There was a time I liked Roman Pizza – I really did.

I’d order fairly often, enjoying slice after slice of their Canadian bacon pies and mouthfuls of warm breadsticks dipped in marinara sauce.

Sure, the cheese was always sort of greasy – the kind where you lay a napkin on top just to absorb all the orange-colored oil – but what pizzeria can ever solve that problem?

The crust was always the right balance of crispy and fluffy, and their sauce had just the perfect amount of basil to keep the ripe, earthy flavor of just-picked tomatoes.

Then, for some unknown reason, the recipes started to slip. It all unraveled for me one night, starting with the breadsticks. The browned, flavorless rectangles were crispy to the core and very salty, making what I remembered as a doughy, filling appetizer into more of an over-baked cracker. In fact, these wafers were so brittle that I ended up with more crumbs and chunks of dough in my lap than in my mouth.

The dipping sauce, which had cooled and had an orangey film of grease coating its surface, was also disappointing.

I tried the pizza – plain cheese this time – and did my little napkin ritual to take off the grease.

In my first bite, I noticed something was slightly different – the cheese was sort of rubbery like any mozzarella blend, but it smelled a little off.

And gone was the palate-pleasing equilibrium of fluff and crisp – this pie’s dough was so limp and underdone that chucks of tomato sauce slid from the crust onto my face every time I tried to bring the slice to my mouth.

I decided that I might like a bite of my friend’s chicken parmesan sandwich, served on a French roll.

The breast of chicken was breaded and fried, and tasted something akin to the mass-produced, perfectly shaped boiled chicken sandwiches I bought in my high school cafeteria. A stingy dollop of marinara sauce and withered cheese rounded out the sandwich, so I decided to get back to my pizza.

It had not improved any with time, however, and I soon came upon a rather shocking discovery.

To culminate the experience, there seemed to have been a piece of thread or hair in the cheese. So I gave up on the soggy mess I had hoped would be my dinner.

And although the deliverymen are some of the kindest in the business, that meal is why I will never call Roman Pizza for delivery again.

Joe Rosemeyer can be reached at [email protected].