Most of my encyclopedic illicit drug knowledge is based not on personal experience, but through Wu-Tang and Clipse albums and The Wire. Scratch that, all of my encyclopedic illicit drug knowledge is based not on personal experience, but through Wu-Tang and Clipse albums and The Wire. However, over my increasingly less productive 23 years, I’ve readily ingested one addictive substance with the reckless abandon reserved for coke fiends: the sauce at Stuc’s in Appleton.

See, the sauce (and by extension, the pizza) at Stuc’s is like my grade-A blast of heroin, and every other pizza is a weak shit substitute that’s been stepped on with a large amount of baking soda. Frozen pizzas? Those might as well be skunkweed compared to Stuc’s. Pizza pockets? I’d get a better high from mouthwash (if I keep stretching this metaphor).

And like any good drug addict, I can chart the moment I hit rock bottom on my endless chase of the perfect high: it was the fall of 2006, when I purposefully went to Appleton (a 30 minute drive) just to get a pizza, and had to stop in Neenah on my way back home just to stick my finger in the sauce and get a taste. It was pitiful. But unlike a recovered junky, I have no shame. That shit is delicious, and I’ll do about anything to get some, because Stuc’s is on another level when it comes to this here pizza shit, creating unsustainably excellent pizzas that will make you weep as you eat them; you will cry for the fact that it is so delicious while crying for the fact that the more you eat now, the less there is to eat later.

The Good: Stuc’s, which is located on College Avenue near the aqueduct, is like a pizza Mecca, where the styles of New York and Chicago morph together to kill appetites dead. The Chicago style is the main attraction, with crust that had to have been created by an all-powerful deity I didn’t believe in until I ate at Stuc’s, roughly 48 ounces of sauce, sausage cut right off a live pig, and whatever else you want on there. The New York style is a bit a thick to be true New York style—the slice is impossible to bend due to the insane amount of cheese—but it too is basically unfuckwithable.

The Bad: Apart from the price—which is totally worth it—there’s not much downside to Stuc’s. The eating-in option is kind of weak, since it’s basically like eating in someone’s basement (all concrete and cheap furniture). Their slogan, “The Good Mood Food,” is kind of bizarre, since it doesn’t rhyme (unless you have a speech impediment) and seems like it was written by the Post Crescent’s copy editors (which is mean as a negative). And I guess it doesn’t have a lame-ass history involving two old guys who broke up and splintered their pizza empires into two franchises that sell you Jack’s frozen pizzas at way too expensive prices. So that puts it behind Frank’s and Cranky Pat’s in Appleton pizza notoriety.

Try: Honestly, if it comes out of the ovens at Stuc’s, I’d gladly put it in my mouth hole. The Chicago style is my favorite pizza of all time, which is saying something, since I essentially went to New York solely to eat pizza in 2004, and ate it for three meals a day for a week, and didn’t find anything better than Stuc’s. I realize this review is pretty weak, but seriously, I can’t even think of halfway coherent things to say about this stuff that doesn’t sound perverted, and I am seriously considering just giving up and posting a YouTube video of me mowing down a large Chicago style, giggling like a loon like those assholes in all the salvia videos on YouTube. Trust; this shit is the best.

Rating: How can you rate a blue sky? A child’s smile? Or a Stuc’s pizza? You can’t. They transcend ratings.

Appleton, Fox Valley, Stuc's