VIEW SLIDESHOW: Chain Reaction: Pizza Hut's Crazy Cheesy Crust

[Photographs and illustrations: Niki Achitoff-Gray]

Last week, we told you that Pizza Hut had debuted a new, limited release pie. The Crazy Cheesy Crust ($12.99 with 1 topping) features 16 detachable "pockets," resembling bite-size bread bowls, brimming with a gooey five-cheese blend.

[Photograph: Pizza Hut]

First of all, I don't consider myself a delusional person. I know that sponsored images of fast food products are hardly accurate representations of the products themselves. When McDonald's advertises a bacon cheeseburger, I know that their real life cheeseburger will be significantly less photogenic. But I also know that it will still contain bacon, cheese, and a burger.

Strictly speaking, I suppose that Pizza Hut's Crazy Cheesy Crust does indeed have a "Crazy" "Cheesy" "Crust." That said, it is also crazy not what I expected.

I placed an order for a large, half pepperoni, half mushroom and olive pie. It finally arrived a full 30 minutes after my 30-minute delivery estimate, so I was decidedly on the hangry side when I opened the box. Imagine my surprise when it actually resembled the ad:

Sadly, that's where the similarity ends. I didn't realize how high my expectations were until I went to tug away my melty nugget of cheese. Here's the thing. Nothing happened. That pocket turned out to be firmly rooted to the rest of the pie.

I know, right?!?

I tend to personify my food whenever it presents an especially unique challenge, so I was already in deep conversation with this particular pizza. What I couldn't figure out was whether it was being tauntingly stubborn or just plain stupid. Either way, it was not being particularly cooperative.

I finally managed to dislodge my elusive prize in a cathartically violent tearing motion/guttural growl. I was so self-satisfied that I was entirely ready to forgive the whole misunderstanding if I could just sink my teeth into some of that goopy, cheesy excess.

But...no. That would have been far too easy. The cheese—a blend of provolone, asiago, mozzarella, fontina, and white cheddar—was rock hard and profoundly unappealing. If you've ever microwaved a Polly-O String Cheese, doused it with salt, left it out overnight, and then, against all logic, put it in your mouth, you probably have a general idea of what I'm talking about. I'd chalk it up to the extended delivery time, but the rest of the pizza tasted totally fine, in a room-temperature-Pizza-Hut sort of way.

There's a slight crunch to the greasy, golden crust before it gives way to the bread. Tender and sweet, the pizza may not merit a Eureka! moment, but it certainly has the makings of a decent chain pie. Sure, the mushrooms taste more of oil than mushroom, and the olives are your average canned fare, but the pepperoni is satisfyingly salty and crisp, the cheese sufficiently gooey, that it's perfectly enjoyable. Especially if you don't concentrate too hard.

Which is why the Crazy Crust situation was so damn frustrating. In theory, it shouldn't have been such a sharp contrast to the rest of the pie. I couldn't understand why it would go so awry. So I did what any sane food critic would: I played with my food, and I played with it good.

Click through the slideshow to see the results »

About the author: Niki Achitoff-Gray is the editor of Slice and a part-time student at the Institute of Culinary Education. She's pretty big into pizza.

[Photographs: Casey Barber]

For bookworms of a certain age, Pizza Hut's new Big Pizza Sliders will likely elicit flashbacks to the Book It! reading program that was all the rage in elementary schools in the mid-'80s (and apparently still exists, though in modified form). As a voracious reader who earned her share of personal pan pizzas—I think I was up to one a week when the program was going full steam—tearing into one of these even-more-personally-sized pies took me right back to the days of smeary vinyl gingham tablecloths and deep-dish indulgences.

If you're already a Pizza Hut fan, the sliders aren't going to take your love of pan pizza to a whole new stratospheric level. If you're not a fan, these aren't going to be the Pizza Hut product that changes your mind. The sliders are merely 3 1/2-inch personal pies. They're not pizza bagels; the disc is flat with no center hole. And they're certainly not changing the way you eat pizza forever. They're just small pizzas, folks!

Actually, they're mostly a thick puck of bread crust with the requisite golden brown, faux-buttery bottom. I'll admit that the crispy pan edge, slightly oozing with grease, is my favorite part of a Pizza Hut pizza. It's like "butter flavor" on your movie popcorn: you know it's not good for you, but the combination of salt, fat, and carbs is too hard to resist.

The sauce is that immediately identifiable salty Pizza Hut sauce, with its melange of garlic and herbs, and the cheese is that congeal-y, gooey-in-a-plastic-kind-of-way Pizza Hut cheese. Nothing revolutionary, no new formulas to be found, and hence, no surprises or disappointments...

...Until we come to the toppings. You can customize each batch of three sliders with up to three toppings, and in the name of science, I went three ways with my 9-piece order ($10): ham and green pepper (my childhood go-to combo), black olive and pineapple (my long-time favorite), and pepperoni, jalapeño, and mushroom, for kicks. But the pathetic smattering of bits across all nine of my sliders—a few sad strips of green pepper, minuscule bits of desiccated mushrooms, scattered ham slices—looked more like afterthoughts than the main event.

My beloved black olive-and-pineapple fared the best of the three, with a healthy, even dusting of both toppings across the batch. Taste-wise, the combinations satisfied when I was able to get a full bite of all the flavors together (the pepperoni and jalapeño in particular being something I'll return to for a home-cooked pizza). Overall, however, it was an underwhelming showing for what seemed to be the biggest selling point for the sliders.

The most enthusiastic reaction to the pizza came from Harry, my 15-pound porker of a cat, who had previously established a taste for Totino's Pizza Rolls. Otherwise a gentleman, when Harry sees a piece of food he wants, he lets you know—loudly—that he's about to stake his claim. Launching onto the chair and sniffing out his prey, he dragged a half-eaten carcass of pizza from the plate to the floor and attacked with gusto. Even if he managed to down a jalapeño during his sneak attack, he had no complaints.

