Corporate Pizza (Which One is the Best?)

“Pizza is kind of like sex. It’s never really bad.” - some anonymous jag off

The person who declared the above statement has obviously never tasted good pizza nor good sex. Luckily I have had both many times, thank you very much. But since this is not a blog about sex (look for my sex blog soon though, entitled This Will Suck And Not in the Good Way) I will have to talk about the pizza.

Not all pizza is created equal. There is bad pizza out there. Really bad. The kind of pizza where if you threw it down a sewer a rat as big as a dog would bring it back, knock on your door and say, “Sir, please take this offensive food item and shove it up your ass. Now if you’ll excuse me I hear a small black child singing a song about me.” Bad pizza is an affront to all mankind and the perpetrators of this heinous crime must be held accountable.

Now, I’m not talking about frozen pizza. Like my beloved Cleveland sports teams, everyone knows frozen pizza is awful so let’s just leave them alone. And I’m also not talking about those scary, hole-in-the-wall pizza joints that look like no one has cleaned it since the Carter administration (in LA there’s this dark, dank pizza joint called Mr. Pizza that I swear is a front for the Russian mob and yet, surprisingly, they serve a good slice of pepperoni and mushroom). No, I’m talking about the nationwide chain pizzas that claim to have “delicious” pizza when in actuality what they give you is the bullshit baked in a circular form. All of them are garbage but which of them are the less painful to eat?

To quote The Hardest Working Man in Show Business, allow me to “break it down”.

Little Caesars: Everything about Little Caesar’s – the stores, the ads, the signage, the food – depresses me. The whole business needs to swallow some St. John’s Wart followed by a handful of SAM-e’s. They are just so sad. They should change their slogan to, “Hey…we have pizza…eat it…or not…I don’t care…life sucks.”

And what adds to that depression is the fact that they know their pizza blows chunks. That’s why they give you a second one. It’s like Little Caesar’s feels bad that their food utterly lacks flavor, so to compensate they’ve decided to give you even more of it for free. That is the equivalent of someone kicking you in the nuts and saying, “Hey man, sorry I kicked you on the nuts. My bad. To make up for it, how about I kick you in the nuts?”

Papa John’s: If Papa John was my dad I would go all Oedipal on his ass. He just thinks he’s so f-ing cool doesn’t he, touring the country with his below average za and touting it as “better ingredients, better pizza”. Trust me, it’s the exact same substandard ingredients creating the exact same substandard pizza as everyone else. And stop with your goddamn garlic dipping sauce. Who you think you’re foolin’? You know you’re just hyping your sauce because you know you’re pizza is taste-free. Here’s a good rule of thumb: if you’re pizza needs to be dipped in anything, then it’s not a pizza worth eating. Oh and PS, your garlic dipping sauce is garbage as well, so good job on adding crap with crap – you’re in negative territory now.

Pizza Hut: The Chinese love Pizza Hut. Seriously, look it up or fly to Beijing and ask someone. Pizza Hut is the biggest food chain in the country. The country! That should say something about Pizza Hut.

It says that the Chinese don’t know dick about pizza.

Pizza Hut’s pizza is a greasy piece of cardboard topped with toppings that I’m convinced come from my daughter’s fake food play set. It sets a benchmark in all things bad about pizza. How they have achieved a pizza that is doughy and crunchy, sauceless with bad sauce, and salty without flavor is a minor miracle in technological ineptitude (notice I didn’t say “cooking ineptitude”. I wouldn’t insult cooking like that). And don’t get me started on that “stuffed crust” nonsense. No one needs that much goddamn cheese. I love cheese, but my heart doesn’t need any extra stuffed into a crust. And guess what? That same cheese in the crust is the same bad cheese that’s on top of your pizza. So now you have a double dose, a two-fer, a buck shot if you will, of terrible cheese to eat.

Domino’s: Ok, full disclosure, when I was in college I loved Domino’s. Chalk it up to being young and dumb, but I remember really enjoying it. But now, as I have been over the last few years forced to consume it at the too numerous to mention kids’ parties that I have to take my children to, I know loather Domino’s Pizza with the same hate I usually save for the music of Rascal Flats.

And now they’re trying to hype this new recipe for their pizza. And make no mistake, it is a new recipe – a recipe for an even shittier pizza. Note to the execs at Domino’s: making your tomato sauce sweeter and your pizza crust saltier does not make it better. It barely makes it different. You are like the high school lacrosse star who is forced to take Home Ec and wants nothing to do with the class so he just half--asses it for the entire semester in hopes he’ll slide by without getting noticed. Congrats Domino’s – you’re lazy and you can’t make pizza. You have corned the market on stupidity.

And on a related note, the new Domino’s commercials are total lies. Those are actors in those ads. No one is that stupid to all of the sudden be surprised that they’re in a “fake room” right next to a Domino’s kitchen. Are you telling me that they didn’t notice the big giant kitchen before they walked into the “room”? And legally Domino’s can get away with it by putting a caption underneath saying, “real people”. Notice how they didn’t say “non-actors”. They use the term “real people” because actors are technically “real people” - just barely, but they are.

So to answer the question, which ass pizza tastes less like ass? Well, that’s a tough one. They are all ass-worthy in their own unique way. But if I had a gun to my head and was forced to eat one of these brands of pizza (which is really the only way you should be eating these pizzas), I guess I would have to pick…oh hell, I don’t know. They’re all so bad. I guess if I had to I would choose Little Caesar’s. If I’m gonna eat awful pizza then I might as well eat a lot of it…and be sad at the same time.

That’s me – go big or go home.


-Kirk Pynchon