I Dream of Pizza- Take 5- Rocco's

Well, I feel like I am losing steam with this blog, maybe it's the changing of the seasons.  Everything around me seems to be winding down- even the pizza.  I love Fall and all the fun that comes with it but lately I've been feeling uninspired.  This week's installment is simply that, uninspiring.  We chose Rocco's Pizza in the Stop and Shop Shopping Center and even though I devoured 3 slices in one sitting the only thing I took away from this experience was a grease stain on my pants.

The Viewing:

The Scoop:

As you can see from above, this pizza scores big points here in size.  It is literally pressing up against the side of the box.  So much so that it is curved.  There was a lot of crust to go around.  But that didn't make the pizza spectacular.  To be honest the pizza dough overall was pretty thin- not the crunchy kind of thin, the floppy kind of thin. To me it seems that the crust was almost wasted dough that could have been spread out more evenly.  Maybe I didn't have my 'A' game/pizza tasting face on this night but that's where the excitement ended.  The pizza was a bit tasteless.  It didn't taste bad but it was a one note kind of taste.  The only thing that I would deem bad or unfortunate was the amount of grease on the pizza.  It was so drippy greasy.  I almost pulled out the 'Long Island Napkin' trick when you place a napkin on the top of the pizza to adsorb excess grease.  Oh well.   

The Rating:

I give this pizza a 3 out of 5.  As I already said it wasn't bad by any means - it is just was okay.  There weren't any special high notes or anything that made this pizza stand out against it's competitors.  Dough- eh, Sauce- eh, Cheese, eh.  Size- :) Grease- yuck!  There was one thing actually that did stand out against all the other pizza places so far, it was the most expensive pie to date.  $14.50.  Yikes!

I Dream of Pizza take 4- Rino's Pizza

I'm not going to lie here I have eaten Rino's pizza before and really loved it.  The Grandma slice is one of my favorites.  But for this tasting I had to block that all out and enter this with a clear mind.

The Viewing

Are you excited?

The Tasting

I really did try to block out my previous tastings and experiences with Rino's but my expectations were high here. Most of my friends' love Rino's so it's hard not to be excited.  So this pizza had a lot to live up to.  This particular pie was good.  It had its ups and downs.  The flavor of the sauce is what stood out and sticks with me the most.  You can just taste the freshness of the sauce come through.  Which is such a nice treat, especially because I grew up on homemade sauce.  We were not a jar sauce family.  Not that there is anything wrong with jar sauce but it just doesn't taste as good in my opinion.  The other pluses here were the crust was a perfect thickness, size of the slices were even and big, and the overall size of the pizza hit the mark.  They definitely didn't skimp here.  

This pizza unfortunately was not a home run, maybe a triple.  The dough was really thin, which I usually don't mind.  However, when my husband picked up his slice it drooped down so much that the sauce and cheese dripped right off.  Not all the slices were like that, which to me showed a little too much inconsistency with it.  Maybe that end just had too much sauce on it.  

But the positives here definitely outshine the negatives.  I had a day old cold slice and it was so good.  I couldn't eat it fast enough.  It took so much will power to not eat the last slice but I am saving it for my husband.

The Rating:

I give Rino's pizza 4 out of 5 stars here.    There really was only one aspect of the pizza that was not out of this world amazing but the overall quality and taste was superior to most of it's competitors thus far.  I thought the pizza overall was great and I would hands down recommend them.

Kudos Rino's!  Thank you for a delicious and splendid dinner!

(Total side note too- the garlic  knots were cold.  We live pretty close to Rino's so it's not like they cooled down on the ride home.  That was also a bit disappointing.  I can't really include that in the rating but I couldn't not share it though.)