For families with a Pizza Hut preference who are sick of mediating the toppings fight between their picky kids, the sliders will no doubt find favor. But for the love of pete, Pizza Hut, could you be a little less tightfisted with your toppings? The sad showing on these sliders left a bad taste in my mouth. (Not my cat's, though.)

While we think mom-and-pop shops make the best pizza in the nation, we'd be remiss if we didn't keep abreast of what the chains are up to. Suit up, it's time for another Chain Reaction, folks.

WARNING: THOSE WITH GLUTEN INTOLERANCE MAY EXPERIENCE ABDOMINAL DISCOMFORT BY READING THIS POST.

You have been warned.

[Photographs: J. Kenji Lopez-Alt]

Look at that. I mean, just look at that picture above. Awe-inspiring? Perhaps. A little frightening? Certainly. Gluten-free and Atkin's friendly? Not on your life.

What you are staring at there is the Italian sausage variation of Domino's Bread Bowl Pasta. Introduced back in 2009 with the tagline "pasta so good you'll devour the bowl," it comes in four flavors—Chicken Alfredo, Italian Sausage Marinara, Chicken Carbonara, Pasta Primavera—with the option to build your own by adding ingredients from their pizza toppings lineup.

The pasta is available on its own baked in a foil tray ($5.99), or for an extra buck, you can have it baked directly into a thick disk of pizza dough ($6.99).

For the purpose of this taste test, your intrepid writer decided to order both versions.

The non-bread bowl version comes in a foil tray with a completely non-sensical pun on the lid.

Somebody on Domino's marketing team just learned what a homophone is.

"A penne saved is a penne earned?" Seriously, Domino's?

Pulling back the lid on the Pasta Primavera version revealed a reasonably sized portion of penne pasta (the only shape available), topped with a smattering of vegetables. I'm not sure what spinach, diced tomatoes, sliced onions, and sliced mushrooms have to do with primavera, but that's what we got here.

The pasta was impressively al dente, still retaining a decent bite. A good step up from the steam-table pasta at neighborhood pizza joints. Similarly, the alfredo sauce was about as good as one could reasonably expect chain pizza-delivered alfredo sauce to be. That is, very edible, slightly goopy, with a flavor that tasted predominantly of garlic powder and green-can cheese.

The only real complaint here was with the mushrooms, which despite being advertised as fresh, looked as if they had been slept on by an obese man with restless leg syndrome and tasted like slightly used kitchen sponges. Thankfully, there were only four slices of mushroom in the whole dish.

The breadbowl version was, unsurprisingly, far less successful. Conceptually, the dish is a mess—the product, no doubt, of a boardroom meeting which consisted of asking "how can we make a new product using only ingredients that are already in the store and that require no new equipment, nor special training?"

"I know, let's just half-stretch a ball of pizza dough, press a hole in the center, throw in some pasta, bake it, and call it a day!"

"That's genius, Wilson."

And it shows. The dough—that spongy, bland, overly sweet dough—is clearly the weakest link in the quality of Domino's pizza. I don't like it when it's stretched thin for a pizza, why the heck would I like it when it's left thick and gummy?

Conceptually, the idea of sticking already-cooked-and-sauced pasta in a raw disk of dough and baking the whole thing together is a bad one. While you do end up with a few nice pieces of crunchy, browned pasta around the edges and top of the bowl, the pasta under the surface suffers a far worse fate.

In the time it takes the bread bowl to cook, the pasta ends up absorbing way too much sauce. The result is pasta that's simultaneously mushy and dry, like baked ziti that has been sitting out a day too long. Their marinara sauce doesn't improve matters, with its crazy sweet flavor and aroma of dried herbs and garlic powder.

The real kicker is that though the dish costs only a buck more than the regular baked pasta, the amount of pasta you receive is far less. I weighed the pasta from the bread bowl against the pasta from the foil tray and found that you get less than 2/3rds the amount of pasta and sauce if you order the bread bowl version.

But is having too little of a bad thing really bad news after all?

About the author: J. Kenji Lopez-Alt is the Chief Creative Officer of Serious Eats where he likes to explore the science of home cooking in his weekly column The Food Lab. You can follow him at @thefoodlab on Twitter, or at The Food Lab on Facebook.

Elves not included. [Image: Pizza Hut Singapore]

Not one to be outdone by Pizza Middle East with their Crown Crust or Cone Crust, Pizza Hut Singapore is making the Double Sensation their December sweetheart. The Double Sensation isn't just some gimmicky design of an outer crust. Oh no, it's all that and much much more. I'm talking not one, but two crusts. If you're thinking stuffed pizza, you're thinking much too conventionally. This is a pizza inside a pizza (not to be confused with this). As in an inner pizza, crust and all, contained within an outer belt of pizza. Mind-bending, right? So that's the Double part. And now take that and Sensation-alize it! The outer ring is triple cheese stuffed with cheddar, Parmesan, and mozzarella, while the inner ring is filled with chicken sausage and cheese. Pepper alfredo sauce blankets the inner pie, which is then topped with smoked chicken and zucchini. Salsa (!) tops ring two, as does turkey ham, bell peppers, and mushrooms. Top it off with a cherry on top. For real. Look. There is a cherry on top.

Seriously hope to get some Singapore intel on this for Slice soon. Stay tuned...

[Via: Eater and Brand Eating]

About the author: Meredith Smith is the Slice editor. You can follow her on Twitter: @mertsmith.

While we think mom-and-pop shops make the best pizza in the nation, we'd be remiss if we didn't keep abreast of what the chains are up to. Suit up, it's time for another Chain Reaction, folks.

