Trotta’s Pizza

The ‘Lotta Trotta’ (with half pepperoni) is a pan pizza intended for 10-12 people …but is it actually enough Trotta? @trottaspizza is a storied Cincy Pizzeria; you probably recall it won Cincinnati Magazine’s best pizza in 1982. Famous for their Sicilian pizza with garlic crust, Trotta’s also pioneered using #goetta as a pizza topping. As much as any, Trotta’s was “the pizza I grew up on”. And having had it last night, I can vouch that (unlike say ‘Mac and Me’) this pizza holds up. Trotta’s style is a particular doughy Sicilian, overloaded with cheese & pepperoni. It is a #Roni forward pizza, with pepperoni both on top and under the cheese (so the photos underplay the pepperoni-ness of this pizza). Perhaps it’s over the top - doughy, cheesy, saucy, and pepperoni(y) - but all the ingredients were tasty and it just works. There are a lot of places that make a doughy Midwest Sicilian pizza (the type that would be perfect for say a fantasy football draft party): @trottaspizza is the best of them.

Afterword: I had wanted to visit Trotta’s soon, as it is currently for sale. I hope they find a quality buyer to keep the flame alive. For me, this will always be the pizza of youth. I thought about this as I left Trotta’s that Wednesday evening with my copy of #Camus for the crudely lit Westwood pony kegs where I took refuge. There, I could read my age in the faces of the crowd - Faces I recognized without being able to name, but I knew that they had once been young with me …and that they were no longer so. I had left Cincinnati’s night, a winter of faces. I know it is madness, almost always punished, to return to the sites of one's youth and try to relive at thirty-seven what one loved at ten. But the world begins over again every day in a new light, as it did at then Glenway & Werk. Light - isn’t that the cry of all the heroes and pizzaioli of classic dramas when brought face to face with their fate? This last resort is ours, too. I knew it then - a new day. And so it was in the depths of winter I at last discovered there was within me, an invisible summer. Cheers to @trottaspizza