By Matt Mueller Culture Editor Published Jun 30, 2016 at 8:26 AM Photography: Lori Fredrich

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Have you ever been eating a bowl of macaroni and cheese and thought to yourself, "You know what would make this mac 'n' cheese better? If it was a pizza instead." Or perhaps you've been midway through a slice of pizza and thought, "Do you know what this starch needs? More starch." No? Well, too bad, because SoLo did, and thus we now have the mac bottom pizza to sate your taste buds and horrify your arteries.

The spiritual sequel to last year's bacon bottom pizza – a diet bomb of a pizza with strips of interwoven cooked bacon instead of a crust; but hey, gluten free! – SoLo's mac bottom pizza is a brick of deep fried mac and cheese slathered in tomato sauce, cheese, sausage and pepperoni. It costs $7.50 and a potentially significant chunk of your dignity and wellbeing. 

Before you dig in, you'll probably have to get past the aesthetics of the thing – not that it's gross-looking, but my lord, is it massive. It is neither pasta nor pizza; it is beast. The hunk of deep-fried cheesy noodles takes up most if not all of the plate, and it's a solid inch thick; meanwhile, the pizza toppings are well heaped on top. It is a wad of food – truly two meals in one – and you can feel your body both applauding and questioning your life choices as you gaze upon its saucy, cheesy, greasy, deep-fried godlessness. What hell hath SoLo wrought?

An inaccurate one, I tell you! Cutting into the pizza, you'll notice that this is not mac 'n' cheese; there is no mac! The noodles are spiral noodles! This foodgasm is built on a crust of LIES! And Soylent Green is people!

But really, the mac bottom is ... well, it's pretty tasty! It's hard to say the whole is greater than the sum of its parts – it's not better than just a good bowl of mac 'n' cheese or a good slice of pizza – but the parts do taste good. The noodles are satisfyingly cheesy – it's good stuff; not Easy Mac – while the tomato sauce adds a nice, tart kick. As for the crust aspect of the actual crust, the deep-fried coating adds a pleasant crunch to cut through all of the cheesy greasiness.

Best of all, it's a much easier eating experience than last year's bacon bottom pizza – which is still on the menu this year as well. The cooked, tight-knit bacon crust was too tough for the typical Summerfest flimsy plastic cutlery, so I ended up trying to eat it with my hands, getting grease all over myself and gnawing vigorously at a clump of meat and cheese with my teeth like I was a feral man-wolf recreating Ramsay's death from "Game of Thrones." I suppose it makes sense that there's no particularly graceful way to eat a not-particularly graceful food mash-up.

While the mac bottom is still a mess in one's hands, it's much easier to eat with a knife and fork, as the mac 'n' cheese crust is more tender than the tough, sinewy bacon. It's not food for on-the-go to your next show, but if you have some time to kill over by the BMO Harris Pavilion or the Marcus Amp, it makes for a fine sit-down meal – as well as not just a soaker pad, but a whole factory's worth of soaker pads. (Watch the video of Matt and Lori trying the mac bottom pizza here, if you dare.)

Still, it's not haute cuisine (obviously). In my experience, I struggled to get a bite that truly tasted like both pizza and mac 'n' cheese. The two are less harmoniously united than quite literally slapped together, like being between two ground stages and hearing two bands you like playing over one another. And like those mammoth milkshakes being peddled in New York and Los Angeles, it's really a group project, not a meal for one. Because what good is a myocardial infarction if you can't share it with friends?

But it tastes good enough that you'll enjoy chowing down on it, and like State Fair's various chocolate-covered deep-fried (enter food here) on a stick, you'll enjoy telling others about what you ate even more. Will they live longer? Probably. But you will have lived more (or so you'll try to convince your dietician).

Now where's that deep fried Old Fashioned to wash this down?

Matt Mueller Culture Editor

As much as it is a gigantic cliché to say that one has always had a passion for film, Matt Mueller has always had a passion for film. Whether it was bringing in the latest movie reviews for his first grade show-and-tell or writing film reviews for the St. Norbert College Times as a high school student, Matt is way too obsessed with movies for his own good.

When he's not writing about the latest blockbuster or talking much too glowingly about "Piranha 3D," Matt can probably be found watching literally any sport (minus cricket) or working at - get this - a local movie theater. Or watching a movie. Yeah, he's probably watching a movie.