[Photographs: Todd Brock]

Uncle Maddio's Pizza Joint

2955 Cobb Parkway, Atlanta, GA 30339 (Map); 770-955-5223; http://unclemaddios.com/
Pizza type: Chain pizza
Oven type: Electric conveyor belt
The Skinny: DIY concept near malls and colleges bringing Chipotle/Subway/Moe's approach to chain pizza
Price: 9-inch pie w/3 toppings, $6.99; 9-inch Chicken Club Pizza, $7.99

We've already covered a few of the players in the growing genre of "Chipotlesque" pizzerias here at Slice. Places like 800 Degrees in L.A. and Pie-ology in the Anaheim area are staking out a rep at the top end of the new category, and Punch Pizza has been doing it in the Twin Cities perhaps longer than anyone. But the others seem to be in a race to see who becomes the first true mega-chain of DIY pizza. One Atlanta-based company is sure giving it a go, with over 75 locations "in development," according to their website. But while Uncle Maddio's Pizza Joint hopes to bring Subway-style pies to the masses, my experience with them has leaned more toward train wreck.

There are just seven Uncle Maddio's stores now, six in metro Atlanta (where it was started by a Moe's Southwest Grill alum) and one in Louisville, KY. (Company propaganda calls out Charlotte, Jacksonville, Knoxville, Raleigh, Savannah, and Tallahassee as future sites.) The ones I'm familiar with are strip-mall tenants, often near popular retail districts or college campuses. On a recent Saturday night, the location near Cumberland Mall was doing fairly brisk business as a pit stop for harried Christmas shoppers.

As an alternative to the mall food court, Uncle Maddio's does offer a step up. Not as fussy or time-sucking as putting your name on a list, waiting for a table, and making small talk with a waiter, the visible assembly line method is certainly preferable to ordering a combo meal by number and waiting for it to unceremoniously appear from the back.

But there was something sad to me about seeing a rack of already-flattened and perfectly-shaped dough rounds wrapped in foil, waiting their turn. (Uncle Maddio's offers three varieties: white, wheat, and gluten-free.) Watching the staff at Atlanta rival Your Pie work a dough ball and give it a toss or two at the beginning of your transaction is a key moment, I believe, in making that pizza feel like a custom-made experience. The stack of ready-to-decorate crusts at Uncle Maddio's just drives home the point that you could have had a real pizza, but chose not to this time.

Even worse was watching my selected sauce and toppings get slid into a conveyor belt oven. The chain touts its "special fast-bake oven" and wants you to be wowed by the six-minute cook time. I suppose that may dazzle the uneducated, but if you're reading this column, you know that with the right equipment and under the right conditions, 90 seconds is not unusual for a serious pizza. So adjust your standards accordingly at Uncle Maddio's.

No char spots on your underside, just a precise array of raised nubbins. Both the white and wheat crusts are chewy and spongy, with a lightly-toasted outer surface but no real microbubble structure to speak of. This is commercially-produced pizza through and through and more akin to a flatbread appetizer base than true-blue pizza crust. You'd better hope you hit a home run picking from the 45+ toppings offered, 'cos that's the only thing that's going to shine.

The chain makes their own sausage and meatballs, as seen in the previous two photos. Both are good, if not quite spectacular. My six-year-old opted for mozzarella, while the nine-year-old picked cheddar. Ricotta, blue, and goat are also available, as is Daiya vegan cheese. These were basic one-topping pies and made my kids happy enough at seven bucks a pop.

I felt the need to stretch a bit. Of the six sauces offered, I went with herb pesto. Toppings: jerk chicken, red onions, and pineapple. It was tasty, but nothing that knocked my socks off. Preferable to both the food court nastiness and the Cheesecake Factory/Maggiano's wait times across the street, I suppose, but not something I'd seek out over a pie from a "real" pizzeria.

Everyone at my table went the personal pizza route, though Uncle Maddio's does offer larger pies to share. Inexplicably, the menu limits you to three toppings per 9-inch pie, with no posted option of paying more to get more. Their Signature Pizzas, of which there are about a dozen, are more loaded up, resulting in a bit more bang for your buck. That was my wife's strategy with the Chicken Club ($7.99).

With buttermilk ranch dressing sauce, mozzarella and cheddar, grilled chicken, bacon, Roma tomatoes, and lettuce, it tasted exactly like its namesake sandwich. In fact, as I closed my eyes and tried to ignore the sensation of the triangular-shaped piece in my hand, I could have sworn I was eating a chicken club sandwich and not a pizza at all. It suddenly occurred to me that Uncle Maddio's crust is nearly identical in every respect (shape, texture, taste, airiness, mouthfeel) to the round sourdough buns at Schlotzsky's. As my wife summarized, "Not bad... but not really pizza."

My guess is this will not be the official tagline as the chain attempts to take DIY pizza nationwide. You should feel free to use Uncle Maddio's as a Plan B to mall food (and there's something to be said for that alone this time of year; beer and wine and a Coca-Cola Freestyle machine help, too), but don't make the mistake of putting it in the same category as what you and I classify as genuine pizza.

About the Author: Todd Brock lives the glamorous life of a stay-at-home freelance writer in the suburbs of Atlanta. Besides being paid to eat cheeseburgers for AHT and pizzas for Slice, he's written and produced over 1,000 hours of television and penned Building Chicken Coops for Dummies. When he grows up, he wants to be either the starting quarterback for the Dallas Cowboys or the drummer for Hootie & the Blowfish. Or both.

The biggest challenge faced by a low-end food and drink reviewer is finding new ways to call things rubbery and sugary. You don't want to plagiarize your vanilla cream vodka evaluation in the following week's frosted cupcake rum story, but it can be disingenuous to obscure the fact that they are very similarly flawed enterprises. And it turns out that most unhappy chicken sandwiches are unhappy in the same way: They taste like condiments and feel like you're chewing on a [redacted; can't waste a good rubber chicken analogy in a pizza post].

In addition to the daily struggle to avoid repeating yourself while acknowledging that a lot of these things share the same corrupt DNA, the subprime-food reviewer must constantly remind himself to be fair. In my case, this means evaluating a product on its own terms. Serious cocktail monsters will reject the notion of smoked brisket schnapps out of hand, and for good reason, but my job isn't to help them celebrate their prejudices; rather, it is to get inside the mind of the target market and decide if they'd be well served by the product.

