Before I made my sojourn to the land of sunburn, pretty great bands that will never be big someday, and reams of 20-year-old girls who remind me I’m at the point where I can’t even relate to someone five years younger than me, I had a brief G-Chat conversation with Doctors of Za capo T. Mario where he implored me to write about Austin pizza. Like I had a choice: When you’re at SXSW, you eat all of your meals standing up, on a curb, over a paper plate, before later expelling that food in a watery mist into a dirty club toilet six hours later (or was that just me?), and pizza is easily the most paper-plate/curb friendly food on earth. Add the facts that I generally don’t like barbecue sauce, and that I eat pizza for about every meal when I’m NOT at a music festival with pizza as the cheapest food option, and even T. Mario had to know I was going to be eating a shit ton of za.

So here’s a survey of the four different places I ate pizza at. Where they any good? Not really. Were they better than Iron Works, the barbecue place I ate at, where Diddy and Cassie and their entourages cut in line in front of me (seriously)? No. But they had cheese. And other pizza-related things! Which is what this website is all about!

Roppolo’s: I ate this pizza my first night in Austin, when I was experiencing some serious crotch chafing and some asshole sweat problems I’ll refer only to as “legendary.” Did Roppolo’s assuage these problems? Nope. It was just serviceable pizza with spicy pepperoni. I ate two slices and took a shower afterward. Neither one felt good. I would bet that the lines I saw at Roppolo’s all week had less to do with the quality of pizza, and more to do with it being on the main drag of SXSW, right in the perfect place to capitalize on people expecting nothing but empty calories and vaguely shitty pizza.

Pizzeria Paparazzi: I passed this place multiple times before actually venturing in: It was across the street from my hotel, and, thanks to its blaring soundtrack of ‘80s hits, was like a antidote to the stream of terrible “alt”-country bands that populated the streets during the fest. However, it was, without question, the worst food I ate all festival, and that includes a monumentally shitty BBQ sandwich at Stubb’s. Imagine your high school cafeteria workers banding together to start a pizza place, and then deciding to just get materials from the same distributors that provided the food for hot lunch. And then, when they were making the pizza, they decided to take it out before it was completely cooked, and use cheese that is only cheese in name. And Pizzeria Paparazzi was just like that. I heard my best food related banter afterwards though: A dude said, “They call that New York pizza? Fuck that!” when he was leaving. I don’t want to get libelous, but I’m sure this pizza is what caused me to have knee weakening stomach problems during my publication’s official showcase.

The Onion: This was a place called the Onion, and it had a newsstand for copies of The Onion, and the pizza was pretty good. I honestly don’t remember that much about it, beyond those facts. Also, I know it went well with Stella Artois. But I wasn’t that drunk: My days sort of became a haze in there. In a midst of dumb haircuts, James Blake and meeting more people in 12 hours than I have in four years, I forgot about what the pizza was like.

Ironically, the best pizza I had all fest wasn’t from Austin at all: It was from Roberta’s, a Brooklyn pizza place that set up a stall at the Fader Fort throughout the Fort’s run. For those not in the know, or without VIP passes (not bragging), Fader magazine has a mini-festival every year, and it is the tits. They book whoever they want, and the music is tops. Fader Fort also isn’t a slave to the overwhelming shittiness of Austin pizza either: Roberta’s was the second best meal I had all week, and I ate a cheese pizza on a giant pillow in a blogger’s lounge, which is about the douchiest combination of pizza type, location, and seating equipment you can imagine in Mad Gabs. But still! The Neapolitan pizza I ate in that blogger’s lounge was just the 100% best. Too bad it was my first pizza of the trip, and everything else pizza-related didn’t stack up. Not even seeing that Cassie is as hot in person as she is in my dreams (she eats pizza with me in my dreams, is what I’m saying).

Lame logo for lame pizza.

Sorry I haven’t contributed here lately. I’ve been up to other things, like writing a musical based on the life of Andre the Giant, writing shit about plays that are about dogs and fucking, and generally doing important shit like ruining the days of 12-year-olds on Halo Reach. But it’s not like I haven’t eaten pizza; my doctor, who I recently saw for the first time in like five years assured me that I am indeed still obese, a pizza lover, and headed to a heart-attack filled grave. When I asked him how he knew I love pizza, he looked at me, and said, “Because of that pepperoni on your chin.”

