Noble Romans

Noble Romans is a local favorite back in the days (decades ago) when I attended high school and classmates worked at an Indianapolis location. I loved the Deep Dish Sicilian pizza, oozing with butter (methinks), cheese, and pizza sauce! But after high school I didn't have the opportunity to patronize Noble Romans for many, many years until just recently. Noble Romans in the interim had several financial issues after a massive expansion effort, and then repackaged itself into new and fewer full-service restaurant locations (with beer service notably on the marqee) and I think most recently small strip mall franchises. What I found out is the small franchises receive their pizza dough pre-made such as Deep Dish Sicilian and so is not as fresh as what is in the full-service corporate restaurant locations. In a pinch I would not hesitate to patronize a franchise as understandably they are more geared for 'fast food' mode but one time I pre-ordered a Deep Dish only to be phoned on my pickup drive they ran out of dough for the day! So when possible we go to one of the Noble Roman pizzeria/brewery restaurants and those issues don't seem to surface. The Noble Romans pizza sauce is slightly more sweet than maybe a competitor like the tangy Donato's; But not quite as sweet as a Papa Johns from my palate. The Deep Dish for me is to die for, the regular round not so much (I'd go for the Papa Johns as the standard and old reliable). So 4 stars not 5. But I do like the combo brewery of the corporate locations. Kudos to Noble Romans for surviving the pizza wars!

The pizza was just how I remember it; if you ever liked Noble Romans pizza, you won't be disappointed. The deep dish Sicilian with the blobs of thick sauce was perfect.The salads, however, were so awful as to be inedible. (I suppose if one is getting salads from a gas station annex, though, one's life choices might fairly be questioned; in our defence, we had a coupon for the salads).