Hot Tomatoes II

I could see how this place could get a bad wrap… with the lack of ingredients/​beer (weird) and the lack of customer service. However, the bartender this past Saturday was pretty cool (played whatever music we wanted) and the food was actually good! We got the veggie/​pepperoni pizza and the beef nachos. The pizza was pretty good… nothing too crazy but I enjoyed it. The nachos were awesome, especially the chips. I live right down the street, so will probably go back.

Good dive, cheap drinks and the food seems frozen but hella good portions and tastes good. Price wasn’t bad either. Nice people too.

I was drinking at butts and Betty’s and ordered a pizza for pick up from this place (it’s across the street). When I opened the box there was a layer of grease a ¼″ thick covering the pizza. I picked up a slice and the entire cheese topping greasy mess slid off. Taste was as horrific as it looked. And I had been drinking and was starving. Still the worst pizza ever! I ordered a frozen pizza from behind the bar at butts and Betty’s. Way better. That’s pretty sad. The good news is I walked the pizza back and they refunded my $. For that I will add an extra star. But seriously. The food is terrible.

I’d like to start off by saying that I love food. I go to all different places from Salt to Dudas Tavern to WTF to Burger King. But I will never again return to Hot Tomatoes II! I had actually heard decent things about it so I decided to make the short trip there (should’ve read the reviews first). So myself and a friend entered the establishment just maybe 2 weeks ago, the bartender was leaning on the end of the bar, drinking and laughing with some guy, who presumably was also an employee as he went behind the bar multiple times to serve himself. Instead of saying anything, the bartender put her index finger up to ‘say’ that shed be with us momentarily. Mind you, besides us and the employees, there were only 2 others in the bar who left shortly after our arrival. We waited a good 2 – 3 minutes before she came over and simply said, «what do you want?» We each asked for food menus and different beverages. Twice my choice was apparently not in stock so I ordered a Boh bottle. And not that’s a huge deal but she did give me a can. So anyway, after receiving only one menu, a few minutes go by and my friend and I were ready for another round and ready to place our food order. However, the bartender was outside smoking. She came back in about 10 minutes later, not washing her hands and stinking of cigarettes, only to return to the end of the bar where her drinking companion was stationed. I politely interrupted to ask for more drinks and to place the food order. She actually looked at me and rolled her eyes as if I was bothering her. As we ordered, she excused herself cuz the guy at the end told her to go look at something on his iPad. When she returned, we finished placing our order and still had to wait for our beers. And she again gave me a can when I asked for a bottle. Fortunately, I can say the food was brought out, by the cook, fairly quickly and was decent. But by NO means did it make up for the inconsiderate bartender. When we were done with our meals, I had to yet again interrupt the bartender to ask for the bill. Before receiving our bill, she disappeared again for another 10 minutes. When she came back, we finally got our bill and she had charged us for a third round which we didnt order or receive. Unfortunately, she AGAIN disappeared. When she decided to come back, instead of coming to us to close us out, she returned to the man at the end of the bar. Yet again, we had to interrupt her playtime to ask her to fix our bill. She said «I don’t have that authority.» So we tried to explain to her that if she couldnt fix it, she needed to redo our bill and deal with her mistaken bill later. After a couple minutes of her trying to argue her way out of it, she complied. She then, disappeared for a third time. Not wanting to be there any longer, we got cash together and left it on the bar. As we were leaving, she came back in, grabbed the cash on the bar and used profanities to exclaim her ‘disappointment’ in not receiving a 20% tip and called us names as we left. I’ve been to some pretty terrible places. But this was the absolute WORST experience I have ever had anywhere! DO NOT waste your time or your money in this ratchet place! NEGATIVE STARS.

This place was awful and will not be here within a year.
I walked in on ¹⁰⁄₂ after work because I had seen photos of their pizza and it had looked great. I go in and there’s a couple at the bar watching TV and no bartender. I sit at the bar. The couple is watching Netflix (pretty sure they were an employee’s friend because they had control of the remote). The show dropped the F-​bomb about 30 times and they were blasting it – I’m not a prude, but the show wasn’t remotely funny. After 5+ minutes of just sitting there a guy comes from the kitchen in an apron and with a confused expression looks at me then asks if I had been helped. I said no, he asks if I wanted food. I order a beer then say that I’m going to get a pizza. He tells me it’s 20 – 25 minutes because everything is «fresh», then says that they’re out of sausage, bacon and some other topping. I ask if the mushrooms are fresh or out of a can and he tells me it’s canned. I decide not to order food and he disappears.
Several minutes go by and the bartender walks in. She had evidently left for a while to buy cigarettes. After hanging out for a few minutes she leaves again to who knows where. I flag down the confused kitchen guy to close my tab, he could tell I was off put since I was leaving after only taking a few sips of my overpriced beer. He just says «sorry about that» and goes back to the kitchen.

