By Rick Rodriguez Special to OnMilwaukee.com Published Apr 24, 2013 at 12:03 PM

One day I was driving back home from visiting my sister, brother-in-law and nephews on the northwest side of Milwaukee. As I approached the ramp to Highway 145 that I always take home, I was disappointed to find it closed for construction.

Okay, I was a lot more than just disappointed, but what’s a guy to do? I followed the detour, of course. While driving eastbound on Fond du Lac Avenue, I noticed on my right Gianelli’s Pizza, 8701 W. Fond du Lac Ave. It had a small marquee advertising that all of its pizzas were "2 for 1."

Gianelli’s has coupons on its website, but customers do not need coupons for the two-for-one pizza deal. Everyone gets that deal all of the time! The coupons included offers such as four 10-inch pizzas with one topping for $21.95 and a two-liter bottle of soda for 19 cents with any purchase.

The history of Gianelli’s Pizza starts with chicken. That’s right, chicken. Wayne Molas owned several businesses, including an ice cream parlor, and opened Chicken Man in 1971 in the Bonanza Shopping Center.

Calvin Wetzel started working for Molas at The Chicken Man at age 18. In 1983, Molas decided to open Gianelli’s Pizza on the opposite end of the strip mall and Wetzel led the project.

They later became partners until Wetzel eventually bought out Molas and the locations were consolidated into the current Gianelli’s location on the east side of the strip mall.

Wetzel was not available to talk with me, but I was able to get the key pieces of the story from managers Walter Schmidt and Cheryl Schroeder, who is Wetzel’s sister-in-law.

Schmidt has worked at Gianelli’s for 12 years and explained how important it was to him that the food looked good as well as tasted good. Simply put, he "wants the food to look the way he would want the food he eats to look."

Schroeder has worked for Gianelli’s off and on for over 16 years in addition to co-owning a restaurant between her stints at Gianelli’s Pizza. Needless to say, Gianelli’s management staff has a great deal of experience.

I entered the lobby on my visit and found four chairs, a small table and a soda machine with Pepsi products. There was also a gumball machine. For 25 cents, a gumball comes out of the machine and if it’s yellow, you can win $5, as long as you yell out "WINNER" as soon as it comes out. The note taped to the machine says as much.

The take-out window is made up of wooden posts with a bell on the counter for customers to ring to grab the attention of one the busy workers in the kitchen.

A gentleman waited on the couple in front of me and then took my order. While I waited in the lobby for my order, I could hear the phone ringing often. Gianelli’s seemed pretty busy for an early Monday evening.

I didn’t wait long for my order, and during that short time three other customers walked in to pick up their pizza and chicken orders.

While sharing facilities and a menu, Gianelli’s Pizza and Chicken Man operate as separate entities. They each even have their own phone number. Besides pizza and fried chicken, the menu consists of side orders, wings, sub sandwiches, burgers, ribs, fish, shrimp, spaghetti and lasagna, which seems to be another featured menu item.

In fact, the two-for-one pizza deal can be combined with lasagna. You may order two pizzas, two lasagna trays or one pizza and one lasagna tray.

The pizzas come in 10, 12, and 14 inches. You can choose from the standard hand-tossed crust or their deep dish, which is a double crust, for a small upcharge.

Cheese pizzas range from $11.45 to $20.45, but remember that includes two pizzas. Additional toppings range from $1 to $1.60 each, again covering both pizzas.

I decided on bacon and jalapeno on their deep dish crust, a combination I haven’t tried before. I liked the mac 'n' cheese with bacon and jalapenos that I tried a while ago, so why not try them on a pizza? They might even photograph well, too.

Gianelli’s Pizza does not use bacon bits nor anything resembling bacon bits. It uses real bacon, chopped into various sizes. There were several pieces of bacon on my pizza that were the size of a third of a strip of bacon. You’ve got to love that if you’re a bacon lover, like I am.

