Rosati’s, Another Option for Thin Crust Tavern Pizza in Lewisville

The Rosati family has been serving Chicago-style pizza, both thin and deep dish, since 1964 (and Italian food in general since long before that). The family started its business in Chicagoland and slowly grew throughout the country. In DFW there are two different Rosati pizzerias, each run by different branches of the Rosati clan and each with a few locations. The menus are similar but not exactly the same. If you want to check out both branches, go here and here.

The Lewisville Rosati’s offers up pastas, wings, salads, and sandwiches (including a decent Italian beef) as well as pizza in three varieties: thin crust, double dough, and deep dish. In the continuing effort to hunt down and try out the real traditional Chicago pizza, the tavern style, we, of course, went with the thin crust on a couple of visits.

First, however, we tried the dough nuggets while we waited for the pizza to be served. These are bite-sized pieces of crispy pizza dough, deep fried and puffed into satisfying little pillows, then tossed in garlic butter and served with a side of marinara sauce. The menu says the dish serves three to four, and they aren’t lying. It was a huge amount, more than two people could handle. And it was very good.

On separate occasions, we ordered a thin crust cheese and a thin crust sausage and onion, which is our normal go-to when trying to compare pizzas across locations. The pizzas took about 15 minutes to prepare and arrived at our table piping hot, with flavorful gooey cheese and perfect seasoning.

Both were cut in squares that could have been smaller, but they were still manageable. The cheese pizza didn’t skimp on the cheese, thankfully, and the sausage and onion had a decent amount of sausage. One can always hope for more, but the larger squares did have sausage on each slice. The onions were not red, unfortunately, which we greatly prefer, but to each his own. These were fully cooked at least and not raw like one sometimes find at pizzerias that hurry the cooking process.

All in all, these were good tavern style pizzas, better than some we’ve had in DFW (including Louie’s … an unpopular opinion, probably), but maybe a step behind Chicago’s Original in Allen or DL Mack’s in Highland Park.

Still, there are several locations, if you include the other family branch, in Flower Mound, Fort Worth, and McKinney. So, depending on where you live this might be one of the better options for Chicago thin-crust pizza lovers.

Perhaps the only ding against the Lewisville Rosati’s is the service, which both times we went was slow and a bit inattentive. It’s a sit-down location with tables and booths, but on our visits no one was attending the counter. There’s a bell to ring, so this must be a common thing. They’re slow to prepare, slow to fill water glasses and slow to bring the bill, but if one is willing to put up with a more leisurely dining experience, pay them a visit.

500 E. Round Grove Road, No. 303, Lewisville, 10 a.m. – 10 p.m. Monday – Thursday; 10 a.m. – 11 p.m. Friday; 11 a.m. – 11 p.m. Saturday; 11 a.m. – 10 p.m. Sunday