DE Pizza Review: Pizza Machine
Updated: Oct 24
Review At A Glance:
The pizzas: Half cheese/half vegetable
The final rating: 6 out of 8 slices
Thinly sliced review: Very quickly prepared pizza in a welcoming, traditional pizza joint with good sauce, tasty crust, real mozzarella, well-prepared vegetables, and excellent pizza engineering. No killer robots, as we feared.
Review date: October 9, 2026
Full Ratings:
Final Composite Score: 6 out of 8 slices (rounded down from 6.25 average)
[Her: 6.5 out of 8 slices]
[Him: 6 out of 8 slices]
Read the full "dialogue review" below these real-time pictures of your reviewers' pizza.
Full Dialogue Review:
Him:
This is our review of Pizza Machine in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. And I have to say, when we decided to visit Pizza Machine, I was a little apprehensive.
I worried we were about to glimpse a dystopian pizza future. I imagined robotic pizzaristas, facial-recognition ordering systems, and artificial intelligence that would refuse to give us what we wanted because it knows better what's good for us.
Fortunately, none of that happened. At least, none that we could see.
Her:
Although, given how quickly the pizza arrived, I'm not entirely sure we can rule it out.
Him:
We'll get to that. But I don't really know what the word "machine" in Pizza Machine refers to. This is one of the most straightforward pizza joints we've visited.
There was a counter. There were pizza makers working immediately behind it. The pizza ovens were in plain sight. There were tables on either side of the storefront. It looked like a whole lot of pizza places I've lived in over the course of my life.
In other words, it was refreshingly and comfortably familiar. I was expecting the future, and instead I got a pizza joint. What a relief.
We did have to adjust our ordering strategy a little because Pizza Machine serves 18-inch pizzas. These things are HUGE. You might think a couple of inches doesn't make a difference. [Fill in your own raunchy joke here.] But the Pizza Machine pizzas are meaningfully bigger than most of the pizzas we've encountered on our travels. So, rather than order two separate pies, we got one pizza with two different halves.
One half was cheese. The other was a vegetable pizza with broccoli rabe, red peppers, onions, and tomatoes. I don't think there were any mushrooms, although I could be wrong.
So, Her, what did you think?
Her:
I really liked it. A lot.
I thought the sauce was delicious. It was garlicky, and it tasted very fresh—not like something that had come out of a factory, whether it actually had or not. I don't know how they make their sauce, but it tasted like someone had taken the time to make something good.
It wasn't as sweet as I think you would have liked it, but I actually thought it was one of my favorite sauces we've had.
The cheese was really good, too. It wasn't particularly memorable in the sense of having some unusual flavor, but it tasted like straightforward mozzarella. There was a nice amount of it on the pizza too.
I also thought the crust was tasty. It was just a tiny bit underdone on the vegetable side, but that might have been because we had a ton of vegetables on one half and none on the other. It's difficult to cook both sides of a pizza perfectly when one side has a lot more moisture and toppings than the other.
The vegetable side was just a tiny bit soggy, but overall, I thought the pizza was very good.
And it arrived scorching hot.
Him:
Let me stop you right there. You made this point at the beginning and you were right. The speed of the service deserves some attention.
This pizza came out faster than any pizza we've ordered anywhere else. It was almost as if the pizzarista had started making it at the precise moment the words came out of our mouths.
It felt like five minutes. Maybe less.
Her:
Perhaps there really is an AI and robots situation happening after all.
Him:
It could very well be. And it wouldn't necessarily be obvious to us, would it? Artificial intelligence could be hiding itself. That's what artificial intelligence would do if it wanted to take over the world of pizza.
But seriously, the speed was remarkable and impressive.
Her:
They brought the pizza out really, really quickly. I wondered whether they had an extra-super-duper-hot oven, but the pizza didn't taste as though it had been cooked at some ridiculous temperature. It wasn't super-crispy or burnt on the bottom.
Him:
No burns at all, except on the roof of my mouth.
Her:
None that our readers need to know about. And it wasn't as though they had premade pizzas sitting around waiting to go out. We watched them making the pizza.
