Pizza Week is a time of joy and forgiveness.
And it is the spirit of forgiveness that I returned to Rosati’s for lunch.
As you probably don’t recall in a previous entry, (No Good Deed Ever Goes Unpunished, July, 2005) Rosati’s by my office seriously botched up our order and did a very poor job of trying to keep a customer.
Despite the fact that they’ve served me some of the best pizzas I’ve ever had, I haven’t been back for 8 months.
I’d like to say it was the spirits of Pizza Week (Past, Present & Future) that brought me back to Rosati’s, but it wasn’t. They called my wife, unsolicited, last week and offered her a free pizza. My guess is that they’d noticed she hadn’t ordered in a long time and were trying to lure customers back. (Notice to merchants: keeping a good repeat customer is better than scrambling for new ones.)
The ploy worked.
I’ve had their stuffed crust pizzas, which I really like, and I had their thin or “original” crust, which I wasn’t as crazy about. Their thin crust is wafer thin and, although I like thin crust pizzas, for some reason Rosati’s just didn’t click for me.
I consider both stuffed pizzas and wafer thin pizzas to be out of the range of a “normal” pizza, so when given a choice of multiple types, I will generally try to review the crust most like the “typical” thickness.
For this pizza, I had a 12″ “double-dough” pepperoni pizza. Double-dough turns out to be about twice as thick as the thin crust, and just about the right thickness.
Normally, I eat the pizza on location, but Rosati’s, like many a pizza place these days, caters to delivery and take-out. The near proximity to my office made for only a 4 minute delay from door to table, and it was still piping hot.
This was an excellent pizza. The only negative was that the crust around the outer edge was a bit dry and floury, as if the dough didn’t have quite enough water in it. There was an unusual horizontal layer in the crust, which leads me to believe the double-dough is, in fact, two thin crusts cooked together, which explain a bit of the dryness.
The pepperoni was good and hidden under the cheese, but there was plenty of it. Likewise the cheese was good.
I think I might have finally figured out what, in particular, makes me like Rosati’s pizza: It’s the sauce. It’s, without doubt the best tasting sauce I’ve had and it really adds a lot to the flavor of the pizza.
Incidentally, the staff and crew were a lot friendlier and efficient.
Cost: 12″ (Double-dough) pepperoni, $10.95, cost per square inch = $0.10 (0.097)
Conclusion: Recommended
various locations around the valley
Review pizza came from
Rosati’s of Arcadia
4041 E Thomas
Phoenix, AZ
Technorati Tags: Blog, Food, Pizza, Pizza Week, Restaurant, Review