“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

Think about some of the most significant movies to ever come out of Hollywood and it becomes clear that one common thread ties them all together: The indisputable cinematic importance of pizza. Sure, everyone can pinpoint the classics like the unforgettable French bread pizza scene in Gone with the Wind, Brando’s timeless deep-dish pizza monologue at the end of On The Waterfront, and that part in Bad Lieutenant where Harvey Keitel whacks off on some chick’s car and then gets a slice. But pizza has permeated so many levels of the film industry that DoZ is setting out to finally get pizza all the credit it deserves by examining some of the most pivotal pizza scenes ever created.

Home Alone (1990, PG)

This holiday blockbuster plants our hero, Kevin McCallister, right in the middle of the titular predicament. The plot would have you believe that his bad attitude is to blame for his being left out of the family trip to France. But really it was that dickhole Buzz’s fault. After no one bothered to save any plain cheese for Kevin, Buzz very rudely suggests someone is going to have to “barf it up” if Kevin is to get any. This, of course, leads to Kevin charging at Buzz, milk being spilled on the plane tickets, and one ticket being thrown away. What’s the lesson here? Hog all the plain cheese and the Wet Bandits will attack an unattended child.

She’s All That (1999, PG-13)

Apologies for the long-ass clip, but I’ll include time marks for the most crucial sections. In this Cinderella story, Laney Boggs and her chode brother Simon are the biggest losers in school until taken under the wing (albeit for alternative motives) of senior class king Zack Siler. Here, Zack proves his worthiness by defending an unexplainably rollerblading and pepper-dispensing Simon from the Sherminator and an unnamed Vietnam vet, who intend to have him eat pizza with pubic hair on it. First, the Sherminator digs deep into his huge raver pants for a handful of pubes (3:19) and moments later he’s humiliated as the coolest kid in school forces him to “Hoover it,” complete with monster close-up (4:33). Even the shittiest pizza doesn’t deserve pube toppings, but if you had to, would you rather eat a famous person’s pubes or your own?

Cobra (1986, R)
 

Without a clip, you’ll have to take my word for it and settle for this really nice music video. But as you can see, Cobra uncoils a gritty cop narrative about Marion Cobretti, a one-man justice machine whose vigilante ways draws constant criticism from his superiors. In one of the most baffling scenes, Cobretti sits down to clean his gun and scarf a slice of leftover ‘za. But before he can eat it, he has to snip the tip off with a pair of office scissors. Some people would say that circumcising your pizza is a waste of time, but this just serves to further prove that Cobra is his own man and he’ll do things however he sees fit, no matter what those pencil pushers down at the precinct think of him or how much of a dipshit it makes him look like.

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.

At the recommendation of DoZ reader Adam, I found myself pestering my friends to bring me to a downtown Giordano’s location when I was in Chicago last weekend. Like almost everything else in Chicago, the famous pizzeria chain had a line out the ass and the occasional self-important fuckface who threatened everyone’s enjoyment of the experience. But — also like Chicago — Giordano’s Pizza also had enough great and impressive things incorporated to make it well worth the time, excess money and inevitable frustration expended in the process.

Saturday, after a short bus ride, a trip on the L in which the monotone P.A. utterance of “Nature Center” made me laugh like a moron, and a 10-block hike that found my host tripping a bunch and stepping in dog shit, we arrived at the crowded corner eatery as visions of deep dish danced in our heads. Obviously, there was a 20-minute wait, but we were able to place our order (a large pepperoni and mushroom-stuffed deep dish) at the counter immediately, making up for the delay.

THE GOOD: Holy shitballs, the pizza was cheesy. It strung off each slice –almost comically so — and would, at times, clog your throat with its unwillingness to separate. It was like auto-erotic asphyxiation in pizza form. David Carradine would’ve loved the place. Beyond that, the sauce was both abundant and zesty; the toppings were plentiful, the crust was fluffy and the mushrooms were fresh.

At one point, I made my friend laugh, and she totally spat all over the five remaining slices of stuffed pizza. The pizza was so good, I didn’t even care. I still ate two more pieces. And for the price ($24), three people left uncomfortably full.

THE BAD: Giordano’s is kind of chain-ey. That makes sense, it being a 55-restaurant chain and all, but I felt like I was sitting down for a Xtreme Jack Daniel’s Fajita Shooter at an outlet mall T.G.I. Friday’s instead of renowned stuffed pizza in downtown Chicago. Kitsch “art” and iconic re-prints were a plenty. Hoards of breeders with kids in tow, and a fanny-packed guild of obvious tourists (such as myself) crowded the dining room. Names of famous people with Chicago ties were painted on the beams and wall’s borders. We sat in a Jim Belushi-adjacent booth, which was 10 times more disgusting to me than eating someone’s spit was.

