99. Michael’s Pizza

Location: West St.Paul, Minnesota

Click the photo to link to Michael’s website and it will show you a stylish and handsome thin-crust pie right out of the oven, but this flies in the face of the evidence that I personally witnessed. Swen and I visited Michael’s Pizza in June 2016 and left confused and with some hurt feelings by both the overly aggressive baking technique and unusually dark and neglected dining room, which could be best described as “a friend of a friend’s family room in the basement in 1974.

Engulfed in faux-woodgrain paneling and an aggressive usage of naugahyde, it’s the kind of place that feels uncomfortably familiar—like the basement of that oddball kid who lived down the block, but with a non-zero chance of misdemeanor crime.

I think the AC wasn’t operating properly, so the staff (courteous, but only marginally interested in patron wellness) compensated by leaving all the lights off with cracked the windows, generating an irritating, humid breeze. The room temperature inside was unforgiving, even turning the soda fountain into a room temp liquid dispensary. Strangely, we were the only in-store customers that evening. As we bear in mind the first sentence at the very top of the page, this was still must rank of our favorite meals.