It has become part of my routine when I visit Long Island to take a trip to Rocco's in St. James, New York.  Rocco's has always managed to provide me some amazing Sicilian pizza, very similar to Umberto's Pizza.  During my recent visit there, the pizza was far from Umberto's style, or even their own style for that matter.

One of the things I have always enjoyed about Rocco's Sicilian slice, is the sweet sauce that is artistically layered across the slice on a diagonal.  It ensures you get a taste of the sauce in every bite, while managing not to overpower your taste-buds with too much.  The sauce on prior visits has always been smooth, and evenly layered.

For some odd reason, this was not the case the other day when I went there.  The sauce was way too chunky, and had more of a spicy taste to it.  The crust was a tad stale tasting, like it had been left out way beyond its prime.  The cheese tasted great, as it always does.  Since all of my previous visits to Rocco's have been delicious, I cannot bash them too much here, but it was obvious they either A) had a new pizza guy  B) hired some cheap help to make the sauce  C) cheaped out themselves on their ingredients  D) all of the above.

I will not avoid Rocco's in the future, but if my next visit there is reminiscent of this visit, Rocco's will lose one of their biggest advocates.  Rocco's wasn't as busy as it usually is on the day I went.  Maybe others are noticing a change as well.  Let us all hope for pizza's sake, that it was just a bad day here. Leave the pizza the way it used to be guys.  It was perfect!

Rocco's Pizza gets 5 out of 8 slices for this visit.