Stoked Coffee is a local coffee shop with locations in Parkersburg and Marietta, the latter of which I visited recently. The original is at 302 Pike St. and is the smaller, longtime Marietta location. It has an enormous selection of flavor combinations. Their signature is the Stoked Mocha, which combines espresso, milk, white chocolate and caramel, which I ordered hot. It’s definitely on the sweeter side, with the white chocolate and caramel giving it more of a dessert-coffee feel than a traditional mocha. The espresso still comes through, though, keeping it from tasting like straight-up melted candy. I paired it with a bagel, which came simply with a packet of cream cheese on the side. I promptly made a mess of trying to open the packet, so the most memorable part of the experience may have been cleaning cream cheese off everything. Grade: B

Dough Boyz Pizzeria is a local pizza shop with a couple locations in southeastern Ohio. From pizzas and pastas to subs and salads, the menu runs the gamut of Italian-American dishes.



I placed an online order and started with cheesy breadsticks topped with banana peppers. My pet peeve is that the toppings were all centered in the middle so there are large edges of cheeseless-bread. But when I did get those inner bites, it was delish.



The pizza had a medium-thick crust that was fairly soft. Sauce was decent and acidic. Not too much of note.



The rigatoni pasta was swimming in that same tomato sauce and baked with mozzarella. I would have loved a more al dente pasta, but this is pretty par for the course.



Overall, I like the variety of options but do have some personal preferences to amp the execution up a bit.



Grade: B