College town=Mecca of Pizza

In the spirit of fairness, I think I should provide a disclaimer for this post.

Disclaimer: I was born in the city of Chicago. I was raised in the northwest suburbs. I grew up having a very narrowly defined view of what pizza should be. As I have traveled about, that view has slowly changed. But...I still have my opinions.

I love pizza. I was raised on the stuff. There was a pizza place just up the block from my parents first apartment together when I was an infant. It was a "family" run Italian pizza joint called Nancy's, (which is now a chain in Chicago and the suburbs.) When we moved out of the city and into the suburbs, their were three pizza restaurants that would come to dominate my childhood, two great pizza places and a mediocre one. The great one's were Village Pizza in Carpentersville and Bill's Pizza in Mundelein. Both of these restaurants were and still are institutions in their respective areas. Both were old school, plank wood floored, shabby supper club chic with peanut shells strewn about. The pizzas were as close to divinity as one could get. And...they WERE NOT Chicago-style deep dish pizzas! If I wanted deep dish, I did the traditional route: Lou Malnati's, Pizzeria Uno, (NOT the chain!) or Giordiano's. Bill's and Village Pizza were different. They served thin crust pizzas that were just as good sitting down in their restaurants as they were sitting down at your dining room table. The mediocrity came in the form of Rosati's Pizza. There's one here in Madison, and they are a chain. The one I went to was in Lake in the Hills, Illinois (I lived there throughout high school) and it wasn't very good...unless you had a six pack of MGD or a dime bag worth of weed in you, then it was greasy, greasy deliciousness!

All this being said, I'm a bit disappointed with pizza here in Madison.

I do understand that Madison is much more than just a college town. This city has an identity all its own without the university. But, it still is a college town and it's missing something as far as pizza is concerned: an institution.

I'm not saying that Madison has nothing but bad pizza. That would simply be untrue. Madison has some very good pizza. What it doesn't have, however, is GREAT pizza. We do not have a mecca of pizza that nearly every college town I've ever been to has. I had asked friends on Facebook living here in Madison to name their favorite pizza place. I got the answers I pretty much expected: Glass Nickel, Ian's, Roman Candle, Falbo's, Pizza Brutta. These are all good choices for pizza, but they're not GREAT. I also noticed that quite a few people named more than one restaurant, and even a few named individual pizzas as well: the feta-licious at Glass Nickel, or the mac-n-cheese pizza at Ian's. But Madison has no great pizza mecca that everyone points to when talking about the best pizza in town.

And so, my fellow Madisonians, I put another question to you: do you agree with my assessment of Madison pizza AND, if you do agree, why do you think this is so?

The pizza-gods await your input.