The New Pizza? Not What I'd Hoped

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

If you’ve been in Cincinnati since, oh, 1954, you’d be aware of LaRosa’s Pizza.

(Note: That in the “Spoiler Box” is just extra detail that really doesn’t add much to the thread. You can just skip it if you want. Like I care.)

[spoiler]You may or may not like it, which is your right, even though not liking LaRosa’s Pizza puts you in league with the Devil Himself, but you would be aware of it. It’s everywhere. Not like Starbucks, where they build new Starbucks in existing Starbucks, but it’s easy to find a LaRosa’s Pizza place. I, personally like LaRosa’s pizza. :slight_smile: It’s pretty good. I mean, it’s been around since 1954 so it can’t suck too badly, now can it? And they have some other things on their menu too, in case you don’t like pizza. Sandwiches, they have sandwiches. And salads. Ummm… And other things too. Probably. But when you come from Cincinnati after 1954 and your think of “LaRosa’s”, you pretty much think of pizza. It was a simple, honest pizza. (In this case “simple” means “slightly stupid”.) no goat cheese or avocado slices here. We don’t need such frippery on our pizzas. No way! :mad:

Buddy LaRosa, the founder of LaRosa’s (he named the restaurant after his dog Spanky LaRosa) is a real community-minded guy too. He supports school sports and he’s big in the church festival scene. He donates pizzas for the festivals and for that we all thank him. A good festival is LaRosa’s pizza, the beer booth, funnel cakes and Bars and Bells. LaRosa’s pizza was also the Official Pizza of King’s Island. I’m not sure if it is now since it’s been a long time since I’ve been to King’s Island (which is now Paramount’s King’s Island and they have Klingons walking around instead of just Scooby Doo and Captain Caveman), but the last time I was there, there was LaRossa’s pizza. (Two kinds! Pepperoni and cheese!) The cheese pizza is a Lent Tradition around here. Fridays during Lent is pretty much “Eat a LaRosa’s cheese pizza day.” It’s not like a formal rule. If you eat something else, you won’t go straight to Hell when you die, but St. Pete will look at you with raised eyebrows. :dubious:

But this is not just the story of LaRosa’s pizza. You can go to their web site for that. Another pizza enters into the story riiiiiiight NOW!

In the 80’s a new kid on the pizza block showed up and made a name for themselves. Trotta’s. This was sort of the anti-LaRosa’s. Yet, it was still good pizza. It had a thicker, chewier crust and it was just loaded with garlic. Quite yummy stuff. Their schtick was giant pizzas is square pans. The square pans became their trademark. Not like they went to the Government and formally trademarked the square pizza pan. Let’s face it, that would have just been stupid. Trotta’s Square Pizza™? No, like I said, just stupid. :rolleyes: Remember how I said they had giant pizzas? No? Go back and reread. I’ll wait. They had a really giant pizza called the Lotta Trotta. It was like three large LaRosa pizzas. So for a while, if you were having a party and wanted pizzas, you got a Lotta Trotta. If it was a really big party, you got two. (This was all on the West Side. If you had a party on the East Side, you’d get a wheel of Brie and wine and no one would come because you didn’t have pizza.)

So, until Trotta’s went out of business (something about drugs and overthrowing a small South American country or something- there are differing stories) round pizza meant LaRosa’s and square pizzas mean Trotta’s.

Only now LaRosa’s came out with a new pizza. The Little It’ly. It’s square. :confused: So I saw this square pizza and I thought it would be pretty Trotta-like. Thick and chewy crust with LaRosa’s pizza on top. Nope, it wasn’t. It was good and all, and I’ll eat it again, but I was hoping for more chew to the crust. And garlic. I wanted more garlic. Baked right in. I didn’t want to have to sprinkle it on at home.

And speaking of sprinkling on a pizza, do you put Parmesan cheese on your pizza? You get this pizza covered with cheese and the first thing you do before you eat it is sprinkle more cheese on it. I do. You can’t have too much cheese. It’s good for you. Wards off osteoporosis.[/spoiler]

So, as it happens the new pizza wasn’t everything I was hoping for.
-Rue.

