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food

Roots

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I’m inspired by Roots Pizza. In fact, it may be just the spark needed to get me writing about food again. It has rocketed to the top of my pizza list with a bullett. It wasn’t but a few months when I mentioned how much I love Lou Malnati’s pizza. But Roots has, at least for now, overtaken Lou’s. I’ll be honest, I don’t think there’s any looking back.

They do it in the style of the Quad Cities, which means malt in the crust, square cut strips, and a special sauce. The crust is of medium thickness and crispy all the way through to the center, but still nice and chewy. Because of physics, it takes two hands to support a fresh piece for the first few bites due to the long and skinny cut. But within a few bites you can have the piece in one hand and one of their many beverages in the other for some serious sports watching.

And the sausage, let me tell you about the sausage. It’s classic, crumbled, sweet, Italian sausage applied uniformly throughout the cheese-covered portion of the pizza. Simply the best sausage in town. Don’t get me wrong, I like the way Malnati’s uses the huge chunks and random application. And I like the sausage disk from Gino’s East. But the crumbled method at Roots rules in my book.

They have flat screens all over the place, a huge outdoor dining area, and garage doors facing Chicago Avenue. This strip of Chicago Avenue in West Town/East Village/Ukrainian Village has a bar/restaurant/bakery/coffee experience for everybody. Everybody. I love slashes.