The problem is, I haven’t eaten much new pizza. I’ve balled down on plenty of Rossi’s, eaten at Roman Candle, (not) mourned the loss of Gumby’s, and eaten (roughly) 100 frozen pizzas. The only new place I’ve tried was Rosati’s, a place so thoroughly inoffensive and unmemorable, that I forgot I ate there when I discussed not writing pizza reviews much any more with my roommate. “I don’t eat at places we haven’t ate anymore,” I said. “Yes you do. We ate at that one place before Social Network,” he said. “I hate you so much,” I said.  The Good: You should know Rosati’s in Madison (at least the one on the west side) isn’t directly affiliated with the Rosati’s Chicago-style pizza chain. It has the same menu and everything, but it’s not affiliated with the chain that has operated for 50 years in Chicago, or the one on the east side that is basically in Sun Prairie (which I’m told sucks dong). But enough with the background on pizza chain affiliates and onto the ‘za.

The pizza comes in three different types, basically a pan style, a super huge pan style, and a fucking enormous pan style that promises to be an obelisk of bread and cheese. My roommates and I went with the middle option, and it was pretty okay. Unlike Brett Favre’s penis, the pizza was thick, it was stiff, it could please a woman, and it didn’t wear Crocs. But…

The Bad: It was huge and bland. It was like taking five one-pound bags of shredded cheese from the grocery store and cooking it on top of a pile of pepperoni and a loaf of bread. It entirely gets wrong the original spirit of Chicago style pizza: It’s not about how high you can make the crust, it’s about how good you can make your sauce. Think about it; that well of crust allows pizza makers to show off their sauce in a way that New York pizza doesn’t allow. Instead, chains like Uno’s and Rosati’s pile on the crust and the cheese, leaving very little sauce. Which in Rosati’s case, might be a good thing, since their sauce also tasted like it was store-bought. I mean, my mom makes pizza just like this, and I don’t have to pay $18 for a medium that takes 30 minutes to cook. Also, mom, if you’re reading this (I hope not), that Brett Favre penis joke was for you. Happy birthday? And Christmas too?

Try: One of my roommates had a gnarly looking Chicago-style hot dog that looked pretty rad, as Rosati’s offers more than just za. Other than that, just try finding a Rocky’s instead.

Rating: Like Ben Roethlisberger in a bar, the pizza comes on strong but…I have no joke for this.

Yep, I ate here.

It is one of the great ironies of Wisconsin pizza patronage that things that are taken as pizza law elsewhere–that crust should never be able to compared to any cracker (except Carson Daly), that sauce should not be the consistency of the stuff on spaghetti, that pizza should be fluffy yet crispy, not taste like it was microwaved and be made with the best ingredients–are treated as optional here. Which explains how I found myself in a basement restaurant in Minneapolis’ warehouse district at noon on Easter Sunday, eating in a place that can be easily described as “stainless-steel-friendly,” surprised as shit that the pizza was melting my face off for its awesomeness.

Black Sheep Pizza has the simplest of conceits: They make their pizza in a coal-fired oven just like people have in New York since 1800. It’s not rocket science, and coal is pretty cheap, but Black Sheep is the only place in the entire Midwest that I’ve eaten at on my one-man quest to die of pizza consumption that makes pizza this way. And unsurprisingly, their za annihilates anything else in Minneapolis. And or for that matter, a single slice of za from Black Sheep probably trumps anything the entire states of North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa and probably Kansas have in terms of any kind of entertainment. Ashton Kutcher’s entire film career is crushed in enjoyment by just the thought of hopping in my car and driving four hours to get some Black Sheep in my grill.

The Good: Everything? I mean, even the goofy as way they serve pizza—the pan is placed precariously on this torture device that is hooked to your table—is perfect. The big thing though is the pepperoni, which is served like it is in the finer restaurants in New York City: the same size as salami slices, or roughly three inches in diameter. This is obviously incredibly awesome, since it’s almost impossible to eat a bite without having some toppings, which is something a lot of Midwest pizza takes for granted. Like I said, it’s the simple, back-to-basics thought that sets Black Sheep apart. Why put macaroni on a pizza, or make it 15 inches thick, when cooking a New York style in a coal oven is as close as human beings can get to eating manna from heaven?

