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| - It breaks my heart to write reviews like this. A new pizza place opens in the neighborhood. They deliver. They're replacing a pizza place that was below par. The neighbors are excited to try a new place that can be their 'go to' restaurant for a quick lunch or to pick up for dinner on the way home. This is not that place.
First of all, I would expect a pizza place to specialize in pizza. By that I mean that you go there for a full pizza experience. The tables don't have crushed red pepper, fresh grated Parmesan, or italian seasoning (oregano, etc..). You can pick up pre-packaged pepper and Parmesan in little packets by the soda machine, but I wouldn't expect that for dine-in customers. I expect a selection of pizzas by the slice for lunch. There was only cheese, pepperoni, and meat sauce. None of them looked very appetizing - they looked flat and cold.
I stopped there on a weekday for lunch. Two slices of pizza: one pepperoni, one cheese. Both had thin crusts, burnt on the bottom. The sauce wasn't sweet, but wasn't zesty either, and had a strange sour/bitter flavor. It was also darker than I expected, and I suspect there was a lot of tomato paste in there -- too much paste. The sauce was thinly applied, as was the cheese. Basically picture a burnt cracker with a thin layer of sour tomato paste, with a final thin layer of greasy cheese.
It was not good enough for me to even eat. I took two bites of each slice and threw them away in disgust. This was not what I was hoping for.
To contrast that pizza, I went around the corner in the same shopping center to Basha's, and purchased a slice of pepperoni pizza from their in-house brick oven pizzaria. The crust was perfect, the sauce zesty without being sweet, and the cheese was thick and gooey. Pepperoni was crispy on the edges and had a spicy bite.
I must say that it's not a good sign when a pizza place is outdone by the grocery store in the same shopping center. I'm very disappointed in my experience at Rochelli's and will not be back.
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