The other major elements of being a fair critic are moderating your expectations, controlling for your personal biases, and not letting one anomalous experience corrupt your view. This last part is the trickiest one for a chain restaurant reviewer. Last month I was ripped off by a Panera sandwich that didn't have nearly enough turkey. Does this mean everyone should avoid this national chain of poultry thieves? Or does it just mean I got a bum sandwich from a rogue assembly line?

Shortly thereafter I set out to review McDonald's new CBO (cheddar, bacon, onion) burger. Mine came without O. So do I write a negative review of an incomplete sandwich, or do I abort the mission on the grounds that McDonald's presumably remembers the onion at least 51% percent of the time? But then if I ignore the misburger and start over, does that let McDonald's off the hook for a pretty major mistake? Or should I bow out of the story altogether and just vent my frustration in a pizza review at a later date (bingo!). It's complicated, man.

[Photographs: Will Gordon]

Which brings us to Uno's new Family Size pizza. This just-launched line of takeout-only 15-inchers features two pies from Bizarre Foods guru Andrew Zimmern, Greek Isle and Artichoke Bianco. I like Uno's pizza, and 10 percent of Family Size sales go to the veterans charity SUS (Services for the UnderServed), so I was happy to pony up $19.99 plus tax and delivery to try both new Zimmern creations. (The standard Family Size price is $16.99, but Uno was running a two for $19.99 special when I placed my order.)

I ordered online at noon for a 3:15 delivery. At about 2:15, I got a call saying they were out of broccoli rabe and would substitute regular broccoli. Fair enough. Then at 3:00, a couple of room temperature pizzas showed up. I would normally have just rolled my eyes and popped them in the oven for a couple minutes, but since I was eating these for review purposes, I worried about the photographs. If I took photos of cold, congealed cheese, that would be broadcasting my anomalously bad experience to the whole pizza world. But if I showed you pictures of freshly reheated pizza, I'd be lying to you and covering Uno's ass with my own oven.

Flustered and hungry, I called the shop. My working theory was that if you order online in advance, they cook your food whenever it's convenient, even if that's hours before the delivery time. The polite and competent manager on duty assured me that wasn't the case. The problem, he explained, is that corporate headquarters had yet to issue insulated delivery bags large enough to accommodate the new pizzas. While this makes sense, it also presses my "Sorry pal, not my problem" button. But the manager was apologetic and honest; I liked him, and I will continue to patronize the Uno's in Harvard Square. Now gather round while Bitter Uncle Willie tells you about one of the worst pizza experiences of his life.

Uno calls the Artichoke Bianco a "white pizza made with a blend of artichokes, spinach, fresh basil, and four cheeses." Full disclosure: I don't care for white pizza. True fact: No one will care for this pizza. At least not the version I got. A few minutes in my oven did nothing to reinvigorate the thick blanket of cold, oversalted cheese, which threatened to burn before it showed any hint of softening. My first bite suggested very little by way of concealed greenery, so I popped the hood—which was a simple matter due to aforementioned congealing—and this is what I saw.

Way too much bad bianco, not nearly enough artichoke. There were a few flecks of spinach, though I didn't taste any through the cheese, and the basil was pretty good. Pretty good basil isn't enough to save an entire pizza, however, and the Artichoke Bianco went into the trash after half a slice.

The Greek Isles pizza wasn't any good, either. It's hard to evaluate the crust on a temperature-traumatized pizza, but the thin undercarriages on both the Artichoke Bianco and the Greek Isle tasted like greasy crackers. They were an odd combination of slimy and brittle. Uno purports the Greek Isles pie to feature "house-made pasta sauce topped with plum tomatoes, broccoli rabe, onions, kalamata olives, feta and mozzarella." Mine had no sauce. Not light sauce, mind you, but an utter lack of sauce. The couple chunks of dried out plum tomato weren't nearly enough to cover this oversight. The olives were firm and flavorful, briny enough to bother being olives but not so much that they overwhelmed the pizza. Both cheeses were bland and dry, and the mozzarella was too salty. As previously mentioned, my broccoli rabe was replaced by broccoli broccoli, and I must admit that this was the highlight of the pizza. I picked off all of the firm, crunchy florets before throwing the Family Size Greek Isle in the trash with its partner in crime.

Uno is too well run to let these problems persist. Your pizza almost certainly won't be as bad as mine was. But my job is to review the pizza I ate, not the pizza Uno promises. The pizza they sold me sucked.

About the author: Will Gordon loves life and has made peace with mayonnaise. You can eat and drink with him in Boston or follow him on twitter @WillGordonAgain.

While we think mom-and-pop shops make the best pizza in the nation, we'd be remiss if we didn't keep abreast of what the chains are up to. Suit up, it's time for another Chain Reaction, folks.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, Bertucci's makes the best chain pies I've had. But in all my years of loyalty to the New England-based brick oven pizzeria franchise, I've been pretty boring in my pie choice: Margherita all the way. Twist my arm and I'll go with the eponymous pepperoni-topped "Bertucci". But of the other mainstays, the Spokie's ricotta turned me off, the Pucillo was too loaded with the 'roni, sausage, mushrooms, peppers, and onions, and Silano's chicken, marinated broccoli, and lemon pepper cream sauce was just too unorthodox for my tastes. Then I learned that Bertucci's has revamped their specialty pie menu with the addition of new fall flavors on four pies! And these are some toppings that I can get on board with....I hoped.

My favorite topping equation, and I am sure I have Slice'rs to thank for planting this seed way back, is salty, fatty pork, something tart, and something hot. To that end, the addition of salami and cherry peppers, and their union on the new Spicy Salami , made my Bertucci's lovin' heart sing. The pulpy, sweet sauce of their's makes a great backdrop for the vinegary heat of the peppers. The peppercorn studded slices of salami had a subtle heat of their own, but my one misgiving with this pie was that the salami stayed too soft bedded beneath the mozzarella and provolone (a cheese flavor that was lost on me) and could have benefited from more exposure to the heat of the oven. Overall, this is a pie that could easily dethrone the Queen Margherita.

