What do you want on that pizza? The most hotly debated question on campus has never been sufficiently answered. Far too often, pizza-lovers compromise by finding toppings that everyone can stand, stifling their ability to test new and exciting combinations. Ever try to order pizza with a vegetarian? You end up eating a lot of cheese pizza, my friend.
But not anymore! Reader, I have found a vegetarian pizza that omnivores and herbivores alike can enjoy. The Monkey, located at 22 E. Frambes Ave., has a margherita pizza that easily ranks as one of the finest pizza tastes in town.
This campus gem comes topped with sautéed plum tomatoes, garlic, basil, romano and mozzarella cheese. The delicious crust is hand-tossed, somewhere between a cracker-thin and grease sponge consistency. The sauce and toppings are light and flavorful, leaving you full but not immobile. Next time you’re in the mood to try something new on your pizza, I highly recommend you give this winner a try.
My faithful wingman Jarrod tried the stuffed-meat pizza and lived to say, “Heart attack or your money back. This pizza made the box fall apart because of all the grease. I had to hold it from underneath or the bottom would’ve given way. You get a lot of food for your $16.75.”
The Monkey describes it as two layers of dough crust stuffed with five different meats, extra cheese and sauce. The description seems designed especially to appeal to stoners, like Jarrod, who are helpless to resist the siren song of five meats and extra cheese.
Now when it comes to walk-in pizza, you can certainly beat The Monkey. I live nearby, and one time made the mistake to just wander in and ask for a sausage and fungus. Want to hear a secret and a lie? Shhh, it was great!
Seriously though, the mushrooms looked and tasted like they had been dipped out of a cold can directly onto my pizza. Nothing made me want to choke The Monkey more than paying two bucks for a bad slice of pizza. Avoid the hassle by having them deliver (291-3667).
The Monkey offers a very wide range of dishes from chicken fettuccini alfredo to enigmatic sweet monkey balls. In an effort to fully experience the restaurant, we sampled a number of their entrees and appetizers.
The chicken fettuccini alfredo was the worst I’ve ever had. The noodles were overcooked, the sauce was bland and slimy, and the chicken was dry and unimpressive. Hell, for $7.99 I could have bought about 56 packs of ramen noodles and eaten like a king for weeks. The alfredo was so bad that I recommend all my readers avoid The Monkey’s white sauce at all costs.
My co-masticator Brian, tried the pepperoni calzone and had this to say: “The calzone here is always good. Warm, gooey ricotta and mozzarella cheese in a crispy crust and fresh pepperoni slices.”
I tried a bite and wholeheartedly agree. The amount of cheese packed into one of these four-buck beauties is a marvel of modern engineering.
The fried mushrooms were warm and delicious, provided you ate them while they were still warm. There are few tastes more disgusting than cold, slippery, mushrooms that have sat out for a couple hours uneaten.
The pizza fries enjoyed a similarly short-lived glory. Eaten while warm, the pizza fries at best tasted like mediocre chili cheese fries. Left to congeal for a few moments, one is left with a cold mess suffering from bad cheese distribution and an unappealing taste and texture.
Readers, if you can help it, try to keep your mouth off the sweet monkey balls. These chocolate or strawberry pastries resemble fried donut holes yet cost a good deal more at 40 cents apiece. The taste and texture are just too mediocre to warrant that kind of price markup.
Pizza lovers would do well to try the margherita, stuffed meat or pepperoni calzone and see if they don’t find a new favorite. In closing, here’s a question for all my faithful readers: Who’s got the best (or worst) pizza around campus and why?
Hank Mylander is a junior from Westerville majoring in Management Information Systems. He was, is, and always will be a firm believer that Iron Chef Chinese, Chen Kenichi, is without a doubt the best Iron Chef ever. Thanks for reading my bio line. The masticator can be reached at [email protected].