The worst aspect of the restaurant was, without question, the service. The crowded, overtly-affable pizzeria it is, it’s obvious the place is busy as shit. But the host called us up to claim out table, and literally yelled at our group for arriving exactly three seconds after he said “last call.” Dude was a total dickfive (one larger than a  dickfore) to us. Doesn’t he know how difficult to negotiate your way through a narrow hallway when it’s stuffed with fat people from Indiana holding shopping bags? Admittedly, our server was very nice though.

TRY: Get the stuffed pizza. Chicago is one of the most unique and reputable pizza locales in the world. Sure, Giordano’s is a chain with a more standardized take on Chicago-style deep dish, but if you find yourself in the joint, you’d better not get a fucking Hot Chicken Ranch Sandwich.

RATING: A Hurricane Ditka of deliciousness.

Not that there’s anything wrong with dim lighting. There are plenty of times when a more intimate setting would be appropriate. Like if I was having dinner with a nice lady instead of a dude friend. Anyway, T. Mar and I got a table and commenced with the romancing.

In addition to pizza, their menu features a wide variety of pastas and salads, as well as a few steak and seafood options. As for the pizza, they offer four different kinds of crust: Thin, Virgin, Deep Dish, and Stuffed. The stuffed crust za was recommended, so we went straight to that. We decided to go all out and get the veggie, featuring mushrooms, onions, green peppers, black olives and tomatoes. The wait for stuffed crust is a little longer (the menu states 25 minutes, but I don’t think it was quite that long), so we ordered some Lakefront brews and settled in.

I hate when the waiter sneaks up on you

When I think of “stuffed crust,” I think of cheese in the crust. Tenuta’s stuffed crust takes that definition a bit differently, essentially wrapping the entire pizza in crust. It was an impressive beast we had before us, and I don’t think we had any hope of finishing the entire thing.

THE GOOD: The pizza was much larger than either of us had expected. Which was good, since the veggie stuffed crust was more than $20, and we definitely felt like we were getting our money’s worth. All of the toppings (more accurately “fillings” in this case) tasted extremely fresh. Our waiter was definitely not one of those creepy white things from The Descent and had the entire beer list memorized.

Leftovers

TRY: If you’re going with the stuffed crust, I would recommend adding extra sauce and/or extra cheese to your pie. I mean, the pizza was good as it was, but it would have been a lot better with something to help cancel out the excess crust. The stuffed crust was an intimidating pie that two grown Doctors of Za couldn’t even manage eat finish half of, so maybe don’t go with the large unless you have a bigger group. Or if you have some sort of death wish.

I will definitely be returning to Tenuta’s at some point to try their other pizza varieties. I think I would prefer to get it as take-out and spare myself from the awkward romantic lighting thing. Unless it’s, you know, an actual date-type situation. Ladies?

RATING: Like going spelunking and not getting brutally murdered by strange cave creatures.

What's that thing hanging from his neck?

Or maybe it’s the other way around and Moosejaw respects animals so much that they find a use for every piece of their carcasses.

“Oh great deer! We honor you by having your head stuffed and making a coat rack out of your hooves, so that you will know you did not die in vain.”

“Oh noble raccoon! We celebrate your soul by making a hat out of your face and placing it atop the head of a dignified bear who we also shot in the face.”

Even the name of the restaurant mentions something ripped off a moose’s head. But regardless if this grizzly funhouse of preserved animal parts stands in homage to the spirit of the wild or in mockery of it, it certainly helps to distract from the pizza, which is pretty butt. Certainly the cheese is chewy and the sauce is bland, but this pizza’s overall woes mostly stem from being boring. And that doesn’t help it stand out amidst the waking Northwoods nightmare that engulfs each diner’s now-shattered soul in a purgatory of mammal humiliation.

So instead of languishing upstairs, make your way to basement, where fun knows no bounds.

The good: I had a ping-pong table in my basement growing up and that was mega tits. But compared to the downstairs at Moosejaw, those tits look like a big pile of shit. The claw game filled with Simpsons characters, the Guitar Hero machine, and the walls made of beer cans would already be enough. But this place won’t stop until your pants are drenched with piss from all the excitement. A real arcade that doesn’t make you trade tickets for worthless shit, it was enough to make this old man long for his youth.

The bad: The pizza elicits many a “meh” and “bleh” from even the most forgiving. This probably sounds crazy/beautiful, but next time I’m there, I think I’ll just order a sandwich or a burger or something.

Try: An official brewpub, Moosejaw whips up some pretty tasty suds. One thing that was always missing from arcades I used to frequent was the ability to make and sell their own beer. If you go in the winter, pound a few Scotch ales, a meaty beer that will warm your bones and choke slam your liver.

Rating: Big Buck Hunter pro hunting video arcade game.

