much that you eat in order out.

Good pizza, good calzone. Service could be better.

*IT’S IN THE WATER*
I tell you this; the worst pizza in NYC is way better than the national pizza chains.
The best way to find out if you wanna try the pizza is by first trying their hot sub.
After watching HIMYM: «Exploding Meatball Sub» on Netflix, my wife and I got an urge for one.
I called NY Ray’s and ordered the Meatball Parm for her and the Chicken Parm for myself. I saw them come out of the oven and they looked AMAZING. The bread was definitely NOT Italian. The cheese was perfect, the sauce was good, but when I bit into my Chicken Parm, something went terribly wrong. Instead of deep fried breaded chicken cutltlets were little cubed pieces of what seemed to be baked chicken. WHAT?!
Then I bit into my wife’s Meatball Parm and found the quality of the meatballs to be less than mediocre. Almost as if they were store-​bought and not made in house, the way even the worst pizza join in NY would make them. Double WHAT?!
It actually hurt me emotionally to have spent $ 9 a pop for these babies. Really.
Needless to say, I won’t be trying their pizza.

Ray’s in NY is consistently delicious. Overloaded with cheese, it doesn’t matter if you go to Original Ray’s, Ray Bari’s, Ray’s Pizza… As long as «Ray» is in the name, you’re bound to get good pizza.
Though I was warned about the Sandy Springs Ray’s, my curiosity won out… and I’m glad it did. True to its name, the pizza here is cheesy and good. The crust isn’t up to par with NY, but overall, this is a really good pie.
Salad, however, is another story. The large salad, enough for the three of us, was 98% iceberg lettuce. A couple of chunks of tasteless tomatoes, 2 strips of green pepper, a few pieces of onion and some dried up cuke. Very mediocre. And overpriced.
Guys, your pizza is good, but upgrade your salad! It could cost you customers.

A JOKE of a pizza place now. I live nearby AND have been patronizing this establishment for many years. I have NO idea what happened in the last couple of years, but GOOD GOD, the food I got was awful. I ordered a take-​out Large Pizza w/​½ Pepperoni & extra Cheese. (Obviously not complicated…). What I ended up with, I realized when I arrived home was: a LITERALLY ½ baked pizza, that seriously looked like it had been re-​used from earlier, then had about a ¼ Handful of ½ melted «extra-​cheese» sprinkled on top. After I Finished cooking it in the oven @ home, I tasted it, and it was still as terrible as it looked before. Cheese, piss poor, Pepperoni, very poor quality. I’ve had better Crappy Pizza from the Fairgrounds w/​a Bisquick Crust. The Only saving grace for this place was the Counter Help, they were at least Friendly. Too Bad they represent a VERY low quality product.
Head down in either Direction to Mellow Mushroom, Ippolito’s, or Double Zero, you’ll get a better quality meal, 100%.

Poor quality and slow service. You expect that a pizzeria would offer slices quick and fresh at the counter. We waited about 20 minutes for a very mediocre cheese sllice and a poorly made, greasy gyro. This place seems to be run by teenagers who do not know what they’re doing. Also needs a deep clean. The fact that the restaurant was mosly empty on a weekend lunch hour was a bad sign.

Being a man from Brooklyn, NY… seeing a place that has NY in the name… especially when its pizza. I get excited. I walked into this establishment. and the excitement left my body immediately.
No air conditioning in this spot? Disgusting!
The pizza? Horrible… its like a 8 year old made it
I had pizza straight out of the freezer that taste better than this.
To have a name like Ray’s…u better learn how to bring it.
My all meat slice was horrible. Then they threw some extra mozz on top n threw it in the oven for a little bit. Sicilian slice was too big and had no taste. Square… not rectangle bro. SMH
Get it together.

I ordered carry-​out here. Got some garlic knots covered with mozzarella cheese and pepperoni pizza. My criticism of both is the same– it lacked flavor. The knots just didnt really have a big flavor. Usually, with knots, you get almost overpowered with garlic. These tasted kind of like unseasoned breadsticks with melted cheese on top of them.
Same goes for the pizza. Everything was kind of bland. The sauce was a little sweet, but generally flavorless. The cheese was forgettable. Even the pepperoni was kind of bland which is quite the feat. It’s also on the expensive end of the pizza continuum.

