The Facts:
Pizza: Mamma Rosa's Italian Restaurant
Business Category: single store
Website: http://www.mammarosasitalian.com/
Location: 200 S. Lowe Ave (2 blocks south of US 70N in downtown Cookeville)
Date of Review Visit: September 11, 2021
What I Ordered: 2 slices of square (Sicilian) pizza with pepperoni and sausage; Coke to drink
Price: $15.61 (includes drink and tax but not tip)
The Micro:
Crust: Mamma Rosa's offers two crust options: hand-tossed round and Sicilian square. As most regular readers of this blog would expect, I chose the thicker square crust. The square crust is a true thick Sicilian crust. While I appreciated the heartiness of this crust, my pizza was slightly overbaked, and some parts of the crust were hard and overly crispy. Overall, I have had better Sicilian crusts that this one. Score: 6/10.
Sauce: The pizza is fairly undersauced. What sauce does exist has a nice tomatoey taste. Score: 7/10.
Cheese: The cheese tastes like high quality provolone or mozzarella. It appears in high quantity and produces little grease. The cheese is the strength of this pizza. Score: 10/10.
Toppings: The sausage comes in tiny crumbles, and it offers spiciness but no real flavor. The pepperoni has nice flavor with just the right amount of thickness and spiciness. Both toppings appear in above average quantity. Score: 8/10.
The Macro:
Appearance/Atmosphere/Service: The pizza has a nice square pizza appearance. The dining room offers a casual dining atmosphere with nice music and pictures on the wall. The service was slow, but they were very busy on my visit right after a Tennessee Tech football game. Score: 9/10.
Value: The quality is solid, but this pizza is very expensive if you buy by the slice as I did. Buying a whole pizza is more economical, but I had nowhere to store any leftovers. Score: 4/10.
Taste: The crust is filling, and you get some spiciness from the sausage. Yet the overall taste is fairly underwhelming. This pizza delivers quantity but not flavor to the taste palette. Score: 13/20.
The Final Judgment:
There are some things to like here, but the cost and lack of flavor keep it from the top of my pizza list. Score: 57/80.
