Custom Fuel Pizza

One of numerous fast casual pizza places that have taken the District by storm, this one’s in the middle of the pack. They have a prime location right near the White House, and if I were a tourist I wouldn’t be disappointed if I ended up here in a hurry. Since I’m not, I know there’s better and worse options nearby.
They have a nice topping selection (and vegan and gluten-​free options for those in need), but they’re not generous with them; a build your own pizza has three toppings and it’s a dollar for each extra beyond that. Most of their toppings are very finely chopped, which is kind of nice; it allows for them to spread evenly and to get standard portions. Indeed, the mushrooms were among the best mushrooms I’ve had on a pizza, perhaps because they’re tastier and easier to chew that way, and the peppers and arugula didn’t hurt either. To get to the minimum for my online order, I added some very basic (and small) garlic breadsticks at minimal expense.
They had some technical difficulty taking an online order, but made my pizza quickly enough to resolve it and threw in a couple of extra breadsticks to apologize for the wait, so no big deal there. I could get more pizza for the money at some of their competitors, but it certainly wasn’t bad.

My mister and I came here about 2 months ago. Ive been super busy so i forgot to do my review of this place, but the food and service was so good that i wanted to make sure i gave my review. Its kinda like a subway or chipotle type setup when ordering your food. My mister and I got pizza and wings. On our pizza we just had pepperoni, sausage and cheese. The Gentleman — Skip was his name (we later learned that he was i think regional manager?) added some extra cheese and italian spices after our pizza was cooked and IT WAS DELICIOUS.
With all the custom pizza places popping up and becoming popular (like pieology and so forth) this pizza takes the cake. So Sooooo good.

It just didn’t taste good. The flavors didn’t pop. Tasted like cheap frozen pizza. The lady who took my order was a sweetheart though, and the place was clean which is where the 2 stars come from.

This place is a pizza joint setup like subway and they have a variety of ingredients. My girlfriend and I had the Brooklyn Bridge and garlic knots. I would pass on the garlic knots but the pie was legit and it came out fast. Paired with a Vienna lager and it was all good, especially after a visit to the Renwick Gallery.

I like this place. The food is good, they’re fast, and they have a good selection.
I’ve hit this place when the line is out the door and they still get your food in a reasonable amount of time. There isn’t a lot of seating but there are a few tables and a bench eating area and when the weather is nice you can sit outside.
They now have sandwiches but personally there are too many sandwich places around here so I plan to stick with them for pizza. I have vegetarian friends and they seem to find something they like here which makes it an easy choice for a group. They also have craft beers for dinner time.
I would recommend this place to any of my friends.

This place is great. Good price for fresh-​made, fresh-​baked pizza.
The fig, prosciutto, and arugula is really good.
Ask for a side of balsamic dressing on the side to drizzle over it to give it a little edge!

This place is so crowded and the service is so rushed. The people behind the counter are just hurrying you along, and they got the order wrong for two people ahead of me.
The food is just alright. I order a 4 meat pizza that tasted alright when fresh from the oven but after 20 minutes, the dough became stodgy and limp, and the cheesy became oily and flabby. Very disappointing.
I don’t understand why there was a long Q, other than the lack of food options around the area.

Love the size of the pizza, great flavors… wish they had honey ricotta back on the menu…

The staff is very friendly and helpful. The spicy shrimp pizza is fantastic!!! I’d come back here if I was nearby.

Originally, I wasn’t sure what kind of place this was judging by the title, even though I had lived in the Foggy Bottom area. When a friend actually mentioned to me that it was a pizza place, I decided that I had to try. This place is actually pretty good. From what I’ve heard, it’s pretty similar to &pizza (which I unfortunately have not yet been to), but having grown up in NY, I do love pizza.
Anyway, they have a few enticing options like the 4 Meat and Brooklyn Bridge. I like how they have original and wheat crust options. I think the 4 Meat is actually the best option with the Brooklyn Bridge as the second best but lacking a great taste. After it goes through an oven conveyor belt, you can to choice your toppings.
Sometimes when I’ve gone, the people who work there are not always focused on your order and can keep you waiting to get your order but sometimes they’re very quick. It really just depends on when you go. Overall, for a pizza place (especially when you can have more control over the product) in the Foggy Bottom area, it’s a pretty good option. It’s better than other options in Foggy but not as good as a number of others in DC.

I’m a die-​hard fan of &pizza, but this pizza joint is closer to where I work now.
I have to say, I liked it! It wasn’t amazing, but I thought it was pretty delicious. I ordered one of their «premium» pizzas, I think it’s called, with roasted peppers, roasted onions, and chicken sausage. The cheese was so gooey and the crust wasn’t too thin and crunchy.
The wait in line wasn’t all that bad, considering it was around 12:30 PM on a Thursday (prime lunch time in a busy work area). I’ll be going again!

