Yes. Yes. Yes. Ordered a similar to Supreme pizza toppings and mozzarella sticks advertised with “warm” marinara…. Damn - Darn (don’t want to offend anyone) that marinara was warm! The mozzarella sticks were like a kiss from my East Coast Pittsburgh roots - not greasy, great ratio - I may need to live here?!? The pizza is on point. Unlike big city pizza joints that require you to pay for extra toppings - Red baron was generous in an old school, delightful way. I’d brought parm and red peppers but even if I hadn’t this pizza delivered. The crust… you won’t be disappointed!
Grew up in big bear, while I hate this town there's some restaurants I've got fond memories of, which I like to visit on rare occasions I'm there just long enough to get something to eat. When i was a kid, this place was more family oriented, with booths that had vintage pics of big bear on the wall, a few arcade machines, candy dispensers. In 2016, I went here for the first time since I was maybe 11 years old so it had been around 10 years.
I was disappointed to find they've turned their focus more towards being a bar, which really destroyed the environment and made it uncomfortable to eat in. Worst of all, the pizza is subpar. I think next time I decide to get pizza in big bear, I'll take my business to Maggio's since I haven't been there in even longer, in hopes at least they've still upheld their quality after all these years.
Also, as a side note, any pizzeria you go to anymore, pizzas are absurdly priced, I'll willingly pay as much as 100$ at my favorite place where I live now, but Red Baron isn't high enough quality anymore to be charging "I know what I got" prices.
edit: in response to the owner; you don't have to say the recipe was changed, I can tell, that's why I left a negative review. I'm sorry, but if you believe using higher quality ingredients automatically makes food taste good, that there is why the quality of your pizza has drastically gone down hill. Any chef will tell you, you don't need high quality ingredients to make good food because a skilled cook can make good food from just about anything.
So, if you are in fact using higher quality ingredients and your pizza still taste as poor as it does, something is very wrong. All I can say is I'd go back to whatever you were doing around 2005/2006 because you didn't improve your pizzas. But frankly, even if you did, I'm sorry to say it just wouldn't be worth taking the risk of trying again when I've got too many superior pizzerias at home or even a much shorter driving distance to find one to justify it. Even then, there's multiple non-pizzeria's in big bear alone that over all just have way better food that are worth the trip.
I'm not taking any joy in what I've said in my review, I'm actually quite sad because I was hoping for the same delicious pizza I enjoyed when I was a kid and it's simply no longer the case.
