RI’s best Italian restaurants: Federal Hill to South County our favorites
From Federal Hill to South County, the best Italian restaurants across Rhode Island.
Journal Staff
There’s New York Style pizza with its thin, foldable crust.
There’s Chicago-style pizza with its thick, deep dish crust.
There’s even Connecticut’s Apizza, or New Haven-style pizza, with it’s thick tomato sauce and crispy edges, and then Massachusetts claims another three distinct types of pizza, including one layered with provolone cheese.
Then, there’s the Rhode Island pizza strip – divisive and distinctly Rhode Island.
It could be argued (and has been on X) that the pizza strip — with its lack of cheese and toppings – lacks the flair of other regional pizza dishes, or maybe isn’t even real pizza. But, they’re wrong. It deserves the some notoriety as the other regional pizzas (and perhaps more than one that features provolone cheese).
Because a pizza strip, also called a party pizza, red strips or a bakery pizza, isn’t trying to be like the other pizzas out there. It’s a much simpler celebration of the most often overlooked element of a pizza – the sauce.
What is a Rhode Island pizza strip?
A pizza strip is a rectangular strip of pizza, served on a crust that would be best described as focaccia, topped with a tomato sauce and often a dusting of grated Romano cheese. It’s served at room temperature.
That’s it.
Where were pizza strips invented?
By all accounts, pizza strips are a Rhode Island dish, a regional oddity (though sometimes it is found in parts of Pennsylvania and parts of Massachusetts). But to be a little more specific, it’s primarily a Rhode Island Italian American dish.
“It originated back in the day,” said Brayn Boza, the owner of Borrelli’s Pastry Shop, a neighborhood Italian bakery in Coventry told The Providence Journal in 2023. “It was an easy dish that could be packed, served at room temperature, and you could eat it all day.”
It also celebrated a key element of Italian cooking — the sauce.
“It’s true. You go to grandma’s house and the sauce will be perfect,” said Boza, who identifies as half Italian, and half Guatemalan. “It is a culture thing.”
Where to get pizza strips
One of the oddities of pizza strips is you don’t typically get them from a pizzeria. These are best ordered from neighborhood Italian bakeries, and they can also be found in most grocery store bakeries.
Some popular places to pick them up around the state are Venda Ravioli on Federal Hill in Providence, LaSalle Bakery in Providence, and DePetrillo’s Pizza & Bakery, which has five locations around the state.
Recipe for pizza strips
For those who want to try to make them at home, Venda Ravioli on Federal Hill shared their recipe for pizza strips with The Providence Journal in 2003.
Dining and Cooking