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| - I'm in Wisconsin for a month for business and the first place I intended to go was Ians, based purely on Yelp. I've gone to a few other places but finally decided to go down to see Camp Randall and get some Ians and see if it really is what many people call the best pizza in Madison. I arrived and despite the fact that the shop was practically empty was ignored for about 10 minutes by the guy making the pizzas. Yes he obviously saw me but didn't so much as say "Be with you in a second" or anything. Some young college students came in and a girl came out and waited on them promptly. It was as if they knew I was from Columbus and Buckeyes were second class citizens or something! I even joked about this later and they did not find it funny. Despite me talking about how highly they were rated and the like they pretty much were very standoffish and very unwilling to talk. Ok, so much for customer service, but hey even the best food places can have totally rude help if the food makes up for it right?
Well not here my friends. I had one slice of the famous mac and cheese pizza. I LOVE Mac and Cheese and I love Pizza so it seemed like a hard thing to mess up...but it was not what I thought it could have been. Looking at pictures on Yelp the recurring thing I kept thinking by looking at the Mac and Cheese pizza slices is how dry they looked. I hoped that once I bit into it that there would be cheese sauce or something that would prove me wrong. But the slices just looked dry and not very cheesy at all. However, photos can be deceptive, it's the taste that matters. Well biting into the Mac and Cheese pizza I realized all of my worst fears. It was tasty macaroni but the slice was very dry and did not taste cheesy in the least. This is not Mac and Cheese pizza so much as Mac and dough pizza. As you can see from my picture I sprinkled a dash of hot sauce at the end at the advice of the woman at the counter. I found out why after tasting the slice that she recommended I do that, because it added some much needed moistness and taste to the slice.
The bottom line is that I threw away about 30% of the slice. I *NEVER* throw out food, you can ask my girlfriend and/or look at my waistline for proof of that, heh. But that indeed is what I did in this case. In hindsight I guess I should have just coated the whole slice in the hot sauce (which was great tasting hot sauce btw) but I didn't want to dilute the purity of the taste of it by doing so and skew my review. I really wonder if maybe you do have to be kind of drunk and in the moment at 2am for this pizza to taste good because to me it made me question how this place stays in business. It's certainly not their friendly employees or their tasty food if the Mac and Dough...er Mac and Cheese slice, is any representation.
To be fair Ians does have a LOT of other combinations and I'll bet if I were to try some others I'd be much more impressed but at $3.50 a slice I'm not going to be trying that anytime soon. Honestly if I lived here I'd probably give them one more chance and that'd be about it. Maybe I'm too old, maybe I'm too much of a pizza traditionalist or maybe Ians just is highly overrated.
After throwing the last part of my slice away I got into my car and drove back over to Pizza Di Roma, a place that has vastly superior pizza in my opinion. Sorry Ians, you may be a landmark but you're not on my places to visit if I return to Madison anytime soon!
P.S. - One reason I waited to try this place for so long is I knew it was on campus and I wondered if there'd be a place to park within reasonable walking distance. There are plenty of places to park in front of the building (about 8 to 10) but they are all metered so have your change ready. So don't let the fact they are on campus stop you from visiting here if you do want to give them a try.
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