Pizza is quite possibly the most perfect food.
Work with me on this, I'm onto something here.
It's an irresistibly simple concoction: bread (dough), tomato sauce, cheese, meat and possibly a few veggies.
You can eat it with your hands, which means it can travel from the restaurant to the picnic table to the car.
Best of all, kids love it and adults act like kids when they eat it.
The vibe
Carrie and Darrell Blanchard can seat a half-dozen happy families in their modest new pizza parlor, Lococo's Pizzeria. On some nights, the six tables fill up with everyone from older couples to young families, most of them hailing from the surrounding Northwest Side neighborhoods. Every once in a while, someone will pop in to pick up a called-in order.
People are also reading…
The dining room has a warm glow to it, with a dark maroon wall accented by a wall painted gold. A few scenes from Italy — mostly large, framed posters of boats and the waterways — are scattered on the walls.
The server on a recent Saturday evening busily attended to three tables, filling drink cups and chatting with diners. Overhead, the soft whir of the air conditioning was silenced by the radio playing 1970s pop — Earth, Wind & Fire one moment, a little Fleetwood Mac the next.
The food
The Blanchards specialize in thin, crispy-crusted pizzas. It's a family recipe handed down by Darrell Blanchard's grandmother, who ran a pizza parlor in Milwaukee in the 1970s.
The crust is cracker thin and crunches like a cracker. It's slathered judiciously with a tomato sauce sporting crushed, fresh tomatoes and a host of spices, then topped with a blend of hand-grated cheeses — Parmesan, mozzarella and provolone. Then they add the extras, such as a sharply seasoned and not-at-all-greasy pepperoni.
A house Caesar salad made with wonderfully crisp mixed greens would have been better if it had been tossed in the store-bought signature dressing ahead of time. The dressing comes on the side and when you apply it yourself you often glop it in one spot. Quite frankly, that can be gross.
Add an order of hot wings to the salad and you've got a meal. The fall-off-the-bone tender wings sport a very slight burn that's doused with a sweetness courtesy of honey.
Lococo's Pizzeria
8330 N. Thornydale Road, at Cortaro Farms Road
• Parking: Plentiful; located in a sizable corner plaza.
• Hours: 11 a.m.-10 p.m. Sundays-Thursdays, 11- a.m.-11 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays; closed Tuesdays.
• Phone: 744-7136.
THE BILL
• Personal pepperoni pizza: $6.70.
• Personal cheese pizza: $5.95.
• Caesar salad: $5.95.
• Two soft drinks: $3.50.
• Hot wings: $6.99.
• Total, before tax and tip: $29.09.
