A'Roma Pizza

The thing to know about A'Roma Pizza before you go is that they grind their own sausage. Not "source it locally" or "use a special blend," but actually run it through a grinder and season it themselves, then roll it into what the shop calls its Original Sausage Rolls. That one detail tells you most of what you need to know about this place: it's a family-operated pizza shop that does the slow, unglamorous parts of the job by hand.

You'll find it at 1123 E. State Blvd., in the East State neighborhood. It's the kind of address a lot of Fort Wayne diners pass a hundred times before they finally stop, and the ones who stop tend to come back.

A Recipe That Outlasted the Restaurant Itself

A'Roma's roots go back to the 1960s. The restaurant closed at one point and was later reopened using the same original recipes it started with, which is a rarer thing than it sounds. Plenty of places reopen under old names with new kitchens behind them. Here the continuity is the point: the pizza you order today is built on the formulas the shop was founded on.

Fort Wayne Magazine's Savor guide has recognized the restaurant for its longevity and its neighborhood ties, according to A'Roma's own site. That's the reputation in a sentence: a place that has been part of East State long enough to be treated as a fixture.

What to Order

Start with the pizza. A'Roma is a thin-crust shop, so this is the flat, crisp style rather than a thick pan pie, and it's what the kitchen is built around.

Then get a sausage roll. The Original Sausage Rolls are the dish the restaurant is known for, made with that house-ground, house-seasoned sausage. Local station WANE 15 put the pizza, the sausage roll, and a grinder through its Living Local taste-test segment, which is a fair map of what to order if it's your first visit.

Beyond the pizza and the sausage rolls, the menu runs to grinders and chicken alfredo, so there's a hot sandwich and a pasta plate for the table that doesn't want a whole pie. If grinders are your reason to go out, A'Roma sits alongside other Fort Wayne spots that build their reputation on them, like Mancino's Grinders and Pizza.

Who It's For

This is a neighborhood pizza shop, family-run, in East State. It fits a weeknight pizza pickup, a casual sit-down when you want thin crust and a sausage roll instead of a chain pie, and anyone curious what a 1960s Fort Wayne recipe tastes like when it's still being made the original way. Go for the sausage roll. Stay because the place has been getting it right long enough that the magazines noticed.