Deep dish or square cut, these heavy pies were thick with cheese held up by two very different but perfectly cooked crusts.
Instagram food blogger @eatingthroughindy recommended this place to us. FYI if you recommend a place, we'll add it to the pizza bucket list on our Indy Pizza Map and shout you out when we get around to trying it. Rosati's hooked us up with both a thin and deep dish style to try, but they didn't have any say in what we could and couldn't write.
My impression is this place is something of a Carmel favorite because they have a lot of posts tagged with their location and they have great reviews on Google. The street out front was completely closed down, but signs pointed us to the back parking lot that had plenty of room. We walked around front to get photos posing and the T-Mobile guy from next door asked if we were looking for the entrance.
These pizzas were heavy! The plan was to go back to our friend Ryan's place so he could help us eat, and because his place is closer so the pizzas wouldn't have to travel as far. Take a closer look at the Chicago style thin crust from Rosati's Pizza in Carmel (view on map).
These big juicy squares are heavy with cheese but the bottom stays relatively dry and not soggy. The pepperoni had a pleasant slight heat and finished with a peppery aftertaste. The cheese was golden and glistening.
The sauce seemed hard to find in some places and we really only got a lot of sauce flavor on the edge pieces. Definitely would get it again, one of the best square cut pizzas we’ve had in a while.
The deep dish had a protective layer of plastic over the top so the box didn't dip into the sauce and make a huge mess - what a clever idea! The Chicago style deep dish was like an entire pizza upside-down cake (or pie I guess) with an ocean of melted cheese contained within a lip of crust around the outside and then the sauce on top instead of on the bottom (see side view detail).
The golden crispiness of the crust held up to the weight of toppings and was evenly cooked to the center without being burned. The crust maintained a slight crunch and didn’t get soggy with the cheese as the bottom layer.
On top of the cheese there was a layer of pepperoni topped with a more minimalist pizza sauce with less spice and bigger chunks of actual tomato - so obviously it had more of a true tomato flavor. It seemed like the pepperoni were sandwiched between layers of cheese and they were not a prominent flavor. It was all about the thick cheese and golden brown crunch of the sturdy but crumbly crust underneath.
Chris picked some of the larger tomatoes off the top but I thought the acidic and sweet chunks mixed with some salt and seasonings helped cut through the heaviness of the cheese. We ate it with a knife and fork and it really did feel like having a slice of pie. It tasted completely different from the more peppery spicy pepperoni thin crust.
Between the two, I think the thin crust was actually our favorite. It had a little more heat and spice to it. The thin crust was more heat and savory, where the deep dish was more gooey and sweet. I know gooey isn't a flavor but you know what I mean!