Everyone wants to be the one who serves up a hot New York-​style pizza pie. and no one gets it right. There’ll never be pizza around here like there is in NY but I’ll never stop trying to find some!
That being said, no it wasn’t NY-​style pizza (good attempt though!), but it was good. Big, hot, pipin’ pie o’ cheese and tasty tomato sauce and soft, chewy crust. We started with a Greek salad, which left a lot to be desired. It was okay, just a salad — throwing some feta and olives and peppers on some lettuce doesn’t mean it’s a Greek salad. Still, it was cold and fresh so that’s good.
My issues didn’t really have to do with the food, although my husband enjoyed his pizza way more than I did. The place is just. I dunno, it leaves a lot to be desired. All the employees in the store, that I could see, were hovered around a tv watching episodes of «Dr. Who» and it made me feel like I was intruding on their downtime by asking for service. There was also a cart right next to our table with dirty towels hanging from it, and cleaners. I really don’t want to see that when eating.
Also, it costs WAY too much. For just the two of us, for a cheese pizza with extra cheese, a small salad and two waters, it cost us almost $ 30. The pizza was good but not THAT good.

Horrible Customer Service
I’ve been a loyal Ray’s customer for over a year now, and order a large pepperoni practically every Friday. Today is the second time they delivered the wrong pizza, and also the second time they did not offer a discount or anything because of their error. Don’t get me wrong, the pizza is delicious, but after talking to a painfully rude and apathetic manager today, this is the last time they’ll receive my business. They apparently aren’t concerned with keeping customers anyway.

My family and I used to frequent Ray’s New York Style Pizza at a very minimum once per week a few years ago, but things out of our control forced us to sacrifice eating at diners and restaurants alike… and yes this included Ray’s New York Pizza.
Well, as fate would have it I received a coupon in my e-​mail that entitled the bearer to have $ 4.00 off of your bill when you purchased two pizzas. It looked like it was time to get back into the flow of our Friday night ritual and consume what I remembered as the best pizza in Atlanta… Oh boy was I in for a surprise.
I called in and ordered two medium pizzas, one of which was cheese, the other of which was a Ray’s Deluxe Pizza. The bill ended up being around $ 28.00 with my coupon and at first I thought, «dang this is some pretty expensive pizza» but I remembered how good it was the last time I had ate there, so my fears were temporarily alleviated and I took the two pizzas back home.
Upon arriving home, I opened the cheese pizza box first and I have to hand it to them, that was some really good pizza! I am a big cheese pizza lover and this hit the spot. Afterward, I opened the box of Ray’s Deluxe Pizza, and I was shocked.
Upon pulling one of the slices out from the box, I noticed that only half of it was in my hand… the other half of the pizza was still in the box, I tried to pick up the other half with my hand and it hit me that this was no pizza, but it was a sloppy mess of dough, sauce, vegetables, and meat. My father tried to cut through the sloppy mess with a pizza cutter, but that wouldn’t even slice through the wet wonderland.
I tried to reheat the pizza up in a toaster over to see if that would help fix the messy situation but to no surprise it had no beneficial effect.
Would I ever order Ray’s New York Pizza again? Well at the moment I have to say that’s a big «NO» however maybe we both need a little bit more time apart from each other and then we can rekindle our relationship.

Are you in that «delivery» mood? Could be you are busy watching sports, or you are feeling lazy and don’t want to cook, maybe you are too busy and don’t have time to make dinner. Whatever the situation, this place has the BEST PIZZA in the area. You can’t go wrong here. Ray’s even has Mellow Mushroom and Atena Pizza beat… and BONUS… they deliver. Order a pepperoni pizza and you won’t be sorry. The crust is delicious, the ingredients are fresh and I love this place!
If you are in the mood for pasta, their spaghetti and meatballs are GREAT! Also, they come with your choice of salad. Their caesar dressing can’t be beat, it is some of the best I have tasted.
****Watch out if you order the mushrooms as a topping though, they can make the crust soggy (they use fresh mushrooms which contain water).

I’ve had their pizza a couple of times when roommates called in for a pickup order, I was not impressed…
Skimp on the toppings, overall greasy feel/​taste, and a single slice sat on my stomach like a ton of lead (and I have a cast iron stomach to begin with).
Maybe this place would appeal to people who actually like this atrocity they call pizza, but overall it’s not worth a second chance in my book…

What is the point in wearing gloves if you are going to touch everything with them anyway (such as a cell phone and your wallet) and THEN prepare my food?
I will say that they do have 100 on the health score and the pizza was pretty yummy once I got the image of the cook preparing my food with dirty gloves on out of my head.
I wouldn’t say it’s the best pizza joint around but it isn’t the worst either.

