A Town Without Pizza

A new pizza place opened up around the corner from us near the dry cleaners and I was all jazzed about it because we cannot find a decent pizza in this town. Then a few nights ago MDH picked up his dry cleaning and stopped in to pick up a menu. I'm no longer jazzed. I'm actually a little angry.

The place features specialties pies like these:

Polski Pizza:
Kielbasa, sauerkraut, bacon, and onion.

The Grand Coney:
Coney sauce, cheddar cheese, chopped hot dogs, onions, jalapenos, and lightly topped with mustard.

Sauerkraut? Are you kidding me with this shit?

They have normal pizzas and subs on the menu, but I will never order from this place out of sheer repulsion from the image they have burned on my mind's eye of what could possibly be the worst ideas for pizzas ever.

I crumbled the menu and threw it directly in the garbage, where it remained until I realized it might make a good blog post and I dug it out again.

It's back in the trash now.

We haven't really found any pizza we love in the nearly four years that we have lived here. The most decent place we've found is still not quite right. The crust is crispy and has air bubbles, but it has too much flour on it and the sauce is too sweet.

If you live in West Michigan and are planning to send me pizza suggestions - I bet you we've tried it already. But please don't stop, we'll keep trying.

So far our pizza favorites here are Bushy's, an Italian dude with a knack for bubbly crust (mentioned above), but a loud mouthed Bush supporter, and Rude Man's. Rude Man will only deliver to us on slow nights and only if MDH calls (MDH is scary persuasive and they know he's a huge tipper) because we are slightly outside of his delivery range.

We also find ourselves ordering pickup and waiting around in the hellish parking lot of Pizzaria Uno sometimes if we're really feeling desperate. But it's not the same as finding your favorite local pizza joint.

In Victorian Village, our neighborhood in Columbus, we had a place nearby called Adriadicos that delivered a mountainous Sicilian style pie that was a delicious work of greasy art.

There was also available a breed of pizza that I miss terribly and that I'm pretty sure is unique to the Midwest and Columbus in particular - the crunchy thin corn meal dusted crust, cut into squares or rectangles instead of triangles, with very spicy sauce and crispy spicy pepperoni. Donatos (a local chain) specializes in this type of pizza with smoked provolone instead of mozzarella.

I like Donato's fine, but because I'm from the East side of Columbus I prefer a place called Massey's. Their pizzas will make fire shoot out of your ass the next day but it's totally worth the suffering. It also tastes great leftover and cold right out of the fridge. (Picture above of the classic Massy's).

MDH, being from the East Coast and half Italian thinks square cut pizzas are just plain wrong (unless they are Sicilian style). He goes on something fierce about the crime of square cuts and how triangle cuts are the best because they can be folded up. Blah, blah, blah.

Whatever buddy.

A pie is a pie and it gets to my belly the same way no matter how it's sliced - through my pie hole. So shut yours Mr. Man and just enjoy.

We don't bother to get bagels anymore either because they suck here too.

You know what you can get here? Hot dogs. Yeah, hot dogs. There's a buttload of hot dog restaurants here. Three that I can think of off the top of my head that are within walking distance from our house.

That's weird right?

Although it goes far to explain the Grand Coney pizza, there's still no excuse for it. I don't even want to know about the sauerkraut one.