Besides that, landmarks like the continually steaming manhole outside Solid Gold Gentleman’s Club, the Allen Bradley clock tower and the always delicious Conjito’s serve as apt indicators of Walker’s Point presence to wide-eyed Northwoods hayseeds like myself. But in terms of Pizza Topography, Marchese’s Olive Pit is — bar none — the neighborhood’s highest point of elevation.

Since moving to to the area, people hyped the shit out of Marchese’s. It was like the Avatar of Milwaukee pizza places. Except, unlike Blue Pocahontas, I actually had remote interest in experiencing the Olive Pit (also available in 3D) first hand. Finally, after months of delay, myself, Ronnie and two of his friends paid a visit to this often-recommended Walker’s Point pizzeria. 

The restaurant seems to specialize is white and garlic sauce pizzas as well as pasta dishes. But not being total pussies, we opted for a classic “Red Sauce” pizza. Kind of being pussies though, we went with a “Doc’s Garden” veggie pizza.

THE GOOD: The thin crust pan pizza (which ran about $20) was massive. It took up most of the table and fed all four of us comfortably. Ronnie and I had to make a delectably painful second sweep just to finish it. I’ve gladly paid $5 plus tip for much less pizza in the past. Portions aside, this collection of fresh mushrooms, green peppers, onion, tomatoes and mozzarella was tasty as hell. 

They also have a fully stocked bar with a buttload of booze, domestic brew mainstays, an assortment of micro and craft beers and $2 Blatz every day. You know I had a Blatz, babies.

THE BAD: I’m a sauce-obsessed soul, so I found Marchese’s lumpy, sporadically placed, mozzarella stick marinara dip-like sauce to be a bit lacking. It was good, but I could have used a bit more. Also, the toppings (for being a veggie deluxe, of sorts) seemed a bit sparse too.

However, the portion load was evidently heavy enough on the crust to make the inside slices mega-flimsy and the outside slices almost too tough. It was a mindfreak. A riddle. You know that story with the car crash and the doctors, and it ends up that the doctor is the kid’s mom or whatever? The Doc’s Garden pizza was like the pizza version of that. Weird.

Plus, our beers took for fucking ever to get there. And it wasn’t even busy.

TRY: The large. All large pizzas are about $6 more than the mediums, and nearly twice the size. Also, Olive Pit has vegan and gluten-free options on hand too. I suppose some people might be interested in the vast White and Garlic sauce pizza offerings, but not me. I hath too much pride.

RATING: Anything but the pits.

Apparently there was to be some sort of competition between nine local pizza makers: Tenuta’s, Marchese’s Olive Pit, Classic Slice, Marco’s, Steny’s, Times Square, Vinchi’s, Mama DeMarini’s, and Moct (which apparently serves food now).

From what we could tell, it was supposed to start at 7. We didn’t get there until almost 8 PM, and there wasn’t a sight or smell of za in the place. Instead of ditching out, we grabbed a few $2 bottles of High Life and decided to wait it out.

Sure enough, the pizzas started rolling in about 8:30 and this complete clusterfuck of an event was getting under way. Some guy mumbled something into a microphone and people started lining up to sample some slices.

Of course there wasn’t enough pizza to go around and it was gone in about five minutes, but we did manage to snag samples from four of the nine varieties. Here are some shitty haikus to explain:

Moct
Seriously, dude
Can I get some fucking ‘za
With all this onion?

Marco’s
Toppings are freshest
Spit out a whole olive pit
What the fuck is that?

Steny’s
Looks like a fetus
Dried out in the summer sun
Tasted delicious

(T. Mario busts in and throws Ronnie’s poetry book to the ground)

“Moct” is a Serbian word for bridge. In Milwaukee, it means over-hyped bar I’ll probably only go to when there’s free pizza and $2 Miller bottles. Ronnie — even in his sick and cough syrup addled state — was majorly balls deep in this idea, so I was glad to accompany him to Moct’s first (and probably last) annual Iron Pizza Competition.

As he said, the event had worse organization and more gaps than Hands Across America meets an anorexia clinic bake sale, but I managed to snag four slices to review.

Moct
Unlike Ronnie, I actually liked Moct’s cheese, sausage and onion pizza. I was surprised to how, unlike the bar bearing the pizza’s namesake, I didn’t die a little while in this Moct. It tasted like there was cream cheese in the sauce. For a bar (with no food menu), Moct wasn’t the “Leact” tasty pizza available.

Vinchi’s
Before everything oh-so-predictably ran out, I got my mits on a square of Vinchi’s works pizza. It was greasy and aggressive… like a pizza Andrew W.K. or something. But they lost points for using canned mushrooms. Canned mushrooms?!? I thought we were at Moct in Milwaukee – a bar named after a Serbian word for bridge. I didn’t know we were actually eating pizza under a Serbian bridge. Not bad, Vinchi’s, but freshen those shrooms up.

Classic Slice

Just fucking with you. Classic Slice, like most of the others, was gone within five minutes of the contest. Read my full review of Classic Slice if you’re really interested.

Steny’s
I don’t know what Ronnie was talking about with his Steny’s haiku. It didn’t look like any of the half dozen sun-dried fetuses (feti?) I’ve ever seen. Sure 20 minutes of solitude left the pizza dry and cold, but it was a colorful blend of bright red from the roasted red peppers, to flowery light green of the artichoke hearts, to the dove white cheese. Overall: Pretty good under its time-dried state of being eaten while standing up in a loud bar with hundreds of people up in my shit.

Marco’s
At the end of the night, I placed my Iron Pizza vote in favor of Marco’s.

My reasoning:
• Largest slices
• Most toppings
• Seem to hold up the best in the lukewarm state such a competition brings about.
• Tasted good.
• Made Ronnie spit out an olive pit and yell “What the fuck was that?” Classic.

We have no idea who actually won this thing. When the pizza was gone, so were we. But no matter who officially won this poorly-organized contest , I think the real winners were the people who got to try less-than-glowing representations of local za for free. And Moct for thinking of a good reason for people to come to Moct.