The current deal at Bertucci's is that you can get two of these new pies for $15. Not bad since the individual pies register at $10.99 each. Never one to miss a deal, I added the most fall of the flavors, the Butternut Squash and Blue Cheese pie. In addition to the crumbled blue cheese, an item that appears to only be available on the specialty pizza as it is not listed in the "craft your own" ingredient list, the butternut squash pie is also topped with candied walnuts. I imagined all the ways that the squash could be dreadful, but the perfectly cut cubes were well-seasoned and intact, but gave way to tender, soft centers. The flavors came together well enough, especially when one of the sweet, praline-esque nuts found their way into a bite. It was kind of like a cheese board pie. Big fans of blue cheese may be able to down a whole one, but a slice or two was all I could eat of the bold flavored special.

The third of the new pies I tried was the Roasted Mushroom and Asiago. Many mushroom topped pizzas can fall victim to drying up into shriveled shrooms, but the the slices of roasted portobellos and white mushroom caps arrived plump and meaty. While the combo of asiago and sage is a fine one, the overall effect of this pie was just too salty. Unlike all the other newly introduced pies, this ones is made on a multigrain crust. It's claims of containing barley, rye flour, and flax seed were undetectable, but the crust was uncharacteristically dense with an intense crunch. Perhaps this crust appeals to the eating philosophies of some, but I can't say I recommend it for flavor or texture.

The one new pie I missed was the bacon and roasted potato. Any other Bertucci fans out there who have tried it? I suspect, that much like these other pies, it will translate to meet expectations, whatever they may be for a potato topped pie. Mine are admittedly low. The rest of the new additions make for a good update to the Bertucci's pie, and I would like to thank all the good people of Bertucci's that saw it fit to add the Spicy Salami. Good call!

About the author: Meredith Smith is the Slice editor. You can follow her on Twitter: @mertsmith.

While we think mom-and-pop shops make the best pizza in the nation, we'd be remiss if we didn't keep abreast of what the chains are up to. Suit up, it's time for another Chain Reaction, folks.

[Photographs: Meredith Smith]

Even at a place that knows its way around good meatballs, there's a lot that can wrong when you try to top a pizza with them. Adam addressed many of the issues in his "Hey Pizza Joints, Why You Gotta Bust My Meatballs?" post. But despite the textural atrocities, or the harrowing risk of sliced balls, I am a sucker for taking a gamble on a meatball pie.

Now one would think that more caution is required when ordering toppings that need extra care from a chain. As if mushrooms have not provided me with a lifetime of examples in the spectrum of slimy canned to dried and desiccated. But the meatball loving side of me is just too powerful for reason. Meatballs don't appear on a chain pizza just any old day. I've never even seen a big chain offer meatballs. This is a limited time offer and an opportunity not to be missed.

Papa John's is currently selling the pizza at the promotional price of $11 and it is billed as having a four cheese blend, savory meatballs, pepperoni, and Italian seasonings. The moment I got the box in my hands, I was struck by just how herb-y this pizza smelled. I've got nothing against herb seasonings, but my internal critic was already making a damning strike against the pie. However, once I got a good look at it, the pizza only seemed modestly dusted in the stuff. And then when I tasted it, I was almost perplexed by how disproportionate the smell and taste of herbs actually were.

Right from the point of peeling back the lid, I felt a surge of optimism with regard to both the ball form and size. Not only were these little suckers actually intact spheres (no slicing—phew!), but they were also well-balanced to the scale of the slice. (Note: I will not say anything about mouth-popping proportion.) To those pluses, I found the odd greenish hue a big fat minus. However, the first bite made it clear that the green was due to a ball packed full of Italian seasonings. While the herbs didn't really do the pie a service or disservice, when it came to the meatballs, the herbs really worked. And it helped to explain their unfortunate color. Herbs, combined with Romano and some garlic flavor made the meatball flavor pretty impressive, especially for a chain. The compressed, yet mushy texture, however, was right in line with what you'd expect from a chain and could still use a little work.

The pepperoni and meatball combo didn't seem like an obvious topping team-up, but they worked well together, particularly with the trademark sweetness of the Papa John's sauce and crust. The salty, mild heat of the pepperoni is key to evening out the sweet spikes and the crisping properties of the 'roni make up for some of the textural pitfalls of the meatballs.

As for the four cheese blend, it tasted pretty standard to me. It has the same creamy, gooey meltability of standard-issue, industry mozzarella. But the added salty factor of shakeable Romano was evident.

Overall, I was pleasantly surprised by this chain meatball pie. All the pros and cons of a regular Papa John's pizza still come into play, but for all the specials of theirs that I have tried, this one is the definite standout.

About the author: Meredith Smith is the Slice editor. You can follow her on Twitter: @mertsmith.

[Photographs: Rich Vana]

The press release from Chili's shouldn't be much of a shock. In fact, that the Dallas-based, Brinker-owned chain would delve into the pizza game could be considered overdue, considering their presence in the national dining scene is about as ubiquitous as pizza itself. Really, the announcement that Chili's is now offering pizza came as no surprise.

To be fair, there is a reason Chili's has met with success; whatever can be said about the quality or creativity, their product is consistent and has a broad appeal, with a menu that includes hamburgers, tacos, and fajitas. What it appears they've done now is to have taken parts of that menu, put them on round pieces of bread with some cheese, thrown them in an oven and called them pizzas.

And they are pizzas—they're just Chili's pizzas. They're neither outstanding nor offensive. The crust, which is the unquestioned major player, is soft, thick, chewy and buttery. It's not a crust that mimics the form of any pre-existing geographic style, but rather bucks the system, a regular loaf of white bread that would otherwise have risen in the middle had it not been for the toppings.

As for said toppings, they're along the lines of what could be expected from pizzas entitled Taco and Southwestern, which were the two that we tasted. The other two static options are Five Cheese and Grilled Chicken and Cheese, along with a Create Your Own, which boasts one of 11 different toppings and up to three additional toppings for an additional charge.

