A short rant about mediocrity and Madison.

There are those days where I get mad at the city I currently live in. I'm not from here, but I do take some pride in my adopted home. I was far beyond proud when my fellow Wisconsinites took to the streets this past February to protest the heavy-handed, short-sighted, and downright mean policies of an incoming governor. I'm proud to live in a state that loves its cheese heritage and craft beers. I love that I live in a city of 230,000-plus, yet I can drive 20 minutes to the west and fish for brown trout in a fast-moving stream in the middle of nowhere. I love not living amongst a sea of strip malls and used car lots like I did down in suburban Illinois. I do like it here.

What I get angry about is the fact that, while Madison, Wisconsin is said to have the highest number of restaurants per capita of any American city over 200,000 people, it has A LOT of mediocre food. There is an abundance of chain stores here, but there are plenty of locally owned establishments as well, and some of them are quite good. But, the food culture here seems stunted, as if there is no real sense of identity. Again, please don't get me wrong, there is good food to be had, but for every L'Etoile and Shinji Muramoto, there's twenty or thirty Samba's or Parthenon Gyros.

What has set me off was a trip to Chicago this past weekend. Some friends and I celebrated a birthday at Fogo de Chao in the Loop. It's part of a Brazilian steak house chain that opened in Brazil in the late seventies and now has sixteen restaurants around the U.S., mostly in major cities. The experience was amazing! The meat never stopped! It was quality food, tasty drinks, excellent service, a wine list that wins awards, and an upbeat atmosphere. It wasn't cheap, mind you, (a date night could easily set you back $200+,) but it was well worth it.

Here in Madison, we have Samba. It's owned by a couple who also own several other restaurants and a couple of liquor stores and are taking turns serving time in prison for tax evasion! The last time I was there, (also for a friend's birthday,) the lamb was game-y, some of the other meats weren't very well cooked or spiced, the salad bar was pretty good, the drinks were ok, and the service absolutely sucked. All of this and I only paid $10 less for the meal than I did for Fogo de Chao.

I'm not sure I have anything constructive to say about Madison's food scene at the moment. There are quality restaurants here and places I love, but some folks here have an attitude that the scene here is on par with Chicago, and I'm here to tell you...it's not. I'm going to sleep on this one and we'll see if I have anything more to say about this issue. /rant

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.