The Bad: There’s not much I can put here, to be honest. I’m jocking pretty hard for this place, obviously. My friend said the place can get kind of busy, but being that we went on Easter, we were outnumbered by staff members by a ratio of 2 to 1. So the service was totally impeccable. Plus our waitress was kind of surprised when we tipped her as well as we did, because we apparently looked like the blown-out delinquents we are.

Try: Anything, basically. My buddy said the green olives are incredible, but I opted out of those because I didn’t want anything to ruin the giant-ass pepperoni. They also have a robust beer list and a full bar, and it’s basically the hippest place I’ve ever eaten at (seriously, I bet the stainless steel chair budget in there is larger than what I’ve made in my entire life).

Rating: Definitely better than Black Sheep the movie, starring Chris Farley. You could say that that was Farley at his worst “fattie fall down, make boom boom” phase. But then he made Beverly Hills Ninja, and that is even worse. I am obviously a doctor of Chris Farley’s movie career as well.

We are not these dudes.

Pizza sits alone in an unfuckwithable food category. Like a can cozey that says “A bad day of golfing is still better than a good day at work,” most people agree that even shitty pizza is still pretty good. So what happens when you take the power of pizza creation into your own feeble hands in service of trying to gross out your bro? Pizza vs. Pizza, in which two esteemed constables of pizza mastication, Dr. Tenderoni and Dr. Benji Mane, your two Madison correspondents, challenge each other to eat totes gross slices of the other’s creation at Roman Candle.

Tenderoni: Sorry for the long delay between our first Pizza vs. Pizza Challenge, and this, our second trip into Roman Candle’s worm hole of fucked up pizza toppings (Blue Cheese? More like Blue FuckYourself). I had a rough couple of months–I lost a pair of Stanley Cups on NHL 2009, I ripped a hole in my favorite Led Zeppelin T-shirt and I totally stubbed a toe that one time in January. It really sucked. Benji Mane apparently had a kid during that time, but he is not a woman, so I don’t understand how that could have worked. His new baby roommate is pretty cool though.

Anyways, Dr. Mane and myself agreed to finally get some meat involved in this Pizza vs. Pizza, because the variety of meats available at Roman Candle are pretty gnarly too. But the meat wasn’t my primary concern. I had an ace in the hole for this Pizza vs. Pizza challenge: Zucchini. Benji Mane reportedly hates the stuff the way baby Hitler hates juice. I figured even if I were to put normal stuff on there for him, he’d be all Hulk-style angry about the zucchini. And he was, even though I took it easy on him by choosing fresh mushrooms and oven-roasted chicken breast. He literally went, “Oh man, I hate zucchini. Waaaaahhh.”

Benji Mane: It’s true: my wife had a baby and that baby is my daughter. Now my life is forever changed and I can rarely get legally drunk anymore. True story: One of the first days we had her at home, she shit so hard that it flew out of her diaper and into her eye, and all over my face. I had to rush her to the bathroom to promptly clean the shit out of her eyes, making it possible for me keep the shit on my face for a full 10 minutes. If any of you don’t have kids yet, just think about this story the next time you’re about to nut all up in some lady guts. It’ll probably help you go for a little longer.

So the littlest Mane came along when Tenderoni and I once again descended into pizza hell via Roman Candle. I think the first time we did this feature we made some rule about no hot stuff on the slices, but I forgot, so that’s just what I did. Jalapenos, with all the seeds and juice, can totally body slam all other flavors near by. So I think it was a pretty clever mind game from Mane to make the slice look like a luscious Hawaiian treat with a little something extra; it looks fun, but it’s totally not. Like luring your enemy into a sweet-ass luau, only to jump from behind the tiki bar and punch him right in the dick.

Those jalapenos are no fucking joke.

Tenderoni: Benji Mane’s choice of jalapenos—which were so spicy my face hurt—and pineapples—which were so juicy that each bite yielded a cumshot of pineapple juice on my mouth’s hangy ball thing—was sinister indeed, but his choice of prosciutto crossed a line I had drawn in the sand. It crossed my religious practices to eat hog for breakfast, but I did it anyway, because it would have been a disservice most foul to the 13 people that will eventually read this for me to have quit so early.

(As a sidebar, here, before you think I’m making a too-easy Muslim/Jew joke, I’m really making an obtuse reference to Ice Cube’s “It Was a Good Day.” And no joke, I follow that song like scripture. In fact, just this morning I put an ass to sleep after going so deep, and I fucked around and got a triple double.)