2

I think most things LaRosan are of the devil. BTW, the Heritage Days festival in Blue Ash is this coming Saturday. You up for it?

3

Oh, I should also mention that I made pizza this weekend. From scratch. Made the dough myself, the sauce myself, the pepperoni myself and the cheese myself. Okay, I’m fibbin’ on the last two. Tossing the dough up in the air isn’t as easy as they make it look. Still, it was nice, but I need to add more salt to the dough next time, and put more cheese on top. But it was fun and inexpensive.

4

Whoohoo! First post in a Rue thread!

Oh, damn. sigh

I like pizza. Except for Hungry Howies, which tastes like salty cardboard. No LaRosa’s in K’zoo. Sorry. I have nothing to add here.

5

Rue, you cruel, cruel man! I’ve been hankerin’ for pizza for the last few months - coincidentally, the same amount of time I’ve been doing low-carb. It’s not that I couldn’t have pizza - I could still have a slice. A single slice. A single, not-too-big slice. But for me, that would be torture, since I loves me some pizza - preferably slightly chewy crust with lots of fresh mushrooms and gooey cheese. mmmmmmmmmmmmm

However, because I’m trying really hard to stick with my new eating plan, and because I’ve been quite successful, I decided to stay away from pizza. I should have ignored your spoiler.

So, to take my mind off its pizza-rifficeness, I’m going to use your MMP to do a little bragging:

My baby has been accepted at the University of Central Florida for the fall term 2004! We haven’t gotten the official letter, but it was noted in her account on their official web site, so that’s good enough for us. We’re thinking that in December when the spousal unit returns to Florida for the holidays, we’ll take a day and go to Orlando to scope out apartments. The Master Plan[sup]TM[/sup] is to have a place leased May 1 so that we can start moving her stuff down there and get her all set up before I head north.

I can’t recall any Dopers who are currently enrolled at UCF, but it’d be nice if there were one or two so the kid could know a couple of people when she gets down there.

And before Ex comes in and claims there’s nothing hijack-worthy that he can latch on to, I offer:[ul]propane grills
shock absorbers
nomads
tree surgeons
bratwursts
electro-shock therapy[/ul]That’s all for now.

6

I love pizza. There’s a place downtown that has a wonderful, thick-crusted potato, mozzerella and onion pizza with cream sauce, garlic and olive oil. It’s all the carbs and fat you want, on one pizza! I wish they delivered to my house, but it’s too far for them. They’re probably missing hundreds of dollars of yearly revenue by refusing to deliver to the Lissar household.

Special announcement!

I am now a quarter of a century old. Bits will start falling off any minute, and I will require dentures with which to eat my birthday dinner. The kitten was very nice, and didn’t start the Meow!snugglesnugglebiteMeow! routine until six this morning. She notices and is respectful of my advancing years.

I think I need to have some of my birthday present from my inlaws for breakfast- chocolate infused icewine. Oh, it’s so good.

7

In the name of all that is holy, please tell me that’s a typo!

8

Advancing years? A mere 25? Pfffft - yer a baby! I’m old enough to be your mother! Seriously!

Aw, Happy Birthday, anyway! I think you should go downtown for dinner and have your favorite pizza. That’s my gift to you - the suggestion that you go out to dinner! No need to thank me!

:smiley:

9

I’m just curious, with those “Lotta Trottas” where could you grab a slice that came from the inside of the pizza? I mean, it wouldn’t have that naked piece of crust you get with round pizzas, a “pizza handle” if you will, and your fingers would get all covered with sauce and cheese and that’d be just plain wrong.

10

In our fundraising office here, we have two priests working for us, one named Father Trotta.

I gotta tell Father Trotta about the Lotta Trotta.

11

Dinner and a movie. Mr. Lissar is being all romantic. No kittens coming, either.

No, it’s not a typo, and it was bought for me by my extremely wine-snob inlaws when we went wine tasting this past weekend. It’s not a liqueur- it just intensifies the chocolate notes already present in the the icewine. It doesn’t muddy the colour or the taste at all. You do know you can get icewine martinis in the Niagara wine region, right :D? Those are scary.

