Restaurant review: Go to Ollie’s, the first of 2 restaurants replacing Liliana’s, for the pizza

“With a restaurant, after a certain amount of time, you have to either reinvent or you have to slowly die emaciated,” Heide said then.

Ollie’s, named for Heide’s oldest child, born Liliana, now Ollie, is the first of those two spots. It opened in mid-December with a playful menu.

Heide has fun with names like “The Dad Joke (Super Cheesy)” pizza and the “2ABPSSLCPOOASSB” burger, under which it says, “That’s right … 2 all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions, on a sesame seed bun,” in reference to the eminent McDonald’s Big Mac slogan.

It’s an $18 burger, which seemed high for a casual place like Ollie’s. The best value is the pizza, which the menu strangely describes as deep dish, when it’s instead Detroit-style or rectangular pan-style.

There are eight varieties, all one size, for $16. The menu says that they feed one or two people, when, in my view, they can comfortably serve two or three. Two of the six cheesy, broad slices should make a filling dinner for most people.

Heide’s blend of cheeses, all from Wisconsin, has star power and creates an exceptional pizza: Hook’s three year cheddar, Farmer Johns’ Provonello, Carr Valley Fontina, Sartori SarVecchio, Roth Butterkäse and mozzarella.

My daughter and I shared the excellent caprese pizza, which besides the house cheese blend, had pesto, sliced tomatoes, fresh mozzarella, herbs and a drizzle of balsamic reduction. The crust, cushioned and tender on the bottom but crisp on the sides, was delicious that way.

Heide said he spent a week in Detroit trying about 18 Detroit-style pizzas. Each pizza place he tried had one pie that was a shining star, he said, but at Buddy’s, which calls itself the original Detroit-style pizza, every pizza impressed him.

A lot of the pizzas had either great crust or great sauce or great cheese, but only Buddy’s had all three, Heide said.

He said he tried about 20 types of crust. Ollie’s pizzas have a slight green tint, he said, because he adds ground oregano and ground thyme.

Heide said he tried flake oregano and flake thyme, but it tasted too leafy. “The ground absolutely gave us the flavor we were hoping for.”

At Ollie’s, his cooks make the dough and sauce from scratch and shred their own cheese, Heide said. “We really wanted to make sure that we nailed everything.”

But enough about the pizza. The modest chop salad ($16) was a great mix of romaine lettuce, bacon, hard-boiled eggs, Gorgonzola, the house cheese blend, and petite tomatoes, with a homemade buttermilk ranch dressing. We added grilled chicken that had a little kick for $4, which made it a pricy salad for its size, even if eaten as an entrée.

The tomato basil bisque ($15), made with coconut cream, came from a section of the menu called “cozy bowls” and is normally the filling in a freshly baked bread bowl. We asked for it without the bread bowl and it came in a cast-iron dish, topped with herbs and attractively zigzagged with sour cream.

My daughter liked it more than I did. I liked it even less though when we were charged the full $15 without the bread bowl. I could have said something, but Ollie’s menu should more clearly give customers the option of also ordering soup and chili in a regular cup or bowl.

Me getting charged full price was a training error, Heide told me later, and it should have been $5 less. A more foolproof way, I learned, would be to ask for it as the gluten-free version.

Dessert isn’t listed on the menu, but our server said Ollie’s had “Five for $5” ginger molasses cookies. They were somewhat cushioned, packaged to go, and more distinctive than the usual chocolate chip cookies.

Heide said the cookies are baked by his friend, Dawn Edseth, with the profits going to Heide’s nonprofit, Little John’s, a community food provider with a future pay-what-you-can restaurant component.

At Ollie’s, customers can order from a QR code on a cup that has a giant push-button featherlight on top to beckon a server. I wasn’t comfortable summoning a server that way, or ordering via QR code, for that matter. Servers will also take your order with a handheld device if you prefer.

When we asked to move from a wobbly high table to a shorter table, I asked if we could have the same waitress who brought over my reasonably good elderly fashioned ($9), but was told it didn’t matter since the tips get pooled.

Be aware that all checks have a 20% gratuity included. Heide said that goes toward paying his entire staff a living wage of $15 an hour, and is communicated on the menu, and on a sign when people walk in.

Originally the credit card slips didn’t have an extra tip line, but Heide said some customers complained that their server did a great job and they wanted to give them something more.

The timing of this review is a little awkward given that I visited Ollie’s a few days before the unraveling of his nonprofit when its fresh short-lived kitchen fell through.

Heide largely reduced operations at Little John’s, which he said made about 16,000 meals a week for the Madison community, mainly for contracts with the county, schools, senior programs and nonprofits.

He plans to still make 3,000 meals a week, but had to lay off about 40 employees. None of Ollie’s staff was affected.

I believe Heide aims to do good work and Ollie’s is a case in point.