But yeah, prosciutto was pretty okay, and pineapples aren’t all that bad, I guess. Though I will never get the idea of having fruit on a pizza that isn’t one of those piles of shit you buy at the grocery store for Fourth of July parties. At any rate, the other toppings didn’t matter, because those hot-as-the deepest pit of hell jalapenos dominated everything soundly. I even tried burying the jalapeños in a wad of crust, and pouring a shitload of marinara on them, but those jalapenos still ruined my shit. And I’m generally in favor of spicy food, but even the light number of jalapenos was too much for me.

This shit was so healthy, it actually had negative grease.

Benji Mane: You know what’s weird? My grandma used to make zucchini bread that was totally amazing and I would eat the shit out of it all the time. But the vegetable itself makes me barfy just writing about it. Even though it would be really uncomfortable, I would shove a zucchini right up my ass just so it would get shit all over it. If I was an inventor and zucchinis had faces, I’d invent a gun that shot knives just so I could shoot a zucchini in the face with a bunch of knives. I fucking hate zucchini. And because zucchini ran rampant on this slice, I hated it.

But what was going on with the rest of this slice? Oven baked chicken breast and fresh mushrooms? The only benefit to eating this healthy is maybe my beard will finally start to fill out. I’d go from looking like Jude Law in The Talented Mr. Ripley to Jude Law in Cold Mountain. Also, I’d be around to see my daughter graduate from high school. But that’s it! And a life without taste is a life worth suiciding the fuck out of. Still, what this slice lacked in flavor and making me happy, it made up for in smelling farty and making me regular.

Results: Draw Both competitors pussed out yet again, leaving the official record at 0-0-2.

Not Jeff and/or Jim at all.

Eau Claire, Wisconsin is famous for so many things, you guys. Like…. Well, that dude from Bon Iver is from there. I heard he’s a cool guy. Also, Eau Claire is the last place to take a decent shit between there and Wausau or Madison. Seriously, just try taking a shit in Thorpe. Good luck, you poor unfortunate soul. Your anus will never forget the Thorpedo. Eau Claire’s fame is basically unfuckwithable, I’m saying.

At any rate, I recently found myself sequestered in the environs of Eau Claire’s bosom, visiting my parents (who don’t live there), my cousin (who doesn’t either), and my aunt and uncle (who do). And because I wanted to “see” what Eau Claire “had to offer” in terms of “pizza,” my cousin and I ventured to the “hip” part of Eau Claire (Waters Street, y’all) to eat at a pizza place called Jeff & Jim’s. I was informed by my cousin that Jeff and Jim were not gay lovers (at least as far as he knew), and they had a falling out at some point, which led Jim to change his name to Jimbo and move to Chippewa Falls and open his own pizza place. It’s like Eau Claire’s civil war or something.

Jeff and Jim’s is one of those pizza joints that you’re sure has to be a drug front. First off, the place is staffed exclusively by college students who all seem at least slightly buzzed on something. These college students will also take time bad mouthing other customers as you order your pizza (the dude who rang us up bitched about someone who called and asked how big a 12-inch was. My urge to make a dick joke was unbearable.). Plus their business model is fucking nuts: Jeff and Jim’s is the, as their menu claims, “The Home of The Buy One Get One Free.” That’s right, buy any size pizza at Jeff and Jims, and you can get one of the same size for free. Which means for like $13, you can get 24 inches of pizza (or for like $20, you can get 32 inches). If that doesn’t scream we only have this pizza place to fund an illegal business, I don’t know what does.

The Good: The price, more or less. The pizza isn’t bad, I guess—it’s hand-tossed, greasy, and the cheese is better than adequate—but when it’s that cheap, I can’t hate. Seriously, it’s almost cheaper than buying frozen, and for that price, Kwik Trip pizzas might not be that bad. The environment at the place is pretty cool too, given that it’s essentially in a literal hole in the wall in Eau Claire. It felt like eating pizza in a darkened alley that has an oven in the corner. The best part about the place, though, was that it has a posted occupancy sign of 20, but has a robust 22 chairs. They must have gotten a deal, and decided to keep two backups.

