I spend most of my time reorganizing shelves at a big box store, which is to say I spend most of my time trying to entertain my co-workers with my near perfect memory of the lyrics to 50 Cent’s “In Da Club” (my strength is the first verse), my flawless singing of the Miley Cyrus songbook and my hilarious tales of “being a writer” at a big box store. One evening recently, one of my 14 supervisors, a no-nonsense dude who I won’t name here, upon hearing my tale of writing for a pizza review site, had this to say:

“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? Read more »

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. Read more »

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. Read more »

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.

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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. Read more »

Phallic symbol extreme!

www.pizzaextreme.biz

What does it take to go viral? Easy answer is a communicable disease like HIV or HPV. But what if you’re not talking about spreading an infection of the body? Instead you’re talking about spreading an infection of the collective conscious. Well, the criteria for successfully globalizing your message is most easily ascertained from the latest stupid bullshit that everyone is blabbing about around the water cooler: “Pants on the Ground,” by “General” Larry Platt, the latest in a long line of mentally handicapped people exploited made famous by American Idol.

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I used to have a long-running argument with an ex-friend about how, while pizza as we know it may have been “created” in America, it wasn’t inaccurate to call it Italian, because it was the Italian immigrants who made it here, not those dirty potato eating Irish. But he was stupid, so he said it didn’t matter that Italians in America made it, it was only American cuisine. Apparently his definition of what makes food of a certain culture is similar to how South American countries view territory disputes (look that shit up, I don’t have time to explain that metaphor here).

Why did I bring up a fight I had with a douche I don’t even talk to any more? Well, because Pizza di Roma, one of the less reputable pizza joints on Madison’s State Street, unlike about every other pizza place in Madison save Paisan’s, is 100% about referencing Italy. I mean, they’ve got Roma in the fucking name. Plus a prerequisite to working there seems to be that you have to be Italian (or at least Mexican) and have a love of hair oil and Italian soccer team t-shirts. Which probably makes Pizza di Roma the most authentic pizza joint in all of Madison. That is if you have a logical definition of what makes for “authentic” Italian pizza. Read more »

Urbandictionary.com features a definition of a pizza slut as “a girl that works at Pizza Hut who gets fucked a lot by different men.” There’s even a mock dialogue added for clarification:

Employee: Let me stuff your crust, Pizza Slut.

Pizza Slut: Ok!

Pretty rough, especially since I consider myself a bit of a pizza slut and I’m neither a woman nor a former Pizza Hut employee. It seems there are enough patrons of Ian’s Pizza in Madison that feel the same way, enough to warrant an Ian’s “Pizza Slut” t-shirt, anyways. And Ian’s has the kind of pizza that is definitely worth hoeing it up for. Read more »

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. Read more »