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.