The Bad: Jeff and Jim’s is pretty damn greasy, to the point where it starts to come out of your holes in great reams pretty much right after eating. Their boxes can’t even contain the grease: I put my box on my dashboard when I left, and it left a huge grease stain. It was not cool. Try explaining to your mom what you’re wiping off your dashboard at 10 at night, and you’ll know what I’m talking about.

Try: Buying just one pizza. They basically refuse your right to only order one. Also, try going to Eau Claire long enough to go and eat there. Because it’s pretty hard.

Rating: Better than Ben & Jerry, worse than Bert & Ernie, but about equal to Tom & Jerry.

“You should eat Rossi’s. It’s in Monona, and it’s the best pizza on the planet. It’s how pizza should be. You say you like Ian’s? Blegh. It’s gross compared to Rossi’s.”

I think I answered noncommittally out of fear, but holy shit, dude was on to something. There’s a giant ass sign outside of Rossi’s that calls it the best pizza on the planet too, and it’s probably the first sign that is totally true since that one I saw that asked if I was tired while driving when I totally was. Rossi’s is hands-down the best pizza I’ve had in my short time in Madison, to the point where I’m not even sure if it’s worth eating anywhere else. Which isn’t exactly the thing you want to feel when you review pizza for fun. Am I right, ladies?

The Good: Is there a way to put down everything here? I mean, Rossi’s travels in a fluffy thin crust that reminds me not of the cracker thin crust you can’t avoid in Wisconsin, but the kind of pizza I ate on my trip to NYC in 2004. The toppings come together like some Justice League of taste-bud asskickery, and they wreak havoc on the forces of evil congealing in your lower intestines. It’s like a fucking Picasso masterwork of pizza, pretty much. Plus their pizza comes in comically huge sizes, specifically a 20-inch and 30-inch variety, which is just bonkers. Though even a huge pizza can’t satiate you entirely on this stuff; my roommates and I mowed through a 20-inch in 15 minutes, and we all cried tears of sadness when we realized what he had done. It was that good. We should have known something seriously awesome was going down in that place: in the window by the kitchen, they have a giant tub of garlic. Any place with a giant tub of garlic in the window is basically the bestest.

And I haven’t even gotten to the Bosco sticks, these sticks of unholy concoction that are basically breaded logs of string cheese that are as addictive as uncut cocaine. Those are good too.

The Bad: Rossi’s has weird hours (only open at dinner, pretty much) and it’s take-out only. Though I don’t know if you’d want to eat there, since it looks like the room where me and my cousins were sequestered in my grandma’s house when she used to make what she called “turkey” at Thanksgiving. Which is to say, it smelled like an old person, had upholstered furniture, was dusty as a motherfucker, and looked as though the interior hadn’t been considered since about 1971. And it’s actually underneath another restaurant, called Rossitano’s, which is confusing as hell. But this doesn’t mean anything vis a vis the pizza.

Try: Fitting a 30-inch pizza into your car. One of the funniest pizza-related things I’ve ever seen was watching a delivery driver come out of the place carrying a box that had a 30-inch pizza. That’s too many trees and too much pizza, there, fella! Then he had to empty his trunk to put the pizza in, which was worth a few more giggles.

Rating: Hard to say, but I feel like Shit Just Got Real

I make a-da Italians feel-a bad about dere heritage.

Just like every other college-educated, self-loathing white son of middle class parents who lives in Madison, I read the A.V. Club and The Onion too much. So let me break with what’s expected of me and link to an A.V. Club story in the next paragraph:

When I started considering writing a review of Rocky Rococo’s, Wisconsin’s pre-eminent corporate pizza chain a whole 36 hours ago, I ran across this Inventory running down movies in which the police detective is told he is too close to a case, and couldn’t help parallel (again, no one else parallels their lives to something they read in the Onion, and by no one, I mean everyone) that list with this review. Am I too close to Rocky’s to write a review of the Italian stereotype-furthering chain? Probably.

You see, I worked at Rocky’s for entirely too long, from the fall of 2002 till the late summer of 2007. I literally did every job you could do at Rocky’s, from starting out as a QC– the guy who cuts the pizzas–to getting laid off for two months by a manager who hated me because I didn’t like him (for the record, I never hated him, just disliked him). I then got rehired as a dishwasher, and worked my way back up to Prep—making pizzas—to delivery driver, and then to Shift Manager. I then resigned and worked as a delivery driver again, and made the pizza dough at seven in the morning two days a week.

