When I was nineteen and playing on small tours around Texas and a few other states in the southwestern area (the first three people that call in with the correct states win a free trip to Six Flags!), eating at Taco Bell for every meal was absolutely suitable, but seven years later the sodium and tastelessness of bean burritos with no onions and extra red sauce has started to get to me. I want to eat like an adult. Personally, I feel like I already eat like a normal human being at home (the opposite of whatever Lil Wayne eats), so why shouldn’t I eat that way when I’m on the road? It’s rare that you get a home cooked meal when you’re driving ten hours to play to thirty people in Richmond, Virginia (more on that later), and it’s even more rare that you get to make a meal for yourself. At this very moment I would murder any hipster that you pointed out to me as long as you promised me the use of your kitchen to make stir fry or even just some breakfast tacos. Enough with the hypotheticals and on to the actuals.
At the moment I’m on tour with a band called Mansions playing drums and trying to figure out food just like every other guy in a jean jacket out there right now. Some of the venues that we’re visiting have an attached restaurant or at least some sort of bar food available, but most don’t and that caters to my manly instincts. After all who doesn’t enjoy the hunt?
For the time being, I’m in Louisville Kentucky rehearsing for tour and we have the luxury of staying with Chris’ parents (Chris is the singer and lead guitarist for Mansions) and they like to cook filling meals with a lot of white wine, but not every night. So tonight we’re going to try to find some food in town (Full Disclosure: We’ve already gone out once and I a. Forgot to take pictures of my food and 2. It was kind of bad and I don’t want to write about places I don’t like, if I did I would call this “Bad Tour Food” and it would be much more negative).
Tonight we want pizza and since Chris is a local, it’s down to him to figure out where we should go; as luck would have it he knows just the place.
Chris, his sister Robin (and also the band’s bass player) and myself adjourn to Wick’s Pizza, a sort of family bar pizza place that probably has more than one location, but I’m not sure because I refuse to look it up; I’m the worst that way. To begin with, we ordered a round of beer because we’re Americans; while the selection is kind of slim, they still have a few good beers. I had a seasonal Sam Adams, someone ordered a Stella and there was also a Blue Moon. Those are things! We ordered cheesy bread as an appateaser (it was pretty much a cheese pizza sans sauce) and a large veggie pizza with olives on the side as our entree because we’re complete bastards. The pizza itself is closer to a Chicago style deep dish pizza than your run of the mill delivery style pizza (which is fine!). If you put a gun to my face and asked me to more accurately describe the pizza I would say that it was as if deep dish pizza and regular pizza (whatever that’s called) decided that there needed to be something in the middle of the two of them to confuse first time food bloggers. But please don’t put a gun to my face. My only real complaint with the pizza was that there wasn’t enough sauce. Personally, I’m a sauce monster. I hide under baby tomatoes’ beds and give them nightmares while they try to sleep. I would eat spoons of sauce by themselves if there wasn’t a perceived social stigma (perceived by me and me alone, call in now if you feel the way I do).
If you’re like me you feel like it’s a sin to eat pizza with a fork, when you see your friends doing it you want to slap them and throw them in pizza jail (the most delicious of jails), but Wick’s pizza is on the verge of being some other dish, almost a baked pizzasagna or lasizza. Either way I stuck to my guns and ate the pizza sans fork. Whatever helps me sleep at night.
Another thing about this pizza is that it’s incredibly cheesy. I didn’t get a chance to go back to the kitchen but I think the order of topping went in this order: Dough, a thin layer of sauce, eight ounces of cheese, garlic butter, our delicious veggie toppings, eight more ounces of cheese, garlic butter. This pizza wasn’t messing around. You could strangle someone with this cheese. I’m probably still not well internally from eating two slices of pizza.
All in all Wick’s was an alright experience. A little too family oriented for my taste, but the pizza was good and the beer hit the spot. The only other piece of advice that I have to offer is to make sure you go in a group so you don’t end up spending all of your sweet sweet per diem.
Will you check out Wick’s the next time you’re in Louisville?
