Takoma Park is on fire, arguably the most exciting dining scene in the D.C. suburbs right now. There’s the new, larger location of best-in-show Mexican restaurant Cielo Rojo and its recently opened San Fran-style burrito shop, San Pancho; Muối Tiêu is winning rave reviews for its vibrant Vietnamese cuisine; Koma Café is killing it with creative soft serve, pizzas, and house-made pastas; and still standing tall are Takoma Bev Co., The Girl and The Vine, Motorkat, and Soko butchery.

Now there’s another notable new kitchen on the block: Red Hound Pizza, powered by two Seylou Bakery alums, chef Charbel Abrache and his wife, Andrea Alvarez, who handles the front of the house. Their venture joins a growing legion of pizzerias in the Maryland burg. Within a block or so, you can score ’zas at Roscoe’s, Carpe Diem, and Pizza Movers; plus, there’s Koma Café on the other side of town.

The couple aims to differentiate themselves by offering square, Roman-meets-Sicilian pizzas built on whole grain crusts. They’re sourcing flour and produce from Takoma Park’s Purple Mountain Grown; Grapewood Farm in Montross, Virginia; 20/20 Farms in Muncy, Pennsylvania; and Next Step Produce in Newburg, Maryland—relationships they began cultivating while working at Seylou. Flours are mixed and matched in house to deepen the dough’s flavor and create a fantastic tabula rasa for whatever Abrache wants to put on it.

Dough is fermented for 24 hours, then stretched into 12-by-12-inch pans and dressed grandma style, starting with cheese, followed by toppings, and sauce to finish. Depending on the number of pies in the oven, it takes a square 15 to 25 minutes to bake. They come out crackly and caramelized on the sides and bottom, the cheese bubbly and browned, skeins of sauce looking like the map of a red river system, the toppings adding flash and panache.

The margherita is a staple; everything else rotates. There is always something meaty—sausage and peppers one week, pancetta with corn and shishito peppers the next—and a vegetable-centric option. For best results, go in with no preconceived notions and just pick whatever looks best on that day.

To complement the carbs, there’s a whatever’s fresh and fun salad. When I visited, there was a summery jumble of roasted corn, tomatoes, shaved shallot, and punctuating splotches of whipped feta, all united by hot honey dressing that delivered a nice balance of sweet and heat.

For finales, there are soft-serve sundaes—vanilla corn ice cream with blackberry sauce or lemon verbena-accented roasted peaches on a pirouette of vanilla—as well as baked goods, such as cookies, brownies, and cake. An assortment of nonalcoholic drinks is on offer, though the couple is applying for a wine and beer license.

Red Hound was a long time in the making. Abrache and Alvarez met nearly two decades ago while studying at pharmacy school in their home country of Venezuela. She obtained her degree, spending seven years working in hospitals. He didn’t, switching tracks to enroll in an intense culinary program at Mariano Moreno Institute in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Ultimately, he came to the United States to stage at Blue Hill at Stone Barns, where he met Jonathan Bethony, who was consulting on their bread program before moving to D.C. to open Seylou in 2017. That same year, Abrache relocated for a job as a pastry chef at the bakery with Alvarez in tow. She joined the team after the pandemic began, helping at their farmers market stand.

It was their 62-pound red hound, Arepa, who showed them the way to their pizzeria. The couple started coming to Takoma Park to hit up Big Bad Woof pet shop, and quickly fell in love with the family-friendly progressive suburb with a burgeoning food scene. They moved into the neighborhood and found a 475-square foot commercial space on Carroll Avenue in the center of town.

Red Hound opened in July with room for 10 diners inside and seating in the back for another 15 guests (patio seating in front is in the works). Available for dine-in, takeout, or delivery, the restaurant is open from 5 to 9 p.m. Wednesday through Friday and 12:30 to 8 p.m. on the weekend.

Red Hound Pizza,7050 Carroll Ave., Unit 101, Takoma Park (240) 531-2988. redhoundpizza.com