Oh, I miss living where some of the *good* pizza places deliver. Everybody’s, NY Pizza Exchange, Ray’s. .. at some point I’ve lived near them all (and anyone remember Rocky’s?! Mm, that was good stuff…) but these days, it’s all dine-​in or carry out when I want tasty pie, thin or thick or any kind. But yesterday, a treat! Lucky me…
Delivery from Ray’s, to my friend’s house (within the Roswell Rd. location’s delivery zone, much to my delight — being the pizza connoisseur I’d like to think I am and also the nerd who stashes restaurant menus in her computer, I was able to pull up Ray’s and sell him on getting something truly tasty delivered!!), along with champagne of course, finished off the day.
Delicious garlic knots — SO good. Great marinara for dipping, and most importantly still hot upon arrival.
Large pizza, half cheese/​double cheese, which was my choice. .. though I totally preferred his choice, Ray’s Deluxe! Best «supreme» type combo of ingredients I’ve had in memory — pepperoni, sausage, meatballs, ham, onion, green pepper, tomato, mushrooms. Such a tasty combination and I think what made it really perfect was the slicing and dicing — ie, perfect scale– of the toppings’ size; nothing was too big, proportionately-​speaking, for each slice. Hey, some of us notice such things…
Yum, yum, yum — and brought to us. Big happy pizza sigh!

Please don’t think I gave this place 1 full star. It’s more like half of a star.
I’ve seen the Food Network type shows on pizza wars across the U.S. So, when we decided on take-​out pizza for dinner one recent night, I thought we were in for a treat when I found Ray’s New York Pizza.
We looked online and chose what we wanted. Turns out the pies come in a variety pre-​loaded varieties. To customize it you get to choose which EXTRA topping (s) to add on top of the prepared pizza. So, we got the veggie pizza with added sausage, and extra mushrooms and onions.
I was anticipating a WOW from my mouth after the first bite. Second slice. no WOW. Next day, cold slice… no WOW. In addition, the crust was like bread and was not crispy. This is supposed to be RAY’S NEW YORK PIZZA, right?
Folks, I DID NOT have a cold or a sinus condition preventing me from tasting food. Not only was there no WOW but there was NO FLAVOR.
We’ve had pizza before so we know what they taste like. The ONLY taste came from the crumbled sausage.
The pizza was an insult to New York.

I asked my waitress: «Is it really NY style Pizza?» and she answers…“I’ve never been to NY so I have no idea.” WTF, lie to me please.
Hands down one of the thinnest slices of pizza I have ever seen. Just ok. Not really worth going.

I have stopped in here on occasion when I am in the mood for a slice of cheese. They are always friendly, and quick with my order.
On this last visit, I was with family so we chose wait service. Our server was friendly, and as we were straddling lunch/​dinner time, we ordered a medium pizza (6 slices in a 14′), a salad and soda/​water (cheap dates).
I have a hangup about sitting near bathrooms/​kitchen/​prep areas (I seem to have some sort of magnet for this-​odd, I know)… so I would suggest sitting in the front of the restaurant, if you share my idiocracies as well!
They also have outdoor patio seating.

Earlier this week I met up with one of my friends for a quick lunch at Ray’s New York Pizza in Sandy Springs. This is a location we would hit up every so often when I worked up that way, but it had probably been up to 2 years since my last visit, and I really couldn’t remember much about the pizza. I had high hopes, but now that I think about it, if I couldn’t remember anything that kind of indicates that it’s unmemorable. There are 5 locations of Ray’s «New York» style pizza in the Atlanta area, where they claim they have «brought the finest New York style pizza to the Atlanta area.» Hmm, we’ll see about that.
What’s up with all the restaurants claiming «New York style»? That doesn’t entice me one bit… so many restaurants claim this title and it has become so ubiquitous that it cannot be used as any measure of expected consistency by the consumer. Well, you may already have gained some insight into the quality of my experience, but let’s move on with the pictures and ratings.
This was one of my least favorite pizzas in Atlanta. I actually liked the flavor of the cheese, but the dough was horrendous. It was soggy under the cheese/​sauce and the endcrust was charred cardboard; flavorless bread that was not the least bit enticing. The toppings were just ok.
I don’t mean to be a jerk, but there is just no love in this pizza, no passion at all. The service was just fine, but I’d definitely save your money and try somewhere else.

I can sum it up with one word: «meh.»
The Restaurant:
* Very plain and seat yourself.
* Small tables with slightly uncomfortable chairs.
* Unattractive bathrooms. The men’s restroom has a dispenser labeled «toilet seat sanitizer» where the hand soap should be, so be careful. Also, there isn’t a paper towel dispenser, so you have to stick your wet hands into a soggy roll to get a piece ripped off.
The Food:
* Not awful, but not great.
* The Greek salad is basic with very plain sauce.
* The only light dressing they have is ranch.
* Plain pizza and the lunch special only includes cheese pizza.
* The steak sandwich is really good.
The Service:
* Nice, but average.
* He didn’t clear our table very well.
* During lunch it wasn’t very busy, but he didn’t have time to split up orders that were placed to-​go for other co-​workers and that made it hard for us to figure out payment.