12

Mmmm. Pizza. I had pizza this weekend, but only because I was working and the boss paid for it. I’m doing the low carb thing too, ** FCM **, but after being at work for 22 hours straight you get a little hungry, and pizza fills the hunger need. It was Pizza Hut, which I don’t really like, but at least it wasn’t Dominoes, which I despise. And, of course, it was free.

I actually prefer only my own pizza, which I make from scratch like Shibb does, with the same exceptions. Hey Shibb, for a real taste sensation mash up some garlic into some melted butter and spread that on the crust, prebake it a bit, then add the rest of the toppings and finish cooking. It’s pretty tasty. Well, I think it’s tasty. And other people have told me it is, but none of them are really trustworthy. They’re my family, after all.

Speaking of low-carb, how’s your low-carb thing going FCM? I only ask because I started doing it because my friend started doing it and I’m a follower. Were I a lemming, which I’m not, I’d jump right off the cliff when Walt Disney told me to.

And oddly enough, I’m going to leap right into one of Fairy Chat Mom’s hijack suggestions: Propane grills. I need a new one, because my old one died the horrible rusintg death from hell. Anyone know of a good one that won’t rust out in a year or two? Mine died not from lack of care but from a surplus of junkiness.

And just for fun:

Nomads don’t use propane grills, do they? Awfully heavy to carry around a propane grill if you’re a nomad, though you could do it if your backpack had good shock absorbers and you had not one, not two, but tree surgeons to work on your back after you’re done walking. Mmmm, nothing like bratwursts after a long day of nomadding. Of course, the rest of the tribe might think you’re mad, lugging around a big old grill just so you can have bratwursts. Don’t sweat it though, bratwursts taste even better after a round of electro-shock therapy. Trust me on this. I know.

13

Man, I miss LaRosa’s pizza. Of course, I’ll be at Kings Island in a couple of weeks, and I’ll get it then. So life will be sweet.

14

“Most things LaRosan are of the devil”? Pardon me while I sputter for a while.

Oh wait, that’s just Shibb talking. Someone who hasn’t been indoctrinated into the LaRosa’s fold since birth. That explains a few things.

And the Blue Ash Heritage Days are just comeing up? I thought they were a couple weeks ago. Maybe I was thinking of something else. I’ve got soemthing in the works with Skippy this weekend, but he’s been flaking on me lately. I’ll try to wring a firm answer out of him soon and get back to you.

You know, if you were a Good Doper, you head up a Fest. Spread the Joy of Blue Ash. I’m just saying.

slortar, you’re as bad as Ex. “Boo hoo! I have nothing to say!” Like that’s a concern for any of us? I feel I’ve lowered the bar sufficiently where pretty much anything goes. As long as you don’t talk bad about people around here (people that are too good for the MMP are fair game) you’re Jake. Now try again, and have a little confidance.

See Snickers, that’s why I can’t diet. “You can’t eat foods that actually taste good.” Yeah, that’s going to last a real long time with me.

But good job on the kid. The whole college thing. I’m sure you can;t wait for her to go. I mean it’s college. She’ll be safe there. It’s not like she could get into any trouble studying right? And that’s all you do at college is study. What’s the worst that could happen?

I was going to say:
Jolly Natility Lissla.

But you were That Way about neing 25 and I’m somewhat more than 25 and nothing’s dropped off of me yet. At least nothing I’ve missed. So now I won’t. Ha!

I think inky-, what you are referring to is the “pizza bone”. That’s not a big thing for me. You see, LaRosa’s cuts their pizza into rectangles so there are two pieces in the middle that have no bones.:eek: You just sort of curl these pieces up so all the grease… I mean “pizza goodness” stays there in the middle of the piece and you eat it all up. It’s a skill you have to learn, but it comes in handy for so many other things.

OK, it’s just good for pizza without bones, but there you go.