Him:
I actually saw one of the guys tossing the dough in the air, just as you would expect to see in a traditional pizza place.
Her:
I will say that the pizza might have been a minute too fast. I think it could have used another minute in the oven.
Him:
That's interesting. You praised the speed of the service, but complained that the pizza arrived too quickly. Hmmmmm.
Her:
I know. But I thought the cheese pizza was really good, and I give most of the credit to the sauce. That's unusual for me because I'm generally much more of a crust-and-cheese person.
And then there's the vegetable pizza.
Him: We should disclose something to our readers. This vegetable pizza featured Her's favorite vegetable.
Her:
I'm a sucker for broccoli rabe. Anytime I see it on a menu, I will order it. It's one of my favorite things to eat. I even ask some places if they have it when it's not on the menu.
Him:
Which creates a problem in ice cream shops, but not in pizza restaurants.
Her:
That's very funny. But I've already planned my next order from Pizza Machine. I'm going to ask for my favorite thing: a white pizza with broccoli rabe.
I think they would make it for me.
Him: I think they probably would, although I don't believe it's on the menu.
Her: It's not on the menu, but it's a topping. And now I have a relationship with them.
In the event there are AI robots involved, they already know what I want.
Him:
That's more than I can say.
Her:
I wouldn't be surprised.
But back to the vegetable pizza. The broccoli rabe was cooked perfectly. It wasn't mushy, and it retained some of the bitterness that broccoli rabe should have. The onions, peppers, and tomatoes were all nicely done, and you could taste the individual vegetables.
I really liked that. I was very satisfied, and by that I mean, I'm absolutely stuffed.
Him:
The 18-inch pizzas had something to do with that. They produce some really big slices.
Her:
And, in the pursuit of accuracy, you have to try everything twice.
Him:
You're a researcher with an advanced ethical code. We take our work seriously here at DE Pizza Online.
Now, I largely agree with you about Pizza Machine. I thought the cheese pizza was really, really good. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
As you said, the cheese was real mozzarella. It had that pull when you picked up a slice. It was creamy, and there was a good amount of it.
But I thought it lacked some of the saltiness and other flavors I want from mozzarella. Your observation that it wasn't particularly memorable was, in fact, memorable to me. I think that's a fair way to describe it. It was good cheese, but it didn't stand out as something exceptional.
Her:
I'll point out that neither of us added salt to the pizza.
Him:
That's right. We didn't reach for the salt shaker because there were plenty of other flavors going on.
I thought the sauce had some additional spice that I couldn't quite identify. It may have been salt, or it may have been something else. But you were right about the sauce being very tomato-forward.
It wasn't homogenized into some anonymous, smooth substance with all the character taken out of it. It was a little chunky, it tasted like tomatoes, and it had a fresh quality to it.
It wasn't as sweet as I usually like my sauce, but I thought it was good. Very good, actually.
And I may disagree with you a little about the crust.
I thought it was really good. It was very thin, and it had the two characteristics we look for in a good pizza crust: crunch and chew. And it had just the right amount of salt.
We've complained in other reviews about crusts that seem to have no salt in them at all. This crust had enough salt to bring out the flavor without tasting like a pretzel. You could tell the salt was there and it made a difference.
Her:
I agree that the crust was tasty. I just thought the vegetable side was a little underdone.
Him:
And I didn't notice that sogginess. That's one of the interesting things about reviewing pizza together. We can eat slices from the same pie and come away with slightly different impressions.
I also thought the vegetables were well prepared. The onions, for example, were lightly cooked but still had a little crunch. Too often, you get onions that are either practically raw or cooked to gooeyness. Sometimes they're described as caramelized when they're really just cooked until they have surrendered all hope of remaining onions.
These were somewhere in between. They had flavor and retained some texture.
The broccoli rabe was especially good. I'm not the expert on broccoli rabe that you are, but I thought it had a nice flavor and a satisfying chew. I suspect they blanched it because it didn't have that overwhelming bitterness you sometimes get. The bitterness was there, but it was more subtle.
I couldn't necessarily taste all the other vegetables individually, as you did, but I thought the overall combination was very good.
And that brings us to one of the most important parts of our evaluation: pizza engineering.
