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| - When I was visiting Madison and deciding whether I was willing to live here, I met a father-son duo equally interested in the campus tour. Once I sufficiently ascertained that they were from Madison, I asked them what I had been waiting to ask of a Madison native: where's the best pizza?
It's not a question that one has answered simply, definitively, and firmly, but I was impressionable and they rattled off a few: mainly Ian's, Glass Nickel, and Buck's. Knowing what I know now, this was a decent response--those were perhaps the staples of Madison, with perhaps some nuance of preference mixed in. It took a while to get to Buck's--they're farther from downtown and it was clearly the odd man out of the lot.
Buck's pizza has the bready consistency of Roman Candle, the cheesy consistency of Glass Nickel (without the taste), and very pasty sauce. It's an uncomfortably greasy pie that is served in a bag. Perhaps this is some sort of tradition but it is now a novelty or gimmick that just makes little sense next to the functionality of pizza boxes. They cut their pie in a tiny grid, but perhaps our guy was new because the grid was not parallel, not cut all the way through, and really, who functionally eats pizza in rectangles the size of credit cards? Its ingredients tasted on par with Pizza Hut and its style was on par with frozen food aisle pizza.
I'm on a pizzaquest for the best pie in Madison. I've had a few great ones, and there are some that I won't touch (thanks, Yelp), but I hope this was just an off day at Buck's because it was easily a pizza I would like to forget. It gives me no pleasure to write this, but I need you to know how hard it is for me to give up on a pizza, and that Buck's made it happen.
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