In Slice of Life, we outsource the

Our inaugural edition finds us talking to Aaron Vold. Beyond drumming for Decibully — one of the state’s most accomplished and beloved bands — Vold is also a pizza connoisseur. When he wasn’t busy playing in support of his band’s latest record, World Travels Fast (available at pay-what-you want digital download HERE), he was gracious enough to answer a few questions for us.

What are your favorite Wisconsin pizza places? 
I’m from Racine originally and we are home to some of the best thin crust pies known to mankind. Wells Bros, Infusino’s, certain DeRango’s, Mike and Angelo’s formerly Butch’s now Bernie’s. In Milwaukee my vote is for Mama DeMarini’s, never been around the corner to the other one though. I lived in Madison for a couple years and the Glass Nickel is where you want to go for quality ‘za but if you have a four AM hole in your stomach the Pokey Stix from Gumby’s will pull you through. We’ve also had the pleasure of playing Cranky Pat’s in Neenah a handful of times and they slice a circle into little squares like you wouldn’t believe. 

You’ve toured across the U.S., as well as parts of Europe and Asia. What are some of the best or more interesting pizzas you’ve consumed during your travels?
The pizza wasn’t that great, necessarily, but after our first show in Germany, we went out to a Discotheque to drink and dance the night away. Eventually I tired of the throbbing bass and drunkenly wandered back towards our sleeping quarters for the evening. Along the way I encountered an open pizzeria and stopped in for a late night slice. I came out and realized I had no idea where I was, but luckily Kenny came along moments later and we got back to where we needed to be, eating pizza the whole way. 

If you had to liken a specific pizza to your newest album what would it be? 
I couldn’t pick a specific pizza, but rather, I would compare it to Stonefire Pizza Buffet as it has a little bit of something for everyone, you can have as much or as little as you like for a very reasonable price, and you know at the end of the day you will emerge satisfied. 

Your band’s singer, Will Seidel, told Shepherd Express that World Travels Fast is an album about growing up. What’s the most grown-up pizza you can think of for a grown-ass man like yourself?
I think for a grown ass man such as myself the only pizza that is truly appropriate is one which features as many meats as the crust can hold. Sausage, Pepperoni, Bacon, Ham, Chicken, Venison, Whatever. No vegetables allowed, Cholula — or other Mexican hot sauce — strongly encouraged. 

Last summer, Abu’s ownership changed hands, and immediately updated its menu with everybody’s favorite Mid-East delicacy — weird pizza.

As a lover of both Middle Eastern cuisine and pizza, I knew I had to try this. I finally made the always-annoying drive down Farwell and — somehow resisting getting a breakfast burrito and beermosa from nearby Comet instead — stepped into Abu’s to have my kind-of-gross-looking pizza cherry torn asunder. With only two heat-lamp wilted pizzas to choose from, I opted for a slice of Chicken Shawerma Pizza, which the menu describes to be “Chicken Shawerma, tomatoes, parsley, mozzarella cheese with Abu’s Tahini Olive Oil and Garlic Sauce.”

THE GOOD: Despite my weathered, end-of-lunch rush slice looking like the pizza equivalent of one of those stay at home moms who goes tanning all the time, the crust/bottom really held up well. In that sense, it was unlike any other pizza I’ve eaten. It was buttery and crispy, but crumbled in the most delightful way when chewed. It was like a warm English muffin had an affair with an authentic French Baguette and they had a baby. Then the baby grew up to be really hot, dressed slutty all the time and fucked the entire high school baseball team. And you were on the high school baseball team. 

Beyond that, I thought the unorthodox sauce was tasty and unique… though it didn’t help in reminding me I was apparently eating pizza. And for $2.99/slice or — better yet — $9.99 for an entire 16” pizza with your choice of toppings, any of Abu’s pizza is worth the gamble. Also, they exclusively carry Lo-Carb Monster, which is the best thing on the planet, as their only energy drink.

THE BAD: I feel like I got a raw deal with my slice being reminiscent of a dried up old cooch that was breathed on by an old man with gingivitis then put in the dryer for 45 minutes, but the chicken looked and tasted rather unappetizing. It was brownish-black and ranged from rubbery to dry. The tomatoes retained their taste a bit better, but (again, due to the heat lamp overexposure) looked like some kind of anal-sex-related mishap. And as an owner of teeth, I found the presence of parsley was just more annoying than anything. 

TRY: Falafel plate with a side of Hummos. For those of you with little exposure to Middle Eastern food, it is the cat’s pajamas. I’d agree to fuck a bowl of pudding on film to be shown at all of my future Menasha High School reunions if I was promised free Middle Eastern for life. And Abu’s is allegedly the state’s oldest restaurant serving Middle Eastern food… so they must be doing something right. For people who like Middle Eastern cuisine, but also enjoy pizza… the Za warrants a try too, mostly because it’s cheap and a bit off the beaten path. And I’d assume it’s significantly better when fresh.

RATING: I’m pretty sure I made this face the entire time I was eating my slice.

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.