Search “Ratch and Deb’s Pizza” on Google Images and you’ll find this…

Search the East side of Oshkosh, WI for Ratch & Deb’s and you’ll find something just as fucked up and inexplicably awesome — Ratch & Deb’s deep dish pizza.

I returned to Oshkosh over Thanksgiving to have lunch with a friend. Oshkosh is a place I attended college, where I majored in English and minored in whiskey-drunk public urination, and a locale in which three of my bikes were stolen (a fact I directly attribute to my present chubbiness). I’ve stated my hatred for Oshkosh in previous reviews but as evidenced by places like Cranky Pat’s, Red’s, and West End, the dickhole of Winnebago County knows its way around a pizza.

Try as it did to test my proverbial gangsta, I found Ratch & Deb’s to perpetuate Oshkosh’s off-putting pizza affinity all the more.

First off, there’s no place to park near this piece. Cast at the corner of busy ass Bowen St. and Merritt Ave. (neither of which have on street parking), my friend and I parked on a side street like two blocks away from the restaurant and walked to the understated edifice. Once she and I were inside, the place was empty, save for a woman playing video poker and enough gaudy Packers memorabilia to make that guy at Lambeau who wears the Lombardi Pope hat puke blood while simultaneously shitting himself and going blind. Puzzled at the scene before us, we waited as our to-be waitress finished a few more hands of video poker.

“Two?” she questioned unapologetically. “Sit anywhere.”

We sidled up to a blocked off bar-adjacent booth and took a look at the surprisingly exorbitant pizza menu. There were over 20 toppings available. We opted for the deluxe deep dish and, with the sheer selflessness of a man half-expecting at least a handy, I relented to the lady’s choice of the requisite six toppings: Sausage, green peppers, extra sauce, black olives, tomato pieces and onions.

Order placed, we patiently awaited our deep dish while talking of the important things: Love lost, life’s constant transitions, the impending collapse of print media, the folly of “scissoring”, and the like. Unbeknownst to us, the pizza would have us creaming our respective jeans in the minutes to follow.

THE GOOD: Holiest of all turtlewangs, this deep dish was incredible. Not only was this fucker morbidly obese in its thickness, it was loaded up with toppings. Every bite yielded a taste of each of our six toppings, which I consider a rarity amongst deluxes. The saucy was almost spicy… in the best way. The pie was filling too. I (with the corpulence of a man with a pizza review Web site who’s had three bikes stolen) was only able to eat three slices before throwing in the towel. Much of the za’s filling capabilities can be attributed to the cheese, which was both abundant and stringy as a MF — almost annoyingly so. Almost.

THE BAD: The pizza took rather long to bake (half hour) and was $17, but I assumed that when I opted for the deep dish. To be pissed about a six-topping deep dish taking long to bake and costing $17 is like bitching because your car got wet at the car wash, or demanding a refund at the theater because the Alvin & the Chipmunks “Squeakquel” ruined cinema forever. Expect it. Beyond that:
1. The extra sauce was more like small dollops of sauce. As a sauce lover, I would’ve loved more.
2. No parking. Minor, but if you’re elderly, a toddler or some kind of weird dwarf or something, the walk could be a bit taxing. 
3. It’s in Oshkosh. It’s not just in Oshkosh, it’s in a shitty part of Oshkosh, which is like saying something is “the worst part of AIDS” … OK, maybe a sliiiiight exaggeration there.

TRY: The deep dish, meng! It’s worth $15-$17 and a 30-minute wait at a hideous restaurant without nearby parking located in a city you’d probably hate. It’s that good.

RATING: The pizza equal of watching tacos explode in slow motion.

Deep Dish, Oshkosh, Ratch & Deb's, T. Mario