WV Gourmet

Mama Rosa’s is kind of a hidden gem in Charleston’s West Side.  Sure, it’s kind of smack dead in the middle of a somewhat sketchy neighborhood, that doesn’t matter, the food and service are excellent.  My trusty sidekick had been telling me for a year about how great this place just down the hill from her place is, and I had not tried it until recently and WOW was I impressed.  Is the pizza as good as Lola’s?  No, but it’s really damn good and you don’t have to stand around and wait all day to get a seat, nor do you have to pay four bucks for a craptacular beer, like PBR.* 

Both times I’ve eaten at Mama Rosa’s (once take out, and most recently inside), I’ve had the Mediterranean pizza.  The Mediterranean pie has lots of feta and olives on it, so it’s loaded with salty goodness.  The crust is thin and crisp, yet soft on the inside and a bit sweet.  The pie is also served with a garlic butter dipping sauce, which is really good if you’re like me and enjoy garlic and butter. 

For our appetizer, we had the grape leaves.  They were very good, and stuffed with ground lamb and rice.  They were served warm, with a yogurt dipping sauce that went well with them.  I am told that the baba ghanouj is really good, however, I have not had it. 

Also, they have draft beers (nothing special, just Bud, Bud Light, and Amber Bock) for 99 cents or $4.99 a pitcher.  Also, there is a buy one get one free calzone night, though I don’t know which night that is (I’m sure that Megan will post on here with that information).  There are several televisions and a poker room too.  We also saw a really sweet mullet during our visit.  It was probably the best mullet I’ve seen in quite some time. 

In summary, if you’d like a tasty pizza, some middle eastern food, cheap beer, and maybe see a bitchin’ mullet, then go to Mama Rosa’s.

*Yes, I’m aware that Lola’s has a selection of very good beers, such as those from Great Lakes and Rogue, but some folks (not me) don’t like good beers and want something cheap and fizzy and while a PBR at Lola’s is certainly fizzy, it ain’t exactly cheap.  Also, I don’t really remember if a PBR is four bucks at Lola’s, however anything higher than fifty cents for a PBR is highway robbery.

Last Friday, the lovely and talented Megan and the lovely and talented me loaded up and headed off to Athens, Ohio to see the greatest band in the world.  Such a trip would not be complete without eating copious amounts of tasty food. 

We started off with a pre-concert trip to Della Zona, a little pizza place which seems to be run and staffed by hippies.  This place has a great deck area (which did not overlook the ghetto) which is where we sat to enjoy the sunshine.  Della Zona serves pizzas made from local ingredients, many organic and/or ethically treated. 

Our server promptly came out and took our orders.  For appetizers we had the marinated olives and the crostini.  The olives were divine, unless you don’t like olives (if you don’t care for olives, you aren’t my kind of people).  There was an assortment of green and black olives (kalamatas, manzanilla, picholine, and aragon), marinated in a somewhat spicy olive oil, served up with a couple slices of toasted french bread from the bakery next door (also owned by the same folks).  The crostini were four slices of that french bread smeared with a delicious olive “pesto” - two were black olive “pesto”, and two were green olive “pesto”.  I use quotes around pesto, because to me this wasn’t so much a pesto, as a tapenade, but whatever you want to call it, it tasted like something handed down by the angels. 

Moving on to our pizzas.  Megan decided to create her own pizza, which included rosemary, artichokes, greens (tasted like kale, perhaps), and smoked gouda pizza.  I went with one of the signature pizzas - the Athena, which had many greek type things - olives, onions, other such goodies.  Both pies were excellent.  The crust was beautiful, crispy, thin (but not too thin) and even a little bit chewy.  In other words, perfect.  One more thing about these pizzas: this place makes their own mozzarella.  In summary, these pizzas made the pies at Lola’s taste like dog poop (and I really like Lola’s pizza, these are just that much better). 

Although our servers dressed rather hippie-ish and worked in a place that sells pizzas made of locally grown, largely organic, ethically treated, etc. pizzas, I’m not so sure they were really hippies.  They may have looked like hippies, but they did not stink of patchouli and body odor. 

After the concert we grabbed burritos from the late night burrito cart, so that we could more fully experience the culinary scene in Athens, Ohio.  This was a damn good late night giant ass burrito.