I mean, I’ve cleaned shit-filled plugged toilets at Rocky’s. I got to help fire a dude from Rocky’s. I’ve technically stolen breadsticks from Rocky’s. I ate roughly 1,500 slices of pizza from Rocky’s (at least five slices a week for four years). I had to throw out old jeans because they didn’t fit any more because of Rocky’s. I had a guy steal pizza from me when I was on a delivery from Rocky’s. I nearly killed a motorcyclist the same shift. I slept in the office at Rocky’s. I’ve seen what their enormous sausage looks like when it’s not been made into patties, and it’s fucking gross. I’ve thrown up in a trashcan at Rocky’s. I sat on boxes of vegetables in the cooler when the air conditioner broke at Rocky’s. I paid for college by working at Rocky’s. I have permanent calluses in the “L” between my pointer fingers and thumbs because I burned my hands every day at Rocky’s.

So am I too close to Rocky’s to write this review? You bet your sweet ass, I am. But one of us pizza-loving fucks has to do it, and since I’ve got some time to kill between now and when I go to work, here it goes:

The Good: Rocky’s is basically the best available chain in Wisconsin, as it straight annihilates Pizza Hut’s butt, Papa John’s john, and Domino’s moldy ball sack. But it used to be a venerable Madison institution, like Ian’s before Ian’s. But after it went corporate in the ‘80s, it lost some of its magic. It’s now basically the place where you take your mouth-breathing kids when they want to play arcade games (at least at the Madison locations that have games) and you don’t want to eat the gonorrhea on a crust that is a Chuck E. Cheese ‘za.

But still, the attention to pizza-making craft is on a higher level than that of other chains. The crust is hand-made, and the toppings are generally fresh and delicious.  The whole-wheat crust might be the best crust on earth, and their sausage is famous the world over (at least from Appleton to Milwaukee and La Crosse), but it’s really more of a meatball. I still get a laugh whenever I think about how all the corporate handbooks said the sausage had to be three fingers. That’s what she said, am I right, guys?

The Bad: The main problem with Rocky’s is the fact that any pizza you buy might be way too doughy and uncooked in the middle. That’s the perils of ordering a pizza that is about 12 pounds of dough. I could never understand how people could order zas from Rocky’s with 8 toppings, because even they had to know that shit wasn’t going to be cooked right. Plus the fact that I am writing this after taking a break to eat a ‘za from Pizza Extreme should tell you something: Rocky’s isn’t going to beat your local place. But then again, that’s coming from someone who has eaten way too much Rocky’s.

Try: I loved a slice called the Motherlode, which is a promotional slice that is available every once in a while, and features stuffed crust. Rocky’s stuffed crust is made with smoked mozzarella, which is basically the best. For non-promotional times, you can’t go wrong with an Uncle Sal’s on whole-wheat.

Rating: Less offensive to Italians than all of the Mario Games (minus Mario Party 5), but equally offensive to that dude named Big Pussy on The Sopranos.

I Didn't Eat At One Of These. Do They Actually Work?

Buffets are meant to increase the national obesity average, lower the overall hygienics of restaurant eating, and because of the powerful gold pole and long window company needed a market for their wares in the 1940s (look it up). And, let’s be adults here: Buffets exist because of fat people. It’s not like a svelte cross-country runner is going to find great happiness at a Golden Corral. No, it takes the kind of person who eats not until their body tells them to stop, but the kind of person who eats until their food starts coming out of their every orifice in petroleum jelly-consistency reams of sweat.

To my (somewhat) dismay, I am the target market for buffets. Tell me there’s a place where I can get bacon, French toast, steak, packets of jam, an omelet, mashed potatoes, more bacon, pizza, and food I can’t readily identify on a single plate, and I’ll be there, early grave be damned.

I mention this because this is precisely how I ended up in a strip mall in Monona, far outside the three square mile area where I play out my meager existence, at a place called Pizza Oven (try Googling it: it’s seriously impossible) nearly going face down into a plate full of pizza and breadsticks. I learned a very important lesson that day: Don’t go to a pizza buffet before working an eight hour shift stocking shelves at a big box store. You will have to take multiple bathroom breaks just to wipe the sweat out of your ass.

