Nebraska Pizza, Eating At Rosies

First time in Nebraska…What an exciting week. I’ve hit Iowa and Nebraska, both new states for me, so of course I had to try the pizza. Nebraska was actually an accident. I was looking up pizza options within reach of my hotel. The choices were all chains – Pizza Hut, Dominos, Papa Johns, and one I haven’t heard of, The Pizza Ranch (didn’t really sound Italian to me). But then Rosies came up with a four star rating on my Verizon Navigator! From there, I hoped in the car and headed south, and in three minutes I was into Nebraska, so here I am.

Rosies sounded promising – the name reminds me of Roses located in midtown Manhattan in the subway station under OnePenn Plaza (which has some great pizza). Inside is clean, and the staff is friendly, but from there it went downhill for me. First, there is no Rosie, the owner’s name is Karen, but she wasn’t in.

Karen has been in business for 23 years, so apparently the locals like this place. There seemed to be a constant stream of customers coming by to pick up pies throughout our meal, but then, the only other choice in South Sioux City is Pizza Hut as far as we can tell.

The picture to the left is Nicole making a pizza…big smile…the entire crew was easy to work with and enjoying their evening making pizzas.

The pizza itself was not what I call good pizza – not as bad as my Texas experience, and Singapore still has the worse pizza I’ve experienced, but this was not one I enjoyed.

The crust is more like a matzah cracker than pizza crust. You can’t fold it, and it has a sort of crumbly texture, but pretty thick. The cheese mixture was also very different – not like typical New York style pizza with mozzarella, although there was mozzarella in it – maybe just a strange brand. It was kind of dry, falls off when you bite it, and requires a lot of chewing. In any case, there was lots of it! Probably too much. The sauce was okay if you like sweet tomato sauce on your pizza (like a Papa John’s Pizza would have). I do like a lot of sauce on my pizza, and Rosies has it. One other thing I didn’t like; they cut our pizza into about 12 slices – what happened to the 8 slice pizza?

Would I recommend going there – no. If you’re down this way, stick with the chains – as I always say, bad pizza is better than no pizza. Once you’re into the chain pizza, you not really eating pizza, but Papa Johns would get my vote.