Rosangela's
2807 1/2 W. 95th Street (Map)
Evergreen Park IL 60805
708-422-2041
CPC invaded Rosangela's on Sunday, March 8, 2020.
Turns out when the Chicago Pizza Club goes on a multi-year hiatus, pizza desires have built up. The dam has broken, pizza friends! El Presidente requested a trip to Rosangela's and what El Presidente wants, El Presidente gets.
I hadn't been to Rosangela's in over a decade since I reviewed it for Serious Eats, where it's difficult to find since an unknown overconfident underpaid 24-year-old editor went ahead and changed the spelling to Roseangela's. Anyhow, I liked it when I went, but I make it down to west 95th Street so rarely, I'm heading to Top Notch Beefburgers 100% of the time. El Presidente sometimes works at the hospital across the street and vouched that the place is still a gem. He was right.
This meeting was called on short notice and some of the regulars couldn't attend. Adam had a wedding, Stelios and Jess had mysterious other plans they wouldn't tell us about, and Andrew and Jen, who had canceled their trip to Japan due to a virus making its way across Asia, were leaving for Hawaii the next day and didn't want to risk being around the petri dishes of disease that are children. So if you're keeping score at home, we had an adult to kid ratio of 5:4 at this one. Turned out to be alright by me thanks to some great pizza, super friendly service and happy, well-behaved kiddos.
Going to Rosangela's and not getting sausage would be a crime against pizza. We started with an extra large sausage pizza with mushroom on half of it. The fennel-packed sausage, generously applied across the pie, is really special stuff. The canned mushrooms did what canned mushrooms do. Some people can't stand them. In the right context, like a family dive pizzeria in Evergreen Park, they work very well.
It remains a mystery why giardniera hasn't spread around the country. It improves all kinds of sandwiches and, of course, works well on pizza. This batch could've been spicier, especially given the ocean of cheese on the pizza, but we happily ate it all.
Two extra large pizzas would have been enough food, but meetings of the Chicago Pizza Club are celebrations. Also, the pizza is cheap at Rosangela's and our server's enthusiasm when I asked about the meatball pizza couldn't be ignored. Besides, leftovers are always good.
We exercised some restraint with the meatball pizza and just got a medium. I burned my mouth on this one and didn't wait more than three seconds before going back in for another bite. The meatballs themselves were great. Our server did us a real solid by pushing this addition to our order. The more mild topping also gave us our best chance to really savor the sauce on this pie. The depth of flavor in the sauce is a really pleasant surprise given tenor of the place. AJ thought there's a red wine reduction involved. It's possible he's right but much more likely that he's out of his mind and this sauce went straight from the can to the pizza. Either way, this sauce has a really nice shot of umami that helps make Rosangela's well worth a visit.
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| A perfect plate |
Remember how we ordered three pizzas with the plan of having leftovers? Yeah, that didn't work out so well. We ate every single square except for one that I pulled out of circulation when it was clear were going to leave three empty doilies behind.
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| Phred approves of Rosangela's! |
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