Stephen Montoya
Rosati's general manager, Justin Czerwinski, holds a Chicago-style deep-dish pizza fresh out of the oven.
Throughout my culinary travels in Texas, I've only tried Chicago-style deep-dish pizza once. I wouldn't even consider it a proper tasting either since the so-called "Chicago-style" pizza I'm referring to came in a box. It was a kit, to be exact, that had to be built in sections. It wasn't what I expected when I bought it impulsively during a forgone grocery trip. All in all, it seemed too labor intensive for the outcome, which seemed to have backward instructions. It called for the sauce to be placed on top of the cheese — yikes.
Upon entering the Rosati's Pizza locale at 5152 Golden Triangle Blvd. in the Fort Worth suburb of Keller, I was reminded of this weird memory. Full disclosure: this wasn't a happenstance stop; I was there at the company's invitation to try out their cuisine. So, I braved the trek up 35W with high hopes and an empty belly.
When I arrived, I was greeted by Rosati's general manager Justin Czerwinski and a plus one in the kitchen. By plus one, I am referring to the giant 14-inch Chicago-style pizza covered with vine-ripened tomato sauce he'd just pulled straight out of the oven.
Stephen Montoya
“I wasn’t sure what you liked, so I just put some toppings on here that we think will give you a good idea of what we’re about,” Czerwinski said while placing the behemoth pie in a to-go box. “What toppings?” I asked since all I could see was sauce. As I cut into this layered pie, the sauce separated like the Red Sea in the “Ten Commandments,” which revealed a world of flavor that hit my taste buds like a fine wine. My first taste surpassed any of my naïve preconceived ideas of what a Chicago-style deep-dish pizza could be.
The toppings, once hidden by sauce, mingled in with each bite. Chicago-style sausage culminated with fresh onions, and cheese to create a unique blend that melded perfectly with the soft but not under-done dough. This inch-thick pie was so hardy that I had no choice but to use a fork and knife to eat it with; apparently, that's the point.
"The Chicago-style deep dish is what we are best known for," Czerwinski said. "It's a really thick, really heavy pizza. It has a lot of toppings and a lot of cheese. [It's] just a very rich pizza overall."
Rosati's Pizza
And although this local pizza spot is just over a year old, its ingredients and recipes go back five generations. Founder Sam Rosati, who opened the first Rosati's in 1964, took some of the lessons he learned from his father, who started his own Chi-Town Italian food tradition during the turn of the century in the early 1900s. "Give the people what they want" was Sam's motto, which proved to be the right business plan as he continued in his father's footsteps. Over the years, four more centuries of Rosati's followed this philosophy, eventually franchising this culinary concept in 1979. This is how we Fort Worthians came to be part of this pizza story. But enough about the pizza. Rosati's offers so much more.
For those of you that aren’t fans of pizza or have it way too often, Rosati’s has you covered. Their menu, which is take-out only, has popular appetizers like chicken tenders, and jalapeno poppers, along with Rosati’s fried ravioli and more. They also offer the obligatory chicken wings and salad fare most pizzerias are known for. Add to this some house-made pastas and sandwiches and you get a full spectrum of items sure to please anyone. Oh yeah, did I mention they have gluten-free options as well? For you game-day afficionados, Rosati’s also has a massive 16-inch pie called the “Monster.” This thing is so big it could almost be used as a spare tire on a car. Toppings for Rosati’s famous “Monster” pizza include sausage, pepperoni, ground beef, bacon, mushroom, onion, green peppers, and green and black olives.
"The big difference is all of our products are fresh, nothing's frozen," Czerwinski says. "We make our dough fresh every day, shred our own cheese, make our own sauce in-house. That's the big difference; everything's fresh, and you can really taste the difference in the pizza.
Per the ingredients not made in-house, Czerwinski verifies that everything is made from scratch and shipped from Chicago. Rosati's might just be the cure for your homesick tastebuds if you are a Windy City transplant in the DFW area.
"Since we opened, we've had a bunch of people from the Chicago area say they haven't been able to find a good pizza place, which is encouraging to us since that's what we make here," Czerwinski says. "I mean, on our opening day, we had a line out the door 30 minutes before we opened. So, people were really excited to have us here, and they keep coming back."
