Bear Brick Oven Pizza—Your New Go-To Pizza Place

Bear Brick Oven Pizza opened across the Safeway in Cloverly Village Center in April, and it’s gaining a lot of business! Currently, they allow people to dine-in socially distanced, dine-in at their outdoor seating, and are available for take-out. They are also offering slots to host graduation parties or small gatherings at the restaurant.

“As COVID is starting to pass and things are starting to open up, we’re able to get things running more.” says co-owner George Jarrel.

Bear Brick Oven is “MoCo Grown ~ MoCo Owned!”; on their website they write that, “we wanted to share fresh, delicious food made with the finest ingredients from local providers and farms right here in Montgomery County.” All of their specialty pizzas are named after neighborhoods in Montgomery County, so they are really appealing to the locals here. The restaurant has a 5 star rating on facebook so far, and my family is striving to try and review all of the specialty pizzas—here’s what we’ve been able to try so far.

The Cloverly

The Cloverly is Bear Brick Oven’s version of a Supreme pizza, with pepperoni, sausage, beef, mushrooms, red onions, and green peppers. This pizza was my favorite, and even though I’m not a fan of mushrooms, I loved how everything tasted. A common trend you’ll be hearing is that the ingredients really are fresh, and you can tell. The pizzas are fairly thin, there’s hardly any excess oil, and you don’t get that clogged feeling in your throat that you can get when eating pizza from any popular pizza chain. I was definitely able to have more slices of this pizza than I would from any other pizza place because it tasted that much better.

The Peachwood

The Peachwood is a pesto pizza; it has chicken, roasted red peppers, and red onions as toppings. I quite liked this pizza, although personally I think it could have used more of the pesto sauce. The Peachwood seems like the type of pizza you would allow yourself to get on a diet—it’s not too covered in toppings, the fresh pesto is “greener” than tomato sauce, and peppers and chicken could be super nutritious! . 

The Stonegate

The Stonegate is a margherita pizza, with only tomatoes, basil, and mozzarella. There is a little bit of tomato sauce, but much less compared to the other pizzas. This pizza was my dad’s favorite; he’s had margherita pizzas before and he thought it was very good comparatively. With how minimal everything is on this pizza, it’s really important to make sure the ingredients are high quality, and they definitely were.

The Ashton

The Ashton had toppings of tomatoes, mushroom, red onions, and green pepper. It’s essentially The Cloverly without meat, and I found it just as enjoyable. I thought that you could taste the green peppers more on this pizza than The Cloverly, which was an attribute I appreciated.

Pizzas aside, the actual atmosphere of the restaurant was super inviting, and immediately made me regret getting takeout instead of dining in. We went in on a weekend, when they have live shows playing inside. I recognized a few people eating, as well as one of the workers there (thanks Grace!), which really set-in-stone the fact that this was a community joint. I also found out that teachers at Blake are already having a retirement party at Bear Brick Oven—it makes you feel like you’re much more connected to people than we’ve been able to in the past year.

“We’re here for the community! We’re here for people to connect and for people to talk with people they haven’t been able to see in a while.” says co-owner Sophia Jarrel.

Definitely check this place out when you have the time! They have other items on their menu besides pizza in case you or someone you know needs alternatives. I cannot stress how welcoming and warm the restaurant felt, and the people there are amazing as well. Go there!! You won’t regret it!!