TLDR: Cook demanded additional tip before giving us our food.
Stopped by on a Friday night (6÷26÷15) for some pizza and mozzarella sticks. Ordered and waited 45 min at which point we and the other patrons realized the bartender and kitchen staff were gone. Found them smoking on the upstairs porch. When we asked about our food, cook yelled at us, asked for cash. Ended up giving 50% tip to get food 15 min later. Then ate food while forced to make small talk with asshole cook.

Poor quality food. Got my food for pick up and was really disappointed. Neither the chicken parm or the chicken cheesesteak had any real flavor. I was really hungry and still threw part of it away.

Not to be confused with Hot Tomatoes, the favorite after-​bar pizza place in Fells. This place is a dive bar first, food place second. Temper your food and ambiance expectations accordingly. The chefs can go missing and forget orders. The honey barbecue wings are small in size but pretty tasty.

Really sad to see all the super negative reviews since I love the staff here, but I suppose you should go in with certain expectations. HTII is by no means a gourmet pizza place. They serve trampoline-​sized pizzas at great prices with a decent beer selection, and let’s face it, it’s a dive bar! Seeing as such, I give HTII a solid 3 stars. Although I may defer to other pizza joints for my delivery pizza, I won’t hesitate to continue to swing by this neighborhood haunt for some brews and a big ol’ cheap slice. Let’s be realistic, kids!

Restaurant is open until 2 AM, I ordered food at 12:20 through the EAT24 app. They refused to deliver my order. If there going to agree to deliver food they should honor the agreement or change their available delivery time. Just goes to show a lack of customer respect or service.

A quintessential neighborhood dive bar with ridiculously cheap happy hour prices. Good music, good service, good people.
Not a so good pizza IMO but other items are solid.

I just had the worst pizza in my 61 year life. It was inedible, as I couldn’t get it out of the box because of the grease. I ordered from the bar across the street and picked up. My wife brought it back to them and they nicely retuned our money. But wow. It was bad. Zero stars if possible. (Btw Butts and Betty’s bar across the street is a terrific neighborhood bar).

Quintessential Baltimore dive bar! Tonight was my third time in 2 weeks. While the atmosphere leaves something to be desired, it’s like hanging out in your buddy’s somewhat drab living room. Every time I’ve been there the same people have been hanging out.
The vibe has gone from drunkenly singing along with the jukebox and ripping shots to family night tonight to watch the Walking Dead. If you’re ever there on a Sunday for the Walking Dead, don’t get yourself in trouble… keep quiet during the show. You can chat during commercials.
The food is shockingly good… don’t let the blasé menu fool you. It’s small but delicious. I’ve had the chicken cheese steak twice now and a pizza once. Both were delicious and made great leftovers the next day. I might have given another star if they weren’t out of lettuce, tomato, and onion, the three toppings I get on my cheese steak. Even without my normal toppings, the chicken was great and the roll was toasted to a perfect crispiness. They don’t have the traditional Baltimore «hots» so I opted for pickled jalapeño. I don’t think much is standard here… last week I was offered banana peppers in lieu of hots.
The pizza wasn’t really anything to write home about but it was good. It totally satisfied but didn’t have any real wow factor.
The bartender is a great dude. Classic dive bar dry funny attitude. He gives great service and hooks up a shot now and then. He doesn’t always have everything available to him in terms of ingredients, but he does a great job of making it work. When he didn’t have lemonade to go with my friend’s iced tea vodka, he whipped up some homemade lemonade on the spot for her. That’s going the extra mile and that means a lot!
The beer selection could use some serious improvement. They essentially only have the typical domestics in bottles, nothing craft and nothing import. On draft they had a pumpkin beer and Resurrection along with maybe Bo and Angry Orchard. I would be way more into hanging out here if I didn’t have to sacrifice my beer selection which is really at least 50% of the reason I’m walking through the door.
Overall, HT2 satisfies. It’s 2 blocks from my front door, the crowd is great, the food is more than adequate, and the booze is good enough. If I end up spending much time here, I’m definitely going to start pushing for some better beer selection. Would I ever go here if I wasn’t in the neighborhood? Definitely not. But I am so we’ll have a friendship of convenience for now.