Background: Just me for lunch in between meetings. 11:45 on a Tuesday. Moderately busy.
Pie: Ordered the 4 Meat pie with a side salad. Pie was tasty, good crust, cheese and meat.
Salad: My first salad was so wilted and turned that it was oozing. Disgusting. My second was not much better. Both of these were prepackaged. My third was not packaged… The clerk roamed around trying to figure out how to make one… He did, and not only was it half the size of the prior containers but it too was wilted. The clerk made a point of showing me that it was good, but then I showed him he needs to look a little more closely. I tossed it in the can.
Bottom Line: Just turned off by my experience and won’t return.

If I had never been to a «make your own pizza» place before, I probably would love Custom Fuel Pizza. But now there are three competitors nearby, and Custom Fuel Pizza lags behind the rest. To their credit, it’s a cool concept, that’s hard to «mess up». (You select your crust, sauce, cheese, and toppings, and a personal pizza is instantly made!)
The main reason is toppings: there just aren’t nearly as many good options, and they don’t look nearly as appetizing. The «custom pizza» includes any 4 topping selections, but the veggie options are weak (and it’s baffling that stuff like «garlic» and «salt and pepper» should count as 1 of 4 toppings). I asked about putting two types of cheese, and was told that would count as an extra topping too. There are free «finishes,» but when I asked for «a bit of scallions and arugula,» I ended up with a comical amount, coating the entire pizza. Six of us came in at once, and they were overwhelmed, as it took 10+ minutes to get my pizza.
I got a pizza with onions, mushrooms, red peppers, and garlic (again a comical amount. Sorry, friends). The result was fine, but unexciting for the price. Pizza tasted a bit more like a flatbread? The crust is thin, and, maybe it was the surplus of scallions, but it wasn’t particularly cheesy.
Maybe I’m spoiled, but «I’ve experienced better» right up the street.
Note: The menus online and posted here are a bit outdated. Pizzas now cost $ 8.50 and some of the ingredients, like artichoke, are extra.

After taking my friend to some of the sights and sounds that DC has to offer, we stopped inside Custom Fuel absolutely famished and in need of lunch.
The good? You get a decently sized meal for $ 10, which isn’t too bad considering the location near the White House and other tourist spots. Custom Fuel is also one of these new «fast casual» places where customization and speed is all the rage — needless to say, order-​to-​stomach time was quick and you have a lot of options to choose from. I went with the Buffalo Chicken Pizza and I got pretty much everything on it as advertised except cilantro. The toppings were plentiful and tasted hot and fresh.
The bad? Well, I’m not sure if the end product is really «pizza,» as opposed to conveyor belt flatbread. The crust is rather flavorless and serves as more of a thin plate on which all of the toppings are allocated. Also, it may have just been my pizza, but the toppings and sauce were really salty and I was left thirsting for water hours after my meal.
Overall, a decent place if you’re in the White House area and need a bite, but you may want to look for another lunch option if you’re wary of sodium or fake pizza.

This placed turned into quite the pleasant surprise for me.
I stopped in for lunch randomly after a long stroll around the city. I was quite famished after exploring all day — it was one of my first days in DC for the summer. Needless to say, this place definitely provided me the adequate «fuel» to finish the rest of my adventure!
I ordered a salad, spinach /​mixed green based with chicken, goat cheese, and a bunch of other goodies. I also opted for an order of the garlic knots — I mean, who could turn down a delicious, greasy, doughy butter ball of garlicy goodness? Definitely not me.
Finished it off with some fresh brewed ice tea and called it a day. Definitely a great place to stop by for a quick yummy bite. Next time I am in the city I hope to be back!

This pizza is surprisingly good.
I ordered the Brooklyn Bridge pizza, which has tomato sauce, fresh mozzarella, Italian sausage, pepperoni, rosemary, cherry peppers, chili oil, and prosciutto. YUM!
The customer service was underwhelming, but if you’re looking for fast and tasty pizza, this is the place to go.

Pretty similar to &pizza but not as good.
I only came here because I had a Living Social deal and probably won’t go out of my way to come back since &pizza is closer to my job. The set up is the same with the quick, conveyer belt «pizzas» (more like flatbreads). The only difference is that you cannot pick as many topping as you want, you can only choose four, which includes the cheese. I think that is stupid since the pizza is almost $ 10 with tax. The pizzas here are also about half the size of the pizzas at &pizza, so don’t expect to have much leftovers. I did like that you can custom create a salad (still with only four ingredients) and I also liked that they have gluten-​free crust as well as Daiya cheese. The gluten-​free crust was actually good.
The employees were nice but seemed to be a little aloof. It was very strange. It was as if I was not speaking English to them or they never saw a black woman before. Very weird. Nevertheless, there’s really no reason to go out of your way to come here IMO.

