Baton Rouge, Louisiana-based, Rotolo’s pizzeria opened a prototype location on Ben Hur Drive in its home city under the Craft & Crust label.
The new flagship store features a “slice bar,” along with 34 beers on tap and a menu with new options, such as Sicilian pizza cooked in an Italian stone deck oven, and an award-winning “figgy piggy” pizza with pulled mozzarella, fig spread, prosciutto, gorgonzola, shaved asiago, oil and balsamic reduction, a news release said.
As at all Rotolo’s locations, dough is scratch-made and vegetables are cut fresh daily, and sauces are concocted in-house.
The Craft & Crust slice bar is specially designed for lunch diners who prefer not to go back to the office and sleep after too much food. Instead, they can now specify the exact amount they want sliced by one of the chain’s pizza chefs.
Rotolo’s Craft & Crust is the 31st store for the system, which boasts 23 locations in its home state. The new store comes more than 20 years after the original Rotolo’s was opened in Tigerland by the father of the current CEO.
“Along the way, we felt like we might’ve lost some of our original grit that made us great, so we knew it was time to make a change,” CEO and 2016 World Pizza Games Champion Mitch Rotolo Jr., said in the release. “We are leveling up and bringing our founding spirit back, in all of its grit and honest charm and we’re doing it all in a cool atmosphere that you’ll look forward to visiting time and again.”