What a great neighborhood bar with great pizza. Definitely a return visit is coming soon. Pizza has a great homemade sauce, cheesy and with pepperoni hit the spot. Couldn’t finish it and took some to lunch the next day. Staff was friendly and attentive. A must go to. Next visit will try a cheesesteak.

Ordered a white pizza. It came an hour and 45 minutes later barely
Cooked with Barely any toppings on it and what I am assuming are burnt pieces from another pizza on it. Not my first time ordering from here but it is my last. Food is never delivered within the right time frame that they advertise. The pizza has been decent but after this experience NEVER again. Worst white pizza I’ve ever gotten. Sorry eat 24 you weren’t much help either.

Ordered take out from here: cheese pizza. It’s surprisingly good. The sauce was slightly tangy which was nice. The pie was oblong and slightly irregular which was kind of fun as opposed to something perfectly round and pristine. They told me 15 minutes and it was ready when I got there. Only complaint was that there wasn’t anyone behind the bar when I first got there. I think that he was in the other room but there didn’t seem to be anyway for me to get their attention. A bell or something would have been nice.
When I went in to pick up the pie, there was a drunk guy sitting at the jukebox singing along animatedly to each song. Classic and amusing.

Two stars for super quick delivery… If only they were delivering another restaurant’s food. Ordered half cheese half pepperoni pizza. Received an overcooked pepperoni pizza with a gigantic hole in it and cheese covering the exposed cardboard. It also tasted like cardboard. Called to complain and they sent us a new pizza this time all cheese with uncooked pepperoni on half. Is it really that challenging to make a pizza?

We’ve gotten takeout from here twice, both times we’ve gotten a pizza and a calzone.
Both times we loved the calzone, but felt the pizza was just OK. Not much to say about the calzone, it’s just delicious. Just get one.
The pizza however seems to often have too much crust and not enough cheese/​sauce. They also cooked it too long the last time.
I’ll probably give it one more try before we give up on the pizza and just order their delicious calzones.
UPDATE: so pretty much every time we’ve gotten pizza from here it’s been pretty subpar. It’s also kind of expensive. They need to step their game up.

This place has potential, but it REALLY needs to get some kinks worked out. I’ve been to the other Hot Tomatoes in Fells and their pizza was pretty decent, so when Hot Tomatoes II opened a block from my house I was stoked. That’s where the fun ended.
We ordered a chicken cheesesteak sub, fries and jalapeño poppers to go. Showed up to pick up our order and were told our order would be up in 2 min… no problem. It became a problem when 20+ min later and multiple assurances that our order would be out in «2 minutes» and we were still waiting. At that point the, I believe, owner/​manager came out to apologize, offer us a drink on the house, and tell us it would just be 5 min more, that they don’t have a deep fryer so the fries and poppers take longer. We declined the drink as we really just wanted to get back and watch the game (that they were not showing for some reason). The no fryer thing also gave us pause, but just figured they’d use the kind you buy in grocery stores and can be baked — ok, whatever.
Finally got home, ready to devour our food and to our horror it was the worst poppers experience ever — and really, I order jalapeño poppers everywhere I go. They were these pale, freezer burnt bisquick caked sad little jalapenos. Even after I tried retoasting them in my own toaster oven there was no salvaging these babies — see picture attached. So, so gross — these were definitely the poppers that HAD to be cooked in a fryer.
The fries were also soggy and under cooked, but we were able to remedy that in the toaster oven. The sub was pretty good.
Moral of the story — steer away from anything that is usually done in a fryer?
I may go back again for pizza, but hard to say after this awful experience. I will never order the poppers again though, which is sad because I really really love poppers!

Hot Tomatoes II, not to be confused with Hot Tomatoes in Fells, is off the beaten path. It opened a little while ago without any ceremony or announcements, but we figured why not check out a new pizza place?
Hot Tomatoes II is a solid neighborhood dive bar that serves surprisingly good pizza. Most importantly, the pizza is a great deal. The large pizza could pretty much feed a small army. We ordered a large pizza with pepperoni and mushrooms. All the ingredients were fresh and they weren’t stingy with the toppings. I really liked the crust. A great example of a crispy thin crust! And for less than 20 dollars this pizza is so big it can barely fit through a standard doorway.
This place can get a bit loud during Orioles games, but otherwise its a pretty chill spot. If you’re in the area and in the mood to grab a beer, watch the Orioles game, and eat pizza, check out Hot Tomatoes II.