Whenever I think about possibly moving to another neighborhood, I start to think of all the things I like about my neighborhood. The woman at the laundromat on the corner, the clerks at the bodega across the street, all the nice people at my local grocery store. I’ve lived in Ridgewood, Queens for 4 years now. As I mentioned before, there’s not a ton of options here, but some of the options I do have are pretty awesome, and of those, I’d say Rosa’s Pizza is the best.
Everyone knows that New York Pizza is unique. The slices are huge, you fold them to eat them, and they’re fairly thin, but Rosa’s takes it one step further. They give you new and different toppings that I’ve never had anywhere else, and struggle to find in Manhattan.
A pizza purist, I stuck to plain and pepperoni for years. I attribute this to my general fear of food. It was almost a crime to do what I did. Ignore the ridiculously amazing pizza concoctions that were before me, day after day, week after week. From Lasagna pizza to Taco Pie. Caesar Salad and Garden Slices. Eventually, I gave in and went outside of my comfort zone. What I found after that would change my life forever. I discovered that I love BBQ Chicken Pizza. The tangy BBQ sauce, intertwined with the cheese and just a bit of marinara is absolutely heavenly.
Since I made this discovery at Rosa’s, I’ve tried it at a few other places, but nothing has come even close to the hearty, somewhat sweet and always tasty Rosa’s BBQ chicken pizza.
And, it’s a super easy restaurant name to remember, especially since I grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio where our go-to pizza/pasta place was called LaRosa’s Pizza. Beyond Skyline Chili, there are two more well-known Cincinnati chain restaurants and LaRosa’s Pizza is one of them.
So, you can imagine my surprise when I walked into ROSA’S across the street from my apartment in New York and saw this:
I believe my exact response was to grab the napkin and yell, “Where did you get this?!” That of course went over well with the guys behind the counter. I stuttered and explained, “I’m from Cincinnati, Ohio! This is my pizza place! This, uh, this is the place I go to in Cincinnati!” Going as far as to look up the logo of my childhood pasta joint on my phone. Sure enough…
…there it was. I showed the photo to the staff. Blank stares was what I got in return. I’ve never been given a direct answer as to how they gained access to a massive quantity of LaRosa’s napkins, but the next time I went in, one of the guys behind the counter yelled out, “Hey Joe! It’s the girl! The girl who knows about the napkins!” Usually they call me by my first name, but occasionally, I’m the girl who knows about the napkins.
This has to be a sign because it’s too strange to be a coincidence. How can I ever move away from the place that gives out pieces of my childhood with every slice?
