Rosati’s Pizza (Evanston)
1168 Dodge AvenueFriday night is always pizza night, right?
B’s synchronized skating team had a competition in Evanston, IL pretty early on Saturday morning so we got a team hotel Friday night. The coaches and team managers put together a pizza party for the kids Friday night. I’m sure there would have been enough leftovers if I wanted to grab a few slices (it was Giordano’s) but we’re in Chicago. I wanted a specific kind of pizza.
Just before J took B down to hang out with his team, I put in an order to Rosati’s Pizza.
Rosati’s Pizza is a chain of Chicago style pizza restaurants based in Chicago. Well…there are two different chains using the Rosati’s name. Like a few other Chicago pizza places, a family dispute is behind the split.
The Evanston location is part of the original Rosati’s chain. The store is on Dodge Avenue is a shopping plaza at the corner of Dempster Street. The building is kind of an out building to a larger strip mall. It’s on the Dodge Street side of the shopping plaza along with several other take out food places.
The restaurant is strictly carry-out. I had put my order in online and it was ready when I got there. Someone from the kitchen came out to the counter and saw me standing there. I gave them my name and he went and found my order in the kitchen.
If you’re just looking for a slice, it looks like they do that too. There’s a rotating warming cabinet just behind the counter that had a few pizzas spinning around with a slice or two already missing.
I grabbed my boxes and headed back to the hotel. I did my best to sneak past the bustling lobby where all of the kids on B’s team were hanging out and headed back up to our room.
I started with an order of Rosati’s Dough Nuggets. This appetizer is bite size pieces of dough tossed in garlic butter. It came with two cups of marinara for dipping. I expected this to be an appetizer but it was a whole dang meal. The small box was bursting at the seem with dough nuggets. I would have been happy with about a quarter of what I got. The nuggets were really good. They were a little crispy so it’s not like a traditional breadstick. Each one of the pieces of dough were coated in a thick garlic butter. I ate what felt like a lot of the box and it still didn’t look like I made a dent in them. I ended up taking them home with us and ate on them for two more days before throwing the rest out.
Even though I was on the Northside, I went with a Southside pizza.
I ordered a medium thin crust with Italian beef and hot giardiniera. This is by far my favorite kind of pizza. Thin, crispy crunch with a sweet sauce topped with thinly sliced beef hot giardiniera and cut in to squares.
This pizza was exactly what I was craving the moment I left my house in Kalamazoo. There is no other time that I would advocate for veggies on pizza…except when it’s this combination of spicy pickled vegetables. There could have been more meat on this pizza and there could have been a little more sauce but it was still a fantastic pizza that I thoroughly enjoyed for two days.
The cost for the pizza and the Dough Nuggest was just over $35.
Chicago pizza is by far the best pizza in the world. I’ll die on that hill. The deep dish pizza that Chicago is known is great and all but it’s really the thin crust pizza in Chicago that drives my opinion. Rosati’s Pizza satisfied the craving. It was a tasty pizza with some incredible toppings. It’s wild to me that pizza places outside of Chicago can’t do this.
SW Michigan Dining 