The Good: You’re not going to a pizza buffet because you like the pizza; you’re going to eat a shitload of food in a short period of time. Which is to say if quality mattered, Shakey’s would have been shut down 10 years ago. But the Pizza Oven pizza buffet pizza was actually pretty good; it was a middle ground between thin and hand-tossed, and the toppings were pretty okay (though the slice I ate with banana peppers tasted like death). The price was reasonable (like seven bucks), and because I went at a slow time (noon on a Monday), the waitress/cashier asked us what we liked, and they made fresh pies for us to eat about 10 minutes after we got there.

But what was totally unexpected was the sheer awesomeness of the breadsticks, which I can’t really describe in a way that doesn’t become a long riff on wiener-shaped bread products. Just know them shits are bomb, so if you ever end up at the Pizza Oven, put some of those bready dongs in between your teeth.

The Bad: Pizza Oven is the kind of place I imagine the guys I knew in high school who drove rusty pickups would take their girlfriends out on dates, because it’s got an area that can be charitably referred to as an arcade (though they do have dome hockey, which is the best arcade game of all time) and an area where consumption of Coors Light seems like a certainty (also known as a “bar”).

Thusly, the musical selection in the joint is programmed accordingly: All country, all the time. Obviously, this sucks (except for when a Taylor Swift song comes on, obviously, and by obviously I mean it’s very, very bad when a Taylor Swift song comes on), and sucks hard. My one character flaw is that I can’t enjoy stuffing my face if the soundtrack isn’t good. I mean, one of my favorite pizza eating memories is crushing a Little Caesar’s pizza while listening to the White Stripes’ Elephant for the first time, and Little Caesar’s is just the worst. And that time I ate at Mesa Pizza when they played The Blueprint from front-to-back was awesome as shit, too.

Plus the daytime environment is a little bit too business casual for me, since I felt like a deviant for wearing a Wu-Tang Clan t-shirt and making “that’s what she said jokes” with my roommate . Granted, we were seated next to a pregnant office worker and her clearly offended supervisor. Sorry ladies. I can’t help myself. It’s too hard. That’s what she said.

Try: Ignoring the fifth Brad Paisley song you heard in 20 minutes along with avoiding eating so much you feel like you might die of sauce-related infarctions the next day.

Rating: Snazzier than the Pizzazz, but less functional than those steel pizza ovens.

A Sign on the Door Says "You Can't Afford This"

If you know me, and you totally probably don’t, you know that I’m not exactly the type of bro who likes fine dining. To be quite honest, the best meals of my life were eaten at a shitty coffee table while I was dressed in sweatpants with a hole in the crotch and a Led Zeppelin T-shirt that fit better when my man-boobs were two cup sizes smaller. When I go to any restaurant where fried food isn’t the predominant foodstuff and Hall and Oates isn’t featured on the in-house stereo, I stick out like a white guy in a N.W.A. band photo.

So it’s with great surprise to my friends (primarily my roommate, who is a total dick, and  who claims I don’t know how to use a fork and knife) that I speak of the virtues of Paisan’s, basically the finest pizza joint in a city of hole-in-the-wall joints piled atop hole-in-the-wall joints. I mean, they have actual table cloths there, the floors and walls are made out of what looks to be very expensive wood, they’re in the bottom of a fancy place downtown and they have a lake front view. If you went to Paisan’s without knowing what they serve there, you’d assume they’d be serving some minimalist fusion of Polish and Vietnamese cuisine. Instead, they serve some of the crispiest thin crust in town.

The Good: Paisan’s is somehow able to have the best of both thick and thin crust, as the innards of their pizza are fluffier than a profile of Oprah in Oprah Magazine, while the outside is crunchy and delicate. The toppings are top notch, and the cheese is probably some of the best tasting I’ve ever had. Plus the awesome ability to gawk at people out on the lake while you go face down in a large sausage (that’s what she said) cannot be understated: It’s totally jawesome. (Obviously I am a professor of all things view-related.) Paisan’s used to be in a strip mall near the university; so obviously, the new place is a huge upgrade. It’s like when Tom Brady went from that pregnant actress to that one model (except without the being a total dick thing).