Her:
Yes. The pizza engineering was excellent.
Him:
The slices folded easily. The ingredients stayed where they belonged when you folded a slice. Nothing flew over my head and we didn't have to scoop cheese off the table.
That might sound like a low bar, but regular readers know that we take structural integrity seriously. A pizza slice should behave like a pizza slice. You shouldn't need to reconstruct it after picking it up.
And remember, this pizza was fresh out of the oven. That's often when the cheese and toppings are at their softest and when a slice is most likely to collapse under the weight of its ingredients.
We couldn't wait, of course, so we immediately dug in. The pizza was piping hot and neither the cheese side nor the vegetable side fell apart.
Even the vegetable slice, with all those toppings piled on it, stayed together.
Her:
And it stayed together even though it was burning hot.
Him: Exactly. Kudos to Pizza Machine's chief engineer, whoever that might be. Human or otherwise.
We were delighted.
I should also say something about the service because the experience was pleasant from beginning to end.
We ordered at the counter and everyone we encountered was very nice. The gentleman who helped us was not only very muscular, but also very agreeable. He had a great personality.
Her:
He even gave me a taste of one of the beers.
Him:
We ultimately decided not to order that particular beer, but we got a couple of beers, and our pizza arrived shortly afterward. The service was friendly, efficient, and welcoming. We had an enjoyable experience.
It's worth emphasizing that because a restaurant is about more than the food. The people were lovely, the setting was comfortable, and the pizza arrived astonishingly quickly without tasting like something that had been sitting around waiting for us.
If there is a machine involved, it appears to be a very well-trained one.
Now, before we finish, we need to give our ratings.
For anyone new to DE Pizza Online, we score pizza on a scale of one to eight slices. One slice means you really ought to consider selling something else—barbells, perhaps, or plumbing supplies. Eight slices means metaphysically perfect pizza.
We haven't yet encountered a pizza that earns a natural eight from every reviewer. We do have a restaurant that serves pizza and has an eight as its final score, but we had to round up to get there. Nobody has received a unanimous, unrounded eight from us.
I'm giving Pizza Machine 6 out of 8 slices.
I thought the pizza was really good. It belongs in the company of some of the other places we've enjoyed, including Russo by the Sea. I thought it was right up there, and perhaps a little better than Ava's.
It wasn't necessarily the most memorable pizza we've ever eaten, the kind of pizza you'd write home about. Although, to be fair, I'm not sure people routinely write home about pizza.
But it was a very good, solid pizza. I enjoyed it and I would absolutely eat there again. No question about it.
Her:
I'm giving Pizza Machine 6.5 out of 8 slices.
I was thinking specifically about Russo by the Sea as I considered my score. I think I gave Russo a slightly lower rating, and that has made me wonder whether I need to go back and order a whole pie there, rather than judge it based on slices.
It's not entirely fair to compare a pizza that we ate piping hot, straight out of the oven, with slices from another restaurant that may not have been quite as fresh when we ate them.
So I still give Pizza Machine a 6.5, but in the name of research, I think we need to revisit Russo by the Sea and have a whole pizza. If we have to revise our scores after more pizza, then we'll revise them.
Him:
We can call that the Russo reassessment.
Her:
Someone has to do the dirty work.
Him:
And we're not afraid to dig in when it's necessary to serve our readers.
Our scores for Pizza Machine are 6 and 6.5, giving it a composite score of 6.25 out of 8 slices.
And that brings us to the end of our review.
To sum it up, we were pleasantly surprised by Pizza Machine. We expected something a little more futuristic, perhaps even a little unsettling. Instead, we found a welcoming, traditional pizza joint with good sauce, tasty crust, real mozzarella, well-prepared vegetables, and excellent pizza engineering.
The pizza was so good that Her is already planning her next order. The service was so fast that we still can't completely rule out artificial intelligence. And the pizza was constructed so well that even a piping-hot slice loaded with vegetables stayed together when we folded it.
That's a pretty good set of findings.
Pizza Machine may not have produced the most unforgettable pizza we've ever eaten, but it produced a pizza we genuinely enjoyed—and one we would happily order again.
Comments