I like my grill welby. It’s not a complete piece of junk and it’s lasted four years now. I think my burner is going, but I can go to the harware store and get replacement parts for it. I think that’s the key to grill happiness, replacement parts. And the main body of the grill is cast aluminiumiumum. So it can’t rust. all the better. It’s a Charbroil Masterflame [sup]2[/sup]™. Pretty much the base model. But then I don’t do any fancy grilling.
-Rue. (non-fancy)

15

welby, I’m doing South Beach, and doing very well - 30# since July 7. I’ve pretty much lost my sweet tooth and I’ve rediscovered the joy of fresh fruit! Plus I’m sleeping better and my blood pressure is dropping. I expect my cholesterol and triglycerides are lower also, but I won’t get that checked till my annual poke-and-prod-and-bloodletting in January. It should be a pleasant surprise!

Nice thing about South Beach - it’s not as hard-core as Atkins about carbs. It’s easy to dine out just about anywhere. I do wish I could make a nice fresh loaf of bread, but I wouldn’t be happy with just one slice, so I won’t tempt myself.

Still, I need to find a high fiber lower carb pizza crust recipe. Perhaps I could ask a passing nomad??

16

Do they fillet the pizzas to remove the bones? Pizzas aren’t naturally boneless, are they? I mean, how do the wild ones survive if they don’t have bones?

I worry that we’re hunting them to extinction.

17

I’m doing a modified Atkins, FCM, but not much modified. I’m skipping the heavy carb stuff, but am eating more than the recommeded daily allowance of greens, and when I can low-fat the dressing I do. I like salad, and I like steak and other dead animals, especially grilled, so that’s pretty much dinner. Breakfast is a couple of hard boiled eggs. Lunch would be something good if I ever had time for lunch.

Probably the worst part about the diet for me is that I can’t have my morning grits anymore. That’s really the only thing I miss. Big old bowl of real grits (not the instant crap) with butter and salt and pepper. There reall is no finer breakfast food.

I’m down roughly 35# since June, but I’m not sure exactly. I only weigh once a month or less because I don’t really care. I’m just happy to be feeling better and having more energy.

18

Rectangular pizza slices, some of which are un-crustworthy. That is just plain wrong of so many levels.

You see, if you cut a square pizza into rectangular slices you get this:


…|…|…
------------------------------
…|…|…
------------------------------
…|…|…
------------------------------
…|…|…


See, just look at that! Two pieces in the middle with no crusty part. The corners? waaaay too much crusty part. It’s just wrong on a culinary level, a geometric level, and an aesthetic level.

19

Rue, thanks for the advice. My major rusting problem was actually the burner and the connectors. The frame itself is pretty much fine, but for some reason the manufacturer seems incapable of making a burner assembly that doesn’t rust over the course of a summer, or even sooner if the grill is used a bunch and carefully cleaned. I’ve replaced mine enough times that I’m approaching “a new grill is definitely cheaper” territory.

Welbywife and I have decided that if we’re going to get one, we might as well spend the jack to get something really fancy that’ll last a while, because we grill out as often as possible.

20

I’m all jazzed up, this being my first post to a Rue-Thread. Deep breath. Here goes…

Little Donette had some rather explosive diaper action the other day. It was Pooh-colored. Classic Pooh. Pooh-colored poo. Ick. Wait! That’s last week topic. Still, it was scary. Luckily, no denim jackets were harmed in making this post.

My fav pizza is Mazzio’s, a regional chain. As I get older, (well pastLissla’s age now) I prefer just cheese. I know it’s a sacriledge and I’ll go to Pizza Hell for it. But I loves my cheese pizza. BTW, I prefer my pizza to have as many bones as possible. mmm… pizza bones…

We went to Lowe’s yesterday and looked at gas grills. Hubby wants a new one. We also looked at flat-topped stoves. I want one of those real bad. How funny that we both want new cooking apparati but neither of us wants to cook. Some things just make you say, “hmmmm…”

mmm…

BTW, did anyone notice that a new poster has registered under the name “mmmm… Forbidden Doughnut?” Like me but with an extra “m” and capitalized. Has this ever happened to anyone else, someone registering a name so close to yours? It makes me feel a little stalked, you know? I don’t like it. Don’t like it one bit.