Rosati's Pizza and California Style Deli

I had a decent experience with this pizzeria. We ordered delivery and it arrived exactly one hour later, the time they had designated. The guy who took my order was much more laid back than most pizza order guys, who usually bark at you We had chosen a deep dish pie, half with spinach and artichoke hearts, half with sausage and onion. (*Disclaimer- I'm new to Chicago and this was my first experience with deep dish, but I'm from Jersey and know my pizza, the thin crust kind anyway. Therefore, I will talk about the quality of pizza, but not how it ranks as a deep dish.)

On the whole, I thought it was decent for a run of the mill pizza delivery place. Not the best, not the worst. The quality of the ingredients was good- the sausage was tasty and in actual pieces, unlike the questionable balls of sausage some places serve. There could have been more spinach/artichoke.  It was an enjoyable slice of pizza with a hearty serving of good cheese, chunky sauce and good flavor.  They added a nice amount of Italian seasoning to it, which added some depth.

The size was huge! We ordered one 18" pie for 3 people, guessing that the deep dish would make it more filling. We were right on that count, but made it through way less of the pie than expected- only half! In this way, it was a good value for the amount of satiation we got out of it, though adding toppings got expensive.

My main problem with the pizza was that the toppings were underneath the cheese, which meant that there lacked a binding agent between the dough and the toppings. This caused the cheese/toppings to slide off and separate from the dough/sauce. Also, the dough was a little on the soft/mushy side. Not horribly so, but noticeably so. The dough could definitely be better. The cheese was pretty melty when we got it, but then congealed kinda quickly.

Overall, flavor was good, execution was lacking a little, but I was pretty satisfied.

Let me begin by saying that our order took nearly two hours to arrive.  We ordered from the online service <a href="/redir?url=http%3A%2F%2FGrubhub.com&s=b68af316d5ad911efafe6df1a7700193fecd9928d904496b34ba6a876ef91c08" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">http://Grubhub.com</a>, where we were prompted to enter our name, address, phone number, and other relevant information that they don't really need for a delivery order.  After an hour and fifteen minutes, we called to check on said order.  We were informed it would be there within a couple of minutes - that the driver had just left.  Twenty minutes later we received an email from Grubhub informing us that the restaurant was unable to deliver the food because they didn't have our phone number.  For the second time, we called the restaurant.  I was put on hold multiple times and spoke to at least two different people.  After about 10 minutes on the phone, I was told that they had already been to the hotel but didn't have our phone number or any way to get in touch with us, and so they had already left.  When I told the person on the phone that I had provided all of this information when we placed our online order, he didn't apologize or offer any explanation - he gruffly took down my phone number and hotel room number (which, as previously mentioned, we had already provided).  The driver came back ten minutes later.  Of course, by this point, our food was cold.  When we got the food out, upon further inspection we realized that several items were missing, and the food was lackluster at best.  We are from out of town, but I had to take pause at 2 a.m. to rate a restaurant that I'll never eat at again (for more than one reason).  Wish I had gone to bed instead of ordering what we thought would be a delicious, late night meal.

I have a love/hate relationship with Rosati's Pizza. When I used to work in Schaumburg, it made for a great Friday afternoon lunch at the office with the coworkers. Generally, their blend of hand-tossed pizza with decent quality ingredients made for pie that's not at the top of the Chicagoland pizza scene, but also not at the bottom. Unfortunately, that doesn't translate to every Rosati's Pizza.

A friend and I stumbled across this location during our lunch break in downtown Chicago hoping to pick up a slice and a drink. Seeing the welcoming sign for "Lunch Special", we decided to try our luck at a place we'd never been. What could go wrong, right?

The pizza was incredibly dry, the cheese congealed, the sausage hard and it was more bread and cinder block hard crust than anything. For pre-heating slices of pizza, the expectation for quality will naturally be much lower than a freshly cooked slice, but at the prime of the lunch rush, these slices seemed to be sitting for what must have been hours.

The special came with a side so we both tried our hand at the chili. It was soupy and lacked any sort of substantial base.  Not mention the iced tea tasted like it might of had some sort of weak fruit punch in it? I couldn't quite put my finger on that one, but I can definitely confirm something wasn't right.

For paying almost $10 for a slice of pizza, drink and small cup of chili, I would have expected a little more quality from Rosati's. I could see the look of disappointment from the black and white photo on the wall of the founders stationed by the door.  It brought a single tear to my eye.  I mean, it wasn't so terrible I didn't finish the meal (I mean, for $10 it wasn't making it's way to the garbage), but it truly was disappointing.