Kind of badass.

Simply stated, there are just certain places you shouldn’t good to get certain things.

Think about it; when you want sushi, you don’t rush to a mini mall in a town of 5,000. I’d advise against venturing to either Dakota if you’re specifically searching for a hot piece of tail (though I once made out with a cute chick from Fargo). Families don’t, or at least shouldn’t, caravan to Washington D.C. just to see “a good baseball game”–even if they live in the D.C. area. In that same vein, very few people go to gas stations with the sole intention of getting a hot slice of pizza. But regional convenience store chain Kwik Trip (of selling milk in bags fame) not only stocks a myriad of pre-made Cheese Mountain Pizza beneath their heat lamps, they really, really push them on people. 

But somehow, I’d managed to resist the the onslaught of radio ads, TV commercials and in-store advertising that makes Avatar seem under-publicized by comparison. Maybe I wasn’t ready to have my mind blown. Maybe I didn’t feel as if I deserved to try Cheese Mountain Pizza. But probably, it was because they look fucking disgusting.

But when I found myself feeling peckish at the Kwik Trip of an off-ramp town I’d never heard of, I was faced with the difficult decision of whether to eat a Power Bar or a past-date chicken salad sandwich (The Sophie’s Choice of gas station dining dilemmas). It was then that I threw caution to the wind, wiped the sand out of my cooter, grew a dick and decided that I would finally traverse the Cheese Mountain.

I cringed before snagging the last two slices of the poetically-named “Four Meat” to go with my Lo-Carb Monster, and I shamefully walked to my car to eat kind of old gas station pizza alone in the parking lot. To take our gay and female readership over the top to an Earth shattering orgasm, I was also wearing a too-tight graphic wolf T-shirt. 

Sitting there in my 2002 Saturn, nibbling a greasy “Four Meat”er, I felt my soul leaving my body. It hovered above me and watched as I crushed both slices in record time so that I could get back on I-94… so I could get back on the road to speed both towards my home and away from the memory of what I’d just done. It was then that it dawned on me: Moments like those in places like that with people like me perfectly embody the reason gas stations sell pizza.

THE GOOD: There were generous toppings on each slice. As to be expected with a pizza called “Four Meat”, there was a lot meat on the pizza. Four to be exact. Four meat. Sausage, really thick pepperoni, chicken and Canadian bacon (actually an entire slice of deli ham) clung to each taxing bite. I’ll be honest; I’m guessing that the fourth meat was chicken. It was a riddle, really.

THE BAD: It was old as shit. The cheese was melted under the heat lamps then re-hardened on the box so I had to pull an Alan Grant just to excavate the slice from the container. The cheese was lukewarm, the sauce was bordering on cold and the greasy toppings were near boiling from heat lamp scorching. Its layers made it like a Neapolitan ice cream of pizza in where, instead of each being a different flavor of ice cream, they were each a different temperature of undesirable pizza. The rest was just grease. The crust almost squirted when I bit into it. I was the bearded, adult, ashamed version of one of those Ann Geddes baby prints.

I nearly poured gas on my skin just to get free use of the Kwik Trip’s chemical shower.

TRY: Planning ahead so you don’t almost run out of gas in an unincorporated township with no restaurants. That failing, I assume the Cheese Mountain take and bake pizzas are exponentially better than the pre-made slices. But if you possess the foresight to plan to buy a take and bake and have the resources in which to cook it, there’s literally EVERY better option for pizza anywhere else… including Kwik Trip’s frozen pizza selection.

RATING: -1 on the pizza scale. Wolfgang Puck on the gas station pizza scale. Bad as it was, it still made Hot Stuff Pizza taste like Piccadilly Circus Pizza by comparison.

“Some assholes, probably,” I’d speculate while en route to Kohl’s or some better pizza place. 

But while back in Appleton last week, I decided to pay a visit — my second in the past eight months — to both my buddy, and to Nick-N-Willy’s Pizza.

This Canadian-owned corporation (in the same way Gumby’s Pizza and Sinclair gas stations are corporations) apparently has 41 locations in the U.S., and six in The Badger State alone. Beyond that, Nick-N-Willy’s — an Indie in the pizza world — was fittingly an Official Provider of the 2010 Sundance Film Festival. A perfect pairing of pizza very few people have heard of and movies very few people have heard of.

The only other thing I know about Nick-N-Willy’s is that they make, serve and sell pizza with varying levels of edibility.

THE GOOD: If you check out the restaurant’s menu, you’ll find a lengthy and versatile listing of specialty ‘Za. The pizzas run the gamut of ingredients and sauce types. One even has mandarin oranges on it. Imagine, baby oranges on a pizza pie. Fuck me sideways! There are certainly more veggie options than many places we’ve previously reviewed. Plus, everything is fresh. I had fresh cut jalapenos on my veggie pizza during my last visit, and it made a world of difference.