The Taco pizza advertised 'ground beef, salsa, cheddar, monterey jack, mozzarella, red onion and cilantro with a cumin-lime sour cream and pico de gallo.' None of these items was missing, but the presence of nearly all of them was underwhelming. There was no sauce to be found on the pizza, which would have been fine if the toppings had popped a little bit—the pico tasted only of generic roma tomatoes, and while there were onions present, their scarcity was overwhelmed by the powerful presence of the bread. The cumin-lime sour cream, however, did taste of cumin and lime, and the taco-flavored beef made a stand against the crust and at the very least announced itself on the palate. As was the case with both pizzas, the flavors of the different cheeses (in this case Cheddar, Monterey Jack and mozzarella) don't stand a chance against the bready underbelly, though the texture of the dairy and a generic cheese flavor do peek through on occasion.

The Southwestern, likewise, was an unadventurous—if not very unpleasant—experience. The sauce and 'pico de gallo' situation was the same as the Taco, though the presence of bell peppers provided an extra component that was otherwise missing from its counterpart. There's a chipotle pesto on the pizza that we were curious about; we're still wondering about it. Though we identified it on the pizza, we never really tasted it. The grilled chicken did have a pronounced chili flavor to it, giving the pizza a bit of favorable personality that would have been sorely missed.

The pizzas at Chili's are acceptable—acceptable by casual, nationwide-chain standards. The prices are slightly more unpalatable: a nine-inch Taco Pizza checked in at $12.29, while the Southwestern Pizza ran us $13.29. There are dedicated pizza joints in every city turning out a superior product at a lower price. Even if you're a fan of Chili's, we couldn't recommend going there just to try the pizza. But if you do give it a shot, you'll likely find yourself unoffended by the offering, though slightly put out by the price it commands.

About the author: Rich Vana spends his days discussing, discovering, and writing about food in Dallas and the surrounding areas. Sometimes he even gets to partake. You can see the fruits of his labor at Entrée Dallas.

[Photographs: Above, Pizza Hut; rest, Arva Ahmed]

It seems like only yesterday that we were recovering fromCheeseburger Crown Crust pizza that had crept its way out of the Pizza Hut labs in the Middle East. For any of you that have managed to annihilate the memory of the mutant pizza creation, let me remind you of a pizza coronated with an outer 'crown' hoisting greyish burger patties, each painstakingly glossed with a translucent layer of plastic congealed cheese. But just as we were convincing our taste buds that the worst of pizza gore was over, our hard-working friends at Pizza Hut Middle East R&D have decided to surprise us with yet another freakish crust experiment.—The Cone Crust Pizza!

The Cone Crust Pizza flyer espouses the very profound theory: Fun starts with a Cone. This maxim of merriment from Pizza Hut Middle East left me shocked and embarrassed that I had lived an exceptionally unconical life thus far, and had me racing to the phone to order a pizza that could remedy an existence of acute unfunness. Other promotional banners revealed Pizza Hut's intent at "reshaping tasty fun," with a mildly disturbing depiction of stuffed cones and conical distressed-looking cats suspended from a clothes line.

The Cone Crust pizza wears a wreath of parmesan-encrusted cones around its rim, each of which is loaded with either "delicious honey mustard chicken strips" or "indulgent Philadelphia cream cheese." Customers are encouraged to select their preferred pizza toppings, and to request a crust with alternating chicken and cream cheese cones so that they can maximize the sheer number of incongruent flavors on one pizza pie. With a Serious Eats mission close to heart, I called for a medium-sized, cheesy pepperoni base ringed with both variants of cone flavors—only a scrooge would kill the fun by opting for one kind.

When the pizza arrived, it looked remarkably similar to the promotional pictures. The edge of the pizza had been partitioned, folded over and curled into mini cones, with each slice being generously allocated its own personal stuffed cone. The only departure was that not every cone on my pizza perimeter was the overflowing cornucopia of chicken or cream cheese stuffing that the adverts had made it out to be. Instead, some of my crusty funnels looked like their scoops of filling had already been licked down by an evil interceptor on the delivery boy's route.

While the individual elements of the pizza looked commendably close to what Pizza Hut had hyped them up to be, and were even quite palatable on their own, they had no business romping around on the same pizza bed together. Wasn't the Cheeseburger Crown Crust ample evidence that smushing pizza together with dissected burger elements on the same pie is a failed attempt at creating fast food synergy?

Now since a customer can pick their own toppings, I won't dwell on the processed veneer of cheese that sealed down the skimpy splodge of marinara sauce over the circular core of the pie. Nor on the salty cradles of pepperoni which weren't entirely unpleasant, other than the minor grievance that they had been left in the oven for too long and looked far removed from the shiny saucers of beefy juiciness that were staring up at me from the flyer. But come now, we have cones to discuss! Let's not waffle over the toppings.

Each stuffed cone was made of pliable, curled-up pizza crust that was far softer and more cushiony than the usual peripheral pizza bones. Pizza Hut had stayed true to its promise, dusting the cones with granules of parmesan that formed a crunchy outer casing, though failed to impart any real cheesy flavor that one would associate with nutty Parmesan.

The chicken stuffing in the cones was shockingly edible. Not only had the chicken strips been pulverized with sweet honey mustard, but Pizza Hut had gone above and beyond by adding little bits of green pepper and onion to the mushy chicken mix. Without these occasional flecks of vegetal crunch, the chicken scoops might have been as pointlessly uni-dimensional as the cones piped with baked blobs of Philadelphia cream cheese.

Which brings us to the question: Why on earth is Pizza Hut so determined to incorporate Philadelphia cream cheese into their pizzas? They had also tried to weasel it in on their crown crust pizzas—you could swap out the burger patties and recrown your pizza with cream cheese gloop. But it's high time that someone melts the cheese on this Pizza Hut myth—swabs of cream cheese randomly splodged on certain areas of the crust is actually not that fun at all.

The big question that had been consuming me, and I'm sure most of you who have studied the Pizza Hut Cone Crust material in detail, is whether the cones are as seamlessly detachable from the rest of the pie as suggested by the dismembered hand raising up a lone cream cheese cone on the flyer?

