Short Stop: Rock City Pie & Ice Brings Detroit-Style Pizza and More to Broomfield

Metro Denver's dining scene is better than ever — and we're hungering to go out. So we're serving up Short Stop, with recommendations for places that should definitely be on your culinary short list, from old favorites to newer additions. This week, head to Broomfield for Detroit-style pizza.

What: Rock City Pie & Ice

Where: 1386 U.S. Highway 287, Broomfield

When: Open from 5 to 9 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday

For more info: Visit rockcitypieandice.com
About the place: Chef Jason Dascoli is an industry vet who started Rock City Pie & Ice out of his house in 2020, making just twenty pizzas a week. Since then, word has spread and he's steadily grown the menu, taking over the commissary kitchen at his current location in 2022 and operating it solo as a carryout restaurant.

Dascoli focuses heavily on technique and the old chef adage of "good food done right." Recent additions like cannoli and a gluten-free crust option have really expanded the appeal. The menu has appetizers, salads and pasta, including chicken parm, baked meatballs, mozzarella sticks and marinated olives.

The focus, however, is on Detroit-style pizza and Italian water ice. Detroit pies are cooked in square or rectangle pans, often blue steel, and have a few tell-tale characteristics, including the hallmark frico crust — burnt cheese that encapsulates the edges of the pie to form a delicious edge. The base is a thick yet airy dough, and the pie is cut in squares, with the thick sauce often drizzled over it post-bake.

The market for Detroit-style pizza has gone from being virtually non-existent outside of Detroit less than a decade ago to growing so large that even Pizza Hut has offered its own take. In the metro area, there are now many options for fans of the style, from the first place that brought it to Denver, Blue Pan, to the recently opened Red Tops Rendezvous in Jefferson Park.
Italian water ice, however, isn’t quite as trendy as those Detroit pies. Dascoli grew up on Long Island eating Italian ice, and the lack of places offering it in the Denver area inspired him to add it to his menu. The treat is made with three simple ingredients: sugar, water and fruit. He offers a variety of flavors such as blue raspberry, chocoa latte, coconut, grape, lemonade, limeade, orange cream, root beer and both black and wild cherry, all of which are available in three sizes.

Dascoli has big dreams for Rock City. He plans to open more locations and to franchise, using a more tech-focused model that would reward all early entrants into the business, not just the usual ownership and management enjoying the upside of success.
What you’re eating: Wild Shroom Detroit Pie

I’ve been following Rock City for well over a year now. I happened to stumble upon its Instagram page when it was young, and I watched over time as the slightly blurry, close-up photos grew into well framed, sharp shots. Appointment-only time slots gave way to a nine-hour carryout window per week. Now that it's open twenty hours each week, I was finally out of excuses and made the trek north to Broomfield to check it out for myself.

Most pizza places treat mushrooms like old dusty department store bicycles that haven't been ridden in years. The typical mushrooms used at many pizzerias, even some high-end ones, are from a can or are bland, nondescript brown or button mushrooms from a restaurant supplier. So when I saw a wild mushroom pizza on offer, it caught my attention.

Dascoli sources organic varieties like maitake and oyster locally from Colorado Mushrooms. Why so many other top pizzerias hesitate to do this, I don't know. If you’re making chef-driven pizza, using multi-day sourdough ferments or even variations like a poolish (a high-yeast cultured dough), along with top-quality sausage, pepperoni, cheese and tomatoes, throwing on bland, sliced, uncooked mushrooms is akin to running a top steakhouse and only serving Miller Lite.

Back to the pizza at hand: It not only contains the aforementioned local mushrooms, but also a list of cheeses that runs the gamut: locally sourced goat cheese crumbles, brick cheese, aged provolone, sharp white cheddar, ricotta, buffalo milk mozzarella, fresh mozzarella and Parmegiano-Reggiano. There’s a certain creamy richness from all those cheeses making this truly a decadent and filling pie.

The sauce provides a nice firm base for all those flavors and a bright hit of acid to cut through the cheese, along with an underlying herbal quality from the basil sprinkled throughout. The mushrooms, which are marinated and roasted, provide an interesting texture on top of the pizza, while the focaccia-like dough is a delicious foundation underneath all the other ingredients.

I’ll be back soon to try my usual carnivore pies, and I’ll try to save room for more dessert, like cannoli or a water ice.

But even after just one visit, it's clear that in a crowded field of Detroit-style pie makers, Rock City Pie & Ice stands out among the very best and offers enough non-pizza items to avoid being a one-trick pony.