Rosa Rosa Pizzeria bills itself as “the Home of the Spaghetti Pizza,” but its Cheesesteak Bomber has been blowing up on TikTok and Instagram in recent months.
Located in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Rosa Rosa opened in 1993, with current owner Angelo DiSomma’s Italian immigrant parents, Maria and Giovanni, at the helm. Tragedy and setbacks have plagued the pizza shop—Giovanni spent a year in a coma after a car wreck and passed away in 2006. Maria took over, only to see a devastating fire shut Rosa Rosa down for two years. When it reopened, she turned the operation over to Angelo, one of five siblings, in 2018.
As Angelo recently told Fox 43, “We don’t like to quit, that’s for sure.”
And it’s a good thing because Angelo’s invention of the Cheesesteak Bomber has raised Rosa Rosa to an entirely new level, drawing customers from all over the East Coast.
It’s basically a half pizza, half cheesesteak stromboli, a visual marvel that’s seemingly tailormade for Instagram Reels and TikTok videos. Angelo stretches his pizza dough to a slightly larger size and tops about one-third with cheesesteak meat and folds the edge over. Then he adds pizza sauce, mozzarella and other toppings to the remaining dough. Angelo bakes it in a wood-fired oven and cuts it into slices for a belly-filling delight that sells for $24.99.
Customers apparently think the price is worth it. According to Lancaster Online, Rosa Rosa sells between 150 and 200 Cheesesteak Bombers a week.
A February 8 Reel featuring the Cheesesteak Bomber drew more than 163,000 likes on Instagram, while a pair of TikTok videos has garnered around 800,000 likes. Just as importantly, influencers have been visiting Rosa Rosa to create their own Reels and TikToks, adding to the viral exposure.
Ironically, Angelo initially had his doubts about the power of social media—it took some convincing from Seth Hirsch, founder of MoodLab Media, to go all-in on the platforms. Hirsch told Lancaster Online that social media provides “a good opportunity to put everything on display. It’s a chance to really advertise anything you want, at any time, in the way that you want….It’s like that fourth dimension to your creations.”
Now that Angelo has learned that lesson, it has paid off in customer traffic, too. As he told Lancaster Online, “Every single day for the past month someone’s come in saying, ‘I’m from Philadelphia, I’m from D.C., I’m from New York.’ And they all try it and love it and rave about it. The feedback is amazing because, for people to drive over an hour to come try some food…for me, [that’s] one of my proudest moments.”
Versions of the Cheesesteak Bomber include the Big Mac Bomber and a Buffalo Chicken Bomber.
Meanwhile, Rosa Rosa Pizzeria’s Spaghetti Pizza is no slouch either. A December 2022 video spotlighting that pizza has more than 2.1 million views on TikTok. Angelo also plans to bring back another specialty pizza featuring a violet potato puree, Parmesan, scamorza cheese and sausage.