I was confident that this specific action—tearing away the cone and holding it up proudly like an Olympic torch flaming with dumpy cream cheese—was the cornerstone of Pizza Hut's vision for fun. I'm ecstatic to report that, YES, indeed they are detachable! For all of you unfortunate Serious Eaters who are oceans away from the Middle East, far away from a world where you can each wave your own personal funnel of fun, I have taken that symbolic and fantastically fun-filled step for you.

The verdict? The Cone Crust pizza had undoubtedly been executed far better than its crowned predecessor. While a few of the cones looked a tad bit greasier and sullen than the model cones fanned out in perfect, synchronized, and heavily Photoshopped formations on the glossy brochures, from a visual standpoint, they were arguably quite close to what Pizza Hut Middle East had twirled them up to be. In fact, one might even applaud the creative layout of 3D cones at perfect tangents to a 2D circular crust, finally displaying the real-life value of having laboured over high-school geometry.

However, as our own Dennis Lee rightly predicted in the comments of the Cone Crust announcement, the pizza was a ninja throwing star with the potential for "extremely accurate deliciousness," but it ended up "running me over with a steamroller of culinary disappointment." It doesn't fail to confound me why anyone would throw three completely disparate and incongruent flavors—honey mustard chicken, cream cheese, and pepperoni—on the same pizza. (My argument would hold even if I had changed course and ventured with the Chicken Fajita or Seafood Island toppings.) The pizza was a flailing team whose individual players would only ever come in the way of each other ever scoring a goal.

Now a third raison-d'être for the Crown Crust is a sneaky PR one. If this was a Pizza Hut ploy to garner international publicity for their crusty daredevil designs, I must admit that I am secretly disappointed. After the Crown Crust pandemic, the Cone Crust didn't have the same newsworthy, shock value. A Cone Crust that would have really been worth cooing over would have been one where the cones held delicately positioned, deep-fried ice-cream balls. This would have been the ultimate (and gloriously gross) indulgence—hot pizza and a batter-encrusted frozen dessert on the very same pie.

With Crowns and Cones now under its belt, what will Pizza Hut strive for next?

I've got my hopes pinned on a Crescent Crust Pizza, embedded with moon-shaped Garlic Cheese Breads (the collective shape would be an aesthetic pizza flower as depicted above). But the real test of Pizza Hut's crusty craftiness will be a Cuboidal Crusted Pizza. This AUTOCAD-designed pizza would have six-faced dough cubes rising up from the pizza rim, each holding a bundle of French fries, or your preferred fizzy soda, or both (yep, in the same cuboid).

It's anyone guess as to what strange and alien crusts Pizza Hut Middle East will cook up next, but we'll stay tuned, because if there's anything we've taken away from our two comical crust experiences, it's that:"FunNY starts with Pizza Hut."

Cone Crust Pizza Commercial

About the author: Arva Ahmed is a Dubai food blogger, freelance writer and food photographer who's obsessed with scouring out ethnic restaurant secrets in Dubai. Her latest foodie project is an attempt to spark an "Old Dubai food revival" by organizing ethnic food tours around older, down-to-earth parts of the city that are far removed from Dubai's new-age glitz and glam. Read more from Arva at her personal blog, I Live in a Frying Pan.

While we think mom-and-pop shops make the best pizza in the nation, we'd be remiss if we didn't keep abreast of what the chains are up to. Suit up, it's time for another Chain Reaction, folks.

[Photographs: Meredith Smith]

Maybe it was irresponsible to try the new Domino's Handmade Pan Pizza without getting a refresher in what the leading chain pan pizza is like, but I think I've had enough Pizza Hut pizzas in my day to leave me with a lasting impression. What I remember is a bread-y pizza with way more yeast flavor than any other chain and a borderline crunchy, oil fried crust. Living in New England, I'm exposed to more pan pizza (Greek in this neck of the woods) than most. But because it's hard to find anyone doing it well (though they do exist), Pizza Hut does set the bar—no matter how high or low it may be—it is most people's primary pan pizza experience*.

So how is Domino's gonna set themselves apart? They makes it clear on their home page announcing the new pizza what you can expect from their new pie. Using fresh, never frozen dough, they claim to have made a pizza with a golden, buttery crust, toppings to the edge, and two layers of cheese in every bite.

*Unless they have Jet's which is purportedly WAY better, though I've never had it and can't say with any authority.

First up, thickness. When I first lifted the lid for the big reveal, the pie was thinner than I anticipated. As you can see from this lip shot, it really isn't a very deep pizza. The lack of end crust, which we'll get to in a minute, may have something to do with that. However, upon deeper reflection (oh,yes, I reflected deeply on this), it actually makes sense for Domino's. What I mean by that is that I think the body of this pie is in exact proportion to a normal Domino's end crust. It's as if the lift and rise of the crust from one of their regular slices has been applied pie-wide. So in that department, they seem to be making their own way. But even more distinguishing is the crustless toppings to the edge angle:

Well, sorta. Some places weren't as well covered as others, but let's chalk it up to new product adjustment on the part of the employee doing the topping. But even that really isn't so distinguishing. Pizza Hut has definitely taken us "to The Edge" before, and even "to The Edge and back." Which makes it an interesting decision for Domino's to go with a style of pie that never took off for a chain that specializes in this kind of pizza. Regardless, the downside is that crust lovers will loathe this pie. The upside, is the bonus of a frico cheese edge. That crispy cheese edge is certainly the pie's best attribute. And as for the rest of the cheese, as advertised there are two layers (above and below the toppings) and the amount is in good proportion to the dough's thickness.

On to flavor. "Buttery" and "Dominio's" are a combo that sends me running. For one thing, imitation butter flavor anything should be banned from all kitchens. If a dish triggers my Whirl detector (a brand of the supremely offensive butter flavored oil products in use today), it quickly becomes a dish pushed to the side. I braced myself for the worst, but it actually wasn't that bad. There are definitely traces of imitation butter flavor at play here, but nothing so bad as to give it that rancid flavor that Serious Eater monkeyerotica commented on in the unveiling post earlier this week.

