Mark’s Score 8.6
There are many pizza places on the Delmarva. But most are pretty ordinary. The yardstick by which I measure all pizza is Pizzeria Regina in Boston’s North End. They produce pizza in the classic Neapolitan style, the style most common in North America. There is no such thing as Italian cuisine, there are a variety of regional Italian cuisines, and that includes pizza. What makes Roma Alla Pala interesting is that they are one of the few, perhaps even the only pizza place, in the area that makes pizza in the Roman style. I am always in the market to try something different, so I decided to give it a try.
Roma Alla Pala is another Bluepoint restaurant. Bluepoint has nearly single-handedly made Easton a culinary hotspot. In traditional Bluepoint fashion, they created a pizza parlor that is a bit different. They did so by making pizza in the Roman pala style. Pala means paddle in Italian, and refers to the long flat shovels that pizza parlors use in placing and removing pizzas from brick ovens. Consequently, pala style pizzas are traditionally rectangular rather than round. In addition, Roman style pizzas traditionally have thick crusts.
Fortunately, I decided to eat at Roma Alla Pala on a cool but sunny day. The restaurant looks like it might once have been a garage attached to a small office building. I walked through the door entering a small foyer with a small counter displaying eight varieties of pizza. I looked around and I asked, “where is the seating?” The friendly employee informed me that the only seating was the few scattered tables out on the sidewalk. Though I hadn’t planned to eat outside on this cool day, it was at least sunny, so sitting outside presented no problem.
You can order by the slice, so I ordered a slice of margherita and a slice of the sausage and chicory. I ordered the margherita because it is traditionally Italian, simple to make, but difficult to get right. I ordered the sausage and chicory because I had never had chicory on a pizza before. Though I had only ordered two slices, they put the slices in a regular sized pizza box and I carried it out to the tables on the sidewalk.
The first thing you notice about Roma’s pizza is that the crust is crispy and tastes of sour dough. It is a Bluepoint restaurant, so of course they use the best quality products when producing their pizza. Roma style crust is supposed to be light and airy, and it was.
But the truth is I ate less than half of what I bought. The two most important attributes when I rate restaurants is authenticity, and quality. Roma Alla Pala certainly passes the test on those attributes, but personally I prefer Neapolitan style pizza.
If you want to try something different, then Roma Alla Pala is worth a try. But I would not rate it the best pizza I have eaten. It was good, not great. Oh, and I don’t think chicory works on pizza.
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