Paisan's - Madison, WI

One day a few weeks ago, I was telling my next door neighbor that I would soon be going up to Madison for a business trip.  She began to tell me about a place that I wasn't familiar with - Paisan's Italian Restaurant.  She said, "Oh, my gosh, they have good pizza and they have this sandwich - the Garibaldi!  Oh!  It's to die for!"  My neighbor can be a little overly dramatic at times, but the conviction in her voice told me that I probably needed to stop at Paisan's during that part of my trip.

The original Paisan's (of course, it means "friend" in Italian) began in 1950 in a small restaurant on the corner of Park Street and University in Madison.  Roy McCormick and his wife, Rosa, used recipes that her Sicilian family handed down over the years.  Paisan's was one of the first places in Madison to serve pizza.  The restaurant eventually moved into the basement of a building that eventually became a sister restaurant - Porta Bella.  But for over 30 years, most Madison residents remember Paisan's in the University Square complex near the University of Wisconsin - Madison campus.  When University Square underwent a major facelift in 2006, the new owners - Ed Shinnick, Jerry Meier and Wally Borowski - decided to move to a new 9,000 square foot street level location in a professional building along Walker Street. (see map)  The new Paisan's opened in 2007.  

The new Paisan's didn't skip a beat with the menu as all three owners - Shinnick, Meier and Borowski - used to work for the McCormick's at the original Paisan's.  All the recipes that Rosa McCormick used back in the 50's are being used today.   

There is a tri-level parking garage underneath the building on W. Wilson, just south and west of the Wisconsin State Capitol square.  You must take a ticket, but Paisan's will validate your parking after 5 p.m. on weeknights and all day on Saturday and Sunday.  After parking the car on the first level, I took the elevator up to the lobby level and immediately saw a door that was marked "Paisan's Entrance".  

After being greeted by a young man at the host stand, he shepherded me down a long hallway, past a colorful back-lit stained glass display, past an enclosed cabinet with ornate beer steins on the shelves, and into a small alcove - one of two or three they had in Paisan's.  I took a seat in an enclosed booth and he dropped off a menu for me to look over.  

 
The popular place to dine at Paisan's on a nice summer evening is their outdoor patio that overlooks Lake Monona.  It was around 7 p.m. when I got into Paisan's and I was told that it was a 30 minute wait if I wanted to eat outside.  I was happy with my cozy little booth in one of the alcoves.

(I tried taking pictures of different areas of the inside of Paisan's, but the disparity of bright outside light coming through the windows and inside dimmed lighting played havoc on my camera phone.  So, I lifted the inside and outside pictures from Paisan's Facebook page.  The food pictures below were taken by my camera phone.) 

Actually, Paisan's is deceivingly big.  It's somewhat of a labyrinth of hallways that empty out into a spacious dining room with large windows that look out over the patio.  Another dining area is off to the side in the back corner of the building.  Paisan's can seat a lot of people inside and out when the weather is nice.  

 
The bar area is to the left as you come into the main entrance.  There's a large back bar and a semi-circled seating area with windows that look out onto a patio that runs along Walker Street.  It was a nice bar and one that I would have liked to have eaten in had I known I could have eaten in there.  

My server for the evening, Paige, came over to greet me as I was going through the menu.  She asked if I wanted anything to start out and I noticed on their beer menu that they had Capital Supper Club beer on tap.  I got a pint of the Supper Club.  

When my neighbor was singing the praises of Paisan's, she was telling me about the Garibaldi sandwich.  It's one of Paisan's signature items, something that they've been serving for 55 years.  They take a small French bread loaf and place ham and salami in it, then add pepper jack cheese and tomatoes on top of that, then you have a choice of green peppers and/or banana peppers.  And that's the Garibaldi.  With the banana peppers, it sounded pretty good.  

Another signature item is Paisan's pizza.  It's a thin crust pizza with an onion-tomato sauce and topped with your choice of fresh mozzarella, Wisconsin cheddar or spicy cheese, and your choice of fresh toppings from as diverse as pepperoni to a walnut-basil pesto.  I was leaning toward the pizza.

Paisan's also has a number of pasta dishes including something called Seafood Tetrazinni - you get your choice of pasta noodles and then it's topped with shrimp, scallops, imitation crab meat and chunks of haddock mixed in with creamy white sauce.  They also had a three meat cannelloni - large tubes of pasta filled with a mixture of ground beef, chicken and Italian sausage, and topped with either a tomato marinara or a cheese sauce.  They sounded interesting, but I was going for the pizza.

They have four different sizes of pizza at Paisan's - a 6" personal size, a 9" small, a 12" medium, and a 16" large.  They have a number of featured pizzas on the menu, but I opted to order one with my standard Italian sausage, pepperoni, and mushrooms.  Paige asked, "Is it OK if the sauce has onions in it?"  I normally don't go with onions on a pizza, but it must be something that makes the Paisan pizza special.  I went with the flow.

I sort of figured that I needed a salad, too.  I asked Paige if I could get one of their vegetable salads (as opposed to another signature item on Paisan's menu - the Porta consisting of a mixture of iceberg and romaine lettuce topped with ham and salami, cheddar and mozzarella cheeses, with garbanzo beans and green peppers).  I got a side of blue cheese dressing with it.   

The salad was delivered with a small plate of warm chunks of French bread.  The salad was piled with lettuce greens, chopped carrotts, broccoli crowns, cucumbers and tomato slices.  The blue cheese dressing was all right.  The veggie salad was fresh and crisp.  It was a good entry toward the pizza. 

 
Paige brought out the pizza and I immediately thought it had potential.  The crust looked misshapen like a good hand-tossed pizza should be.  The outer edges of the pizza had caramelized and it was covered with a good amount of Italian sausage chunks, thick slices of pepperoni and fresh cut mushrooms.  

The first bite told me it was a good pizza - not a great pizza, but good one, nonetheless.  The crust was firm, but not overly crunchy.  The Italian sausage had a sweet taste with a hint of fennel.  I loved the thick and flavorful pepperoni slices that curled up on their edges from the baking process.  The mushrooms were a little underwhelming as they lacked that good mushroom flavor I look for on pizza.  But it was a better than average thin crust pizza.  

For just the pizza alone, Paisan's would be worth the visit.  But their other menu items - the Garibaldi sandwich and the pasta dishes, mainly - would be worth checking out.  While I enjoyed the pizza and Paige's attentive service, I will say that Paisan's was a little pricey.  It was $16 dollars and change for a three topping 9" pizza with cheese with an additional $3.85 for the side veggie salad.  With two beers and a tip for Paige, the bill came to well over $30 bucks.  I wouldn't quite build up Paisan's in the way that my neighbor did for me, but it was a good pizza in a good setting with good service.

Comments

[W. B. Oz]

I still remember Paisan's in the North Francis basement location with no possibility of natural lighting and a seemingly impossible "Golden Ticket" that prevented them from getting a perpetual fire code violation. Nobody in panic could have escaped up that twisting entrance/exit stairway. The pizza then was no great shakes - the thin, greasy, cardboard-crust, New York-style that I came to despise. But, the Garibaldi . . . that brings back good memories of late-night deliveries to hungry students living in the Lakeshore dorms.

[Ed D]

Best pizza in Madison, hands down.