Without having a lot of firsthand pan pizza making experience, I would think that a well-seasoned pan lends the crusts more flavor. And so it may be because these pans are new that there wasn't a lot of pan pizza flavor. And while it was golden in spots, as you can see, it was more blond than not.

The squishy bread texture of the dough is most like that of standard sliced sandwich bread. In fact, even the golden browned patches, pseudo-flaky and trapping most of the faux butter flavor, have the texture of the crust of sandwich bread; offering slightly more resistance, but not much in the way of a crackling, oil-fried crust. It's the same texture you find in a fast food pastry. And really, there's something beyond the texture that makes that comparison ring true. All the dough between the cheese and outer most crust tastes most like a yeasted donut without the sugary glaze. And once that became evident, I realized that this pizza tasted exactly what I imagined Cinnabon's Pizzabon to taste like!

The lack of crispness is something that can befall any carryout pan pizza since the steam released by the pie in the box makes the bread sweat and soften. But Domino's is all take-out—all boxed. Based on the specimen I tried, I'm not sure that they can achieve the crisp crust, which I think is pan pizza's biggest draw. Add to that the oily, sweet fried dough flavor, and I think if faced with a chain pan pizza decision, I would choose the Hut over this new contender.

Anyone else tried the new pan pizza? What are your thoughts?

About the author: Meredith Smith is the Slice editor. You can follow her on Twitter: @mertsmith.

[Image: Domino's Facebook]

On their website, the dough is advertised as having "a crispy golden crust and a buttery taste" and is "made from fresh, never-frozen dough." These pies also have "two layers of cheese in every bite" and "toppings all the way to the edge."

Will the third time be a charm for Domino's as they take another stab at getting a cut of the pan pizza profits? Time will tell. In the meantime, I'll get my mitts on one of these and report back.

[Via: usatoday.com]

About the author: Meredith Smith is the Slice editor. You can follow her on Twitter: @mertsmith.

While we think mom-and-pop shops make the best pizza in the nation, we'd be remiss if we didn't keep abreast of what the chains are up to. Suit up, it's time for another Chain Reaction, folks.

[Photographs: Will Gordon]

Serious pizza people scoff at most national chains, and for good reason. I didn't come here to bash the big boys, and there's no need to list their many spongy, undercooked, and overprocessed shortcomings. I mention it simply to establish up front that I agree with the general Slice consensus that chain pizza tends not to be good pizza. But it's a category that can't be ignored by anyone with a TV, a lazy streak, and a love of online ordering.

I can spot a discerning pizza shopper by her general comportment, and when I see someone with the tell-tale confident strut and healthy bone structure clearly born of fresh toppings and real mozzarella, I'll stop her in the middle of the sidewalk to inquire as to her favorite national chain. The most common response is pepper spray, followed closely by some version of "I don't really like any of them, but I guess I'd go to Papa John's in a pinch." I respect this position but had never found myself appropriately pinched until last week when Head Slice sent me out for Papa John's new limited-edition Chicken Parmesan pizza.

Papa John's advocates often cite the sauce as the key distinction that separates PJ pie from the rest of the sloppy pile; the Internet's filthy with de- and reconstructed homemade versions, most of which seem based on the twin principles of adding sugar and cooking the hell out of it. The basic red sauce is indeed a smidge sweeter and better than the competition, but in the case of the Chicken Parm pie, it has to share the stage with an ill-advised "creamy garlic parmesan" liquid of medium viscosity, high salt, and low class.

The garlic-powdered white goop undermines the whole operation by taking a reasonable pizza concept—breaded chicken strips and Parmesan cheese—and turning it into a trashy dorm-room-style "everything but the kitchen sink, unless the kitchen sink is where all the gross white salad dressing is, in which case throw the sink on there too" fiasco. But fear not, or at least fear less, for the pizza is still edible no matter how much disdain you have for white goop: It's applied sparingly, so while it does undermine the pizza, it doesn't overwhelm it.

The crust is just your basic chain pizza topping-holder, with perhaps a little less fake butter and a little more sugar than the industry standard. It was unremarkable but inoffensive, which is an achievement in this category. If I were eating for pleasure rather than for science, I would have availed myself of the "well-done" option on Papa J's very user-friendly online order form; I went with the standard cook time, which left the crust predictably dirty blonde and spongy. (There's also a thin-crust option.)

The cheese needs to be a big factor in a specialty pizza with "Parmesan" in the name; it was hit and miss. The basic undercoating of mozzarella was typical—bred more for texture than for flavor—and the Parmesan-Romano mix shaken on top was appropriately tangy but scandalously gritty. My dinner seemed sandy.

The chicken was the best part of this pie. The breaded strips were crunchy on the outside and moist in the middle. The exterior crunch provided a crucial saving grace to a pizza that was otherwise marred by a monotonous squishiness from top to bottom. There was a lot of this good thing, too: The $10 large (14-inch) pizza was remarkably heavy, and it's to John's credit that he took the high road of loading it up on chicken rather than weighing it down with even more white goop. (Though they could have done a better job with chunk distribution; some slices were over-chickened and some under-.) The quantity and quality of the chicken are enough to keep my mind open about future Papa John's encounters, but I can't recommend any self-respecting face-stuffer order the Chicken Parmesan special.

About the author: Will Gordon loves life and hates mayonnaise. You can eat and drink with him in Boston or follow him on twitter @WillGordonAgain.

While we think mom-and-pop shops make the best pizza in the nation, we'd be remiss if we didn't keep abreast of what the chains are up to. Suit up, it's time for another Chain Reaction, folks.

[Photographs: Casey Barber]

Like Five Guys, a burger name that meant virtually nothing to most of America a few years ago and then suddenly expanded into nationwide ubiquity, CiCi's is making a push for pizza buffet domination. With one of its 600 locations (a number that the company plans to nearly double in the next decade) open in East Rutherford, I had no excuse not to give it a