Also, if you hate lines, this is the place for you. I ordered, waited for and ate my entire pizza in the time it took three customers to venture into the place. Ghost town. That said, the speed and quality of service was good — especially when accounting for their lack of actual encounters with customers.

THE BAD: No matter who you are, we can all agree that even sub-par pizza is still great food. I’m not saying N-N-W’s is bad, but it does lack identity. The few morsels of personality this sterile franchise does possess aren’t extremely flattering.

• The pizza sauce tastes like cheesy marinara sauce. I like marinara sauce… on pasta.
• They used cheddar cheese along with mozzarella. What the fuck? Cheddar? Is this Soviet Russia? In the theme of that shitty Russian comic Yakov Smirnoff, is every cheese-related thing at Nick-N-Willy’s the less appealing opposite of what it would be at a normal pizza place? I like cheddar as much as the next 85th weight percentile out there, but when it comes to pizza, keep it at mozzarella, feta, parmesan or goat. Hell, I might even prefer fromunda cheese (fromunda my nuts) over cheddar on my ‘Za.
• No matter if you dine in or carry out, you need to give a name and phone number. Hang on Missy… since 9/11 I’ve been living off the grid. I’ll be God damned if al Qaeda (or jury duty) tracks me down because I ate at a failing pizza franchise twice. Last I checked, it wasn’t Fort Knox-N-Willy’s; let’s just keep our Social Security cards in our pocket — at least until Focaccia Sandwiches come into play.

TRY: Anything with the “Olive Oil Glaze” instead of tomato sauce. I usually base a pizza’s quality on its sauce, but since Nick-N-Willy’s tomato sauce is akin to still-cold Lunchables pizza sauce, I opted for the glaze on my second time in. I found that it really allowed the flavor of the fresh and abundant vegetables to take center stage.

RATING: If Nick Lachey-N-Willie McGee collaborated on a charity softball game/soundtrack and the proceeds went towards making cheddar the official cheese for pizzas at independent film festivals.

Now 50 percent more similar.

So seldom is the world impacted by a truly great change — things like democracy, women’s suffrage, and the Slap Chop. 

More often, a minimal and altogether futile change is brought about, and no real impact is brought to our planet nor anyone residing on it. This is evidenced by an unattractive woman getting highlights put in her hair, a guy going to the gym once a month, and — most recently — Domino’s Pizza COMPLETELY RE-INVENTING ITSELF! 

For those not in the know, Domino’s is a little mom and pop pizza operation. It has played an integral role in my fatass youth by being a welcomed component in such otherwise-shitty events as church lock-ins, Cub Scout meetings, elementary school pizza parties and interventions. My mom usually bought Pizza Pit — so the rare times I got pizza good enough to have commercials where the actors had no discernable regional dialect, I was pitching a Lee Pipes tent.

For my money, I now prefer a unique experience at a local pizzeria over any national chain, but I recently relented to Domino’s claims of an alleged overhaul and decided to give it a try — if only to review it.

THE GOOD: I’m not one of those people who takes up an allegiance with Pizza Hut and declares that Papa John’s is the bane of my existence. All the successful national pizza chains (and Little Caesar’s) have collectively standardized the pizza into an over-cheesed and spiced orb of test-market-approved ingredients. Sure, slight differences exist, but in all, you’re getting a pedestrian pie approved by the populace. Domino’s is no different.

Processed as it is, it’s always been good. But usually anything greasy that’s been molested by fake mozzarella and affable sauce does the trick. Yeah, I still ate eight pieces, then four the next morning… want to fight about it?

To be avoided.

THE BAD: Despite all the company’s drastic changes, the pizza tastes almost exactly the same. So they brushed the crust with butter and put garlic salt on it; do you think that will make me forget about “The Noid” ad campaign? As fucking if! And judging by both the new commercial AND my taste buds, the sauce was painstakingly re-fashioned by adding 16 flecks of oregano to each heaping pot.

The pizza remains ever-edible as always, but where I would’ve usually been somewhat satisfied with Domino’s, I was pretty much just pissed off that I was eating the same old Domino’s again when I could have been eating at Pizza Man — which is now burned to shit.

TRY: The new Domino’s Pizza recipe. If you like the old Domino’s, you’ll love the new Domino’s… because it’s the same thing, only newer and identical. Long story short, if you’re telling people you’re changing, you better go ahead and change: Make all the drivers get an earring, become “The Official Pizza of Porn Scenes Where a Delivery Man is Seduced by a Horny Customer” or launch an implicitly-racist national ad campaign. Anything! Better yet, change the pizza.

RATING: The Office’s clip episode.