The Pizza Wars (food)

I don't know if it has anything to do with the football playoffs starting, but the two biggest pizza chains are trying to step it up. Pizza Hut is currently offering $10 for any pizza any size any toppings. Dominos is offering two two-topping medium pizzas for $5.99 each. Dominos is going even further beyond the coupons by completely changing their recipe. My friend DGW mentioned actually liking the new Dominos recipe, which is quite a thing to say living in NYC. Since I can't just be rambling about expensive food on this blog, I decided to order some Dominos. That famous 30 minute guarantee pretty much doesn't apply any more I think.

The first pie had ham and pineapple on it. Now I'm a guy who's never really liked eating fruit, but I think ham and pineapple on pizza just goes well together.

The next one consisted of "philly steak" and banana peppers. I actually like the banana peppers at Dominos. The dry, dark brown pieces of "meat" were pretty tasteless except for a clear saltiness. I'd recommend avoiding it.

So let's talk about the new recipe. First of all, they advertise "100% real mozzarella cheese". I strongly dislike this trend of "100% real beef", "100% real cheese", "100% real white meat chicken", etc. I don't see why it's a selling point, and if it is, then they basically admitted that they were feeding us crap for a long long time. The cheese is what it is. The sauce was supposed to have been spiced up, but I couldn't really tell. It's certainly not sweet like many pizza sauces end up being, which I guess is a good thing. They added garlic and herbs to the crust, and the garlic flavor definitely comes through, which is nice. The dough still reminds me more of bread than pizza, and even though it doesn't provide much flavor, I wouldn't describe it as cardboard like I would some other pizza doughs. In all, it's not a good pizza, but not a bad pizza. I'd be ok eating it (not regularly) if I was located somewhere without easy access to good pizza.

The real problem is that it's not as good or even ok of a deal as it might seem. You take the $12, then add tax, a DELIVERY CHARGE, AND a gratuity for the driver, and you're approaching $18.