THIS IS AS GOOD AS IT GET… when it comes to fast, fresh pizza that can be made unique by you or ordered from a list of pre-​crafted pies! The Haverty’s…of Pizza! I feel like a kid in a candy store every time I come to this place. I mean any and every topping you can imagine is available for you to create a Picasso of a pizza! If I could eat Custom Fuel Pizza every day… I would! I mean he#! (heck.lol) why not, their pizzas meet the standards of the USDA food pyramid and new 4 food groups. Despite the calories, I can get all my nutritional needs met in one place: meats, veggies, dairy, fruits, and grains! WHAT?! Holla, if you feel me! LOL. And, a Groupon offer last week sweeten the deal for me to stop into this place for a dinner pickup.
The setting… modern space, friendly helpful staff, and great vibe. You walk in and will be immediately greeted. Next, you choose your crust, sauce, veggies, meats and cheese. You can make your own pizza as healthy or extremely indulgent as you’d like. And, I am not kidding… this place keeps it real! They are very generous on the toppings… unlike Chipotle! Oops… sorry…I digress. Once satisfied with your choice of toppings, in goes your pizza into a commercial ‘Easy Bake’ Oven for a brief few minutes. By the way, if you are not feeling like being creative, there are several classic and vintage house pizzas to choose from. While waiting, you can enjoy a brew or libation such as a house margarita or rum punch. I tried the margarita while waiting. It was good, not strong, and DUI friendly. For the extreme carnivore as myself, I was able to create two twisted pizzas of epic proportions. I ordered a 4 Meats Pizza and customized their Brooklyn Bridge Pizza: Italian Sausage * Prosciutto * Pepperoni * Spinach * Bacon * Meatballs * Cherry Peppers * Green Peppers * Spinach * Onion * Roma Tomato * Fresh Mozzarella Balls * Tomato Sauce * Rosemary * Chili Oil! Imagine all that baked goodness in one bite! See pics below. And, if that was not enough, the finishing toppings brought my pizza to a joyous climatic end…*Cigarettes not included; but a box to take it home is! The finishing toppings are meant to accent the pizza with additional flavor and balance. There are many to choose from. Of all the finishing toppings, the garlic cheese topping is my favorite and seriously good! It’s mad addictive. So for my order, I continued to wait in all about 5 minutes which seemed like forever and my excitement was running high. All phallic senses (can I say that here.lol.oh well) were on alert! Finally, out comes my pizza creations. Nothting but pure excitement beams from my face. In all this glory and heightened senses while waiting, it was interesting to learn from the store manager that all their vegetables are source locally when available and never frozen. That means a lot from a QC-​quality control perspective and to those that are demi-​health conscious (such as myself) in my book. It is always good to learn and know what you are putting in your belly! The overall product and customer experience was the finale that sealed the deal. Custom Fuel Pizza you have a fan and definitely, a repeat customer.
P. S. Thanks to this place… I almost got a speeding ticket and deer endangerment driving points on Rock Creek Parkway… because I was driving like a bat out of he!# and couldn’t wait to get home to crush the pizzas. :-)

Alas, the Breadline is closed on Saturday.
But Custom Fuel is open for business and cranking out remarkably good pizzas and salads at reasable prices. Service was friendly and efficient.
My son had something with pepperoni. I had pear slices, gorgonzola, arugula, and pistachios Very thin crust. It was great. In fact two people could share one pizza. We took half of each pizza with us, gave No. 1 son a couple of slices and No. 2 son had the rest for lunch the next day.

This place is Fuel Pizza with a twist an offspring of two different ideals. If Fuel Pizza had a baby with Subway, Custom Fuel Pizza would be the baby. So how this works is you choose a pizza, or make your own, and then after they cook it you can add whatever toppings they provide. See how it’s like Subway, but for pizza?
I ordered the veggie delight, because I thought it sounded the most bizarre. Scallions in a pizza? What? Anyways, I wasn’t disappointed, I really enjoyed it. At first when I started with the toppings I wasn’t sure what I wanted on it, then it was just like «PUT EVERYTHING ON THERE» sort of thought as I was thinking «that’s exactly what I would do at subway.» What can I say? My eating habits overlap if they have some kind of similarity.
If you like fuel pizza, this restaurant is definitely a place to try out as it combines a new way of making pizzas and comes out with the same fresh ingredients as a normal fuel pizza would come out with.