Rotolo’s honors New Orleans Saints at pizzeria

Published 10:50 am Sunday, April 28, 2013

Is it ever wrong to integrate sports with the rest of our everyday lives?

Not if the sports team in question is the Super Bowl-winning New Orleans Saints.

That’s exactly what Rotolo’s Pizzeria does, billing itself as the “official pizza of the Saints.”

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If it’s good enough for Super Bowl-winning quarterback Drew Brees, it’s good enough for me (and for my Dallas Cowboys-loving brother-in-law and my nieces and nephews, too, I’m sure).

The Baton Rouge-based restaurant recently opened a Lake Charles location in a strip mall at 4201 Nelson Road.

The restaurant menu sticks to the Saints motif with a fleur-de-lis representing which menu items are house specialties.

Joe Horn BBQ Chicken, named so after the former Saints wide receiver, is available on several items — on pizza, in calzones and in sandwiches or wraps.

My co-worker Coop and I, both avid Saints fans, recently shared lunch at Rotolo’s, splitting pizza, breadsticks and salad.

We got the Sweep the Floor breadsticks, Joe Horn BBQ Chicken pizza and The Angry Pig pizza.

Both pizzas had a tasty, tangy barbecue sauce, while the Sweep the Floor breadsticks had pepperoni and bacon.

The restaurant offers a wide range of typical pizza-restaurant fare. The menu boasts calzones, pasta, sandwiches, soup, wraps and salads, as well as desserts.

Pizzas are broken down into traditional and nontraditional categories. The traditional features standards such as deluxe combination, four cheese, meat feast and bacon cheeseburger, but also boasts flavors such as chicken cacciatore and muffuletta.

The Joe Horn and the Angry Pig both fell under nontraditional, as did blackened chicken Alfredo, Sicilian and chicken florentine.

Rotolo’s traditional pizzas are made with their homemade marinara sauce, while the nontraditional pizzas are made with the restaurant’s homemade specialty sauce.

Rotolo’s prices are standard to what most restaurants charge, with pizza prices ranging from $8 for an 8-inch to $23 or $24 for an 18-inch.

Sandwiches and wraps are $8.99, calzones are $8.50 to $9, and pasta ranges from $11 to $13.

While Rotolo’s is a nice, sit-down restaurant, it also has several televisions, just in case the Saints are playing.

The pizzeria’s website said Mitch Rotolo opened the restaurant near the LSU campus in 1996. It has since grown to nearly 30 locations, most of those in Louisiana, but a few in Alabama and Florida.””

Rotolo’s is at 4201 Nelson Road in Lake Charles. (Michael Cooper / American Press)

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The Angry Pig pizza has a tangy barbecue sauce. (Michael Cooper / American Press)