The Bad: To get a large pizza at Paisan’s, you have to take out a second mortgage on your house, or like me, you have to whore yourself out to 30 women for a dollar each or charge a half a woman $60. Seriously, the reason Paisan’s can afford the rent on their Wilson Street location (it sits between John Nolen and Wilson Street, which means got an incredible, 270-degree view of Lake Monona) is because people have to resort to contract murder to afford to eat at the place. It’s like $25 for a 14 inch pizza, which maybe doesn’t seem like much, but for the same price you can get like 10 pizzas at Gumby’s or three pizzas at Pizza Extreme. Though Paisan’s is terribly resplendent.

Try: A large sausage and roni is my fave, but the vegetables are also a top draw, since those are fresh and delicious (peep the onions, especially, since they come standard on every pizza unless you ask for them to be removed). For appetizers, try their bombass spicy cheese bread, which will reduce even the brawniest of men to weeping bitches.

Rating: Five out of five iPods.*

*- That’s a 30 Rock reference, because like Paisan’s, that show is beloved by upper-middle class whites, and ignored by everyone else.

Is Pokey giving Gumby a handy? I'd bet so.

Like the green rubbered fellow that gives the place its namesake, Gumby’s Pizza in Madison has seen better days. Which is basically like a nice way of saying it’s a shitpile, but still; when I went there recently, they had just been raided by the local Pepsi distributor who took all of their Pepsi back due to delinquent bills. The dude working there said it was because corporate didn’t pay a bill (it apparently had nothing to do with him), which is pretty gnarly to think about, since Pepsi apparently has collection people who will come and yank out soda fountains at the drop of a hat. Plus they didn’t actually have pans to serve the pizza on, so we ate ours right out of the box. They did have paper plates at least. But even the fucking stone Gumby they have in there is torn the hell up. Seriously, he looks less put together than Lil Wayne.

But the fact that I had to drink warm tap water out of a sink in back didn’t prevent the place from having some kind of charm; it’s basically the stereotypical stoner delight that can’t really exist elsewhere in Wisconsin. The dude working the oven seemed stoned. The guy working the counter seemed stoned. And they actually laughed about how bad their customer service is, while still seeming somewhat embarrassed about the whole no soda, no pan thing. If it was a Pizza Hut chain in Stevens Point, someone would have shut it down years ago for it being a dump. In Madison, this place could be a local favorite for years.

It somehow went from being horrifically awful to being kind of charming. It’s nice when the guy running the place takes a break from his cigarette break (which happens right on the balcony that overlooks State Street) to ask if he can get you anything else. It’s even better when he pours you a refill of warm tap water out of the sink in back in between laughing at how he can’t understand why anyone would eat there.

The Good: The price, mainly, which is really cheap. There was some kind of deal we got that involved getting a menu item of lesser value for free if you buy a large pizza. To be honest, I never quite got the specifics of the deal because the monumentally stoned delivery driver kept interrupting and making the whole thing seem like they were making shit up as they went along. Which is probably half true. So we got a large pizza and a large order of Pokey Stix for like $15.

The best menu item is the Pokey Stix, which are named after Gumby’s horse/sexual partner (seriously, they had to be fucking each other, right? I mean, who lives with a horse for their whole life and isn’t fucking/being fucked by said horse? Matthew Broderick? HO!). Basically, they’re Toppers Stix with a shit ton of garlic. Which makes them way awesome. The only problem is the whole shitting gallons of garlic six to eight hours after consumption.

The Bad: Gumby’s Pizza (which is apparently a full chain, though I’d never heard of it until I moved here) comes from a sub-genus of pizza I affectionately call the “Hot Garbage Genus.” This pizza fits all the qualities that you expect from pizza (it’s reasonably warm, has cheese, some kind of meat/sauce) but it’s basically garbage. There is a time and place for Hot Garbage pizza, and most of those times involve being broke and/or drunk and/or having no taste buds. Gumby’s is solidly in the middle of the Hot Garbage Genus, slotting somewhere above Pizza Hut, Pizza Pit and Papa John’s, but somewhere below Topper’s (contrary to popular belief, Domino’s doesn’t fit in this genus; it belongs to the “Actual Shit” genus).

Try: The Pokey Stix. And getting a medium Pepsi. It sounds like I’m harping on that point, but I ended up not caring; it was just really, really sad. Going to Gumby’s is like watching an old porn star film a scene; the motions of a pizza place are there, they’re just not able to finish on your face.

Rating: Equal to actually having to watch an episode of Gumby.