Some of the jalapeno slices had no seeds while others had their fair share of seeds, so the amount of heat varied. Although overall there wasn’t too much heat to take away from the other flavors on the pie.

In fact, I think some of jalapeno slices seemed to taste a little sweet. It complemented the sauce, which also had a sweetness to it.

Gianelli’s adds its own special blend of seasoning to a canned base. The result is a rich and slightly thick sauce that is a little spicy but leans closer to a sweet flavor. I was quite happy that my choice of toppings worked so well.

The other pizza was my go-to sausage and pepperoni on its standard hand-tossed crust. Neither the sausage nor pepperoni seemed spicy to me, but both brought good flavors. I thought they tasted even better with Gianelli’s sauce than the bacon and jalapeno combination.

The crust on both pizzas was crispy and chewy, but not like a New York-style crust. These crusts were made with cornmeal, and while I prefer my pizzas without cornmeal, I felt that Gianelli’s used the right amount to create a nice texture.

The deep dish crust stayed crisp throughout the pie, while the standard hand-tossed crust was crispy along the perimeter but much softer and a bit flimsy in the center, as would be expected on most thin crust pizzas.

The crust rose close to the same height in some areas around the perimeter, but for the most part, the deep dish was thicker as expected.

Gianelli’s makes its pizza dough fresh every morning. It uses two balls of dough for the deep dish crust. If you like your hand-tossed crust to stay crisp, then the deep dish is likely your best option.

Upon request, Gianelli's will make your crust "paper" thin. You may want to specify that it be made crispy as well. Pizzas are always cut in triangular slices, but Gianelli's cuts your pizza into squares if you prefer, as long as you order it that way.

You can also request a par-bake pizza if you have a longer drive home and want to finish baking it in your own oven.

The Bonanza Shopping Center is not even a glimmer of what it once was, but Gianelli’s Pizza and Chicken Man are doing their best to keep some life in the building, and I think they’re doing a good job.

It would be easy to think the entire building has been abandoned, but keep your eyes peeled for the red "open" sign in the window on the end. Tasty pizzas await you.

Rick Rodriguez Special to OnMilwaukee.com
I was born and raised in Milwaukee, and I plan to stay in Milwaukee forever. I'm the oldest of three children and grew up in the Riverwest neighborhood. My family still lives in the same Riverwest house since 1971.

I graduated from Rufus King High School and the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater with a business degree.

My true passion for Milwaukee probably started after I joined the Young Professionals of Milwaukee (now called FUEL Milwaukee) which just celebrated its one year anniversary at the time. The events that I attended, and sometimes organized, really opened my eyes to what Milwaukee had to offer, as well as its potential for the future. So for the past, present, and future FUEL Milwaukee corporate sponsors out there, that organization does produce results (editorial)!

I love all of the Milwaukee Sports teams, professional and amateur. I love the Milwaukee arts scene and all of the festivals. I love that you can find a free concert in the summer just about every day of the week. I love the various neighborhoods around the Milwaukee area and the unique characteristics that they offer. I love the people who take the time to tell us about those unique characteristics. I have to hold my breath and count to ten when someone tells me that there is nothing to do in Milwaukee. Then I prove them wrong.

Most of all, I love the Milwaukee dining scene. I love how it continues to evolve with modern dishes and new trends while the classic restaurants continue to remind us that great food doesn't have to be "fancy schmancy." However, I also love the chefs that create the "fancy schmancy" dishes and continue to challenge themselves and Milwaukee diners with dishes we've never seen before.

Our media provides attention to the new restaurants, which is great, but I don't like seeing the older great restaurants close their doors (Don Quijote, African Hut) because they've been forgotten, so I try to do my part to let Milwaukeeans know that they're still out there, too. I do that through social media, online reviews, and a dinner club I run for my friends, where we visit restaurants they haven't heard of before or try ethnic cuisine they haven't had before.

My dream is that one day I can mention a great experience in Milwaukee and not have someone respond with "have you been to Chicago?" I don't like those people very much.