Tim C.
Yelp
Federal Hill. Providence's red sauce stronghold since forever. The kind of neighborhood where a pizza place needs to bring something distinct to the table or die trying. Sicilia's has been doing exactly that since 1988 - that's 37 years of stuffing pizzas with an ungodly amount of cheese while the culinary world around them had begun to dissolve into a sea of artisanal wood-fired nonsense and hot dog stands in place of institutions.
The space inside looks exactly how you want it to: super clean, exposed brick walls, old-school booths in deep navy blue, wooden tables that have seen lots of pizza grease.
The ornate tin ceiling feels like something from another era - because it is. Nothing about this screams "we hired a restaurant designer." This is a place built for utility that accidentally became charming through sheer stubbornness.
We ordered a regular pepperoni pie as a warmup. The crust was weird - not in a bad way, just unexpected. Soft, with a texture that suggested these guys aren't losing sleep over fermentation times or gluten development. It's almost like they're making pizza the way someone's grandmother would, with more concern for feeding people than impressing them. The cheese-to-sauce ratio heavily favors cheese, which isn't my thing, but I respect the commitment. Because, let's be serious, this place is all about cheese.
Nobody comes to Sicilia's for regular pizza. You come for the stuffed pie - "The Original." This beast is what would happen if a calzone and deep dish had a baby and then fed it steroids. What surprised me was the crust - not the heavy Chicago-style monstrosity you might expect, but a thin, short-style crust (think buttery shortbread, but for pizza). Somehow this relatively delicate foundation supports the metric ton of toppings without surrendering structural integrity - pick it up, and it doesn't disintegrate; cut it with a knife, and it doesn't crush under pressure.
When Angela, our awesome server, brought it to the table, she performed what I can only describe as cheese choreography - lifting each slice with the practiced confidence of someone who's done this thousands of times, creating those Instagram-worthy cheese pulls that stretch across the table like some dairy version of Spider-Man's web, before cutting it against the plate and delivering it to each person.
The cheese itself deserves mention - not fancy, not artisanal, just good, properly melty mozzarella in quantities that would make a cardiologist start pre-filling prescriptions. But what's truly impressive is how the flavors work together. Instead of distinct layers where you taste cheese, then spinach, then mushrooms, everything melds into a harmonious whole - essentially a better version of the classic spinach pie Rhode Islanders know and love. Even our friend Kirk, who typically treats mushrooms like a personal insult, demolished his slice without complaint.
The sauce sits on top like a protective layer, but it's not just basic tomato sauce slopped on as an afterthought. They've somehow cracked the code on getting that oven-roasted tomato intensity you find on a great tomato pie without sacrificing what's underneath. It's acidic enough to cut through all that dairy richness, with a depth that only comes from proper cooking.
Is this pizza for everyone? Hell no. If you worship at the altar of Neapolitan minimalism, you'll need therapy after this. But that's the point. Sicilia's isn't trying to be everything to everyone. They picked their lane in 1988 and haven't swerved since.
Providence has fancier restaurants, trendier spots, places where they'll tell you the life story of every ingredient. But Sicilia's offers something increasingly rare - a genuinely regional style executed with zero apologies, served in a room where families have been celebrating birthdays, ending softball games, and arguing about politics for almost four decades of competition.
In an age of endless reinvention, I love a place that just keeps doing its thing, confident that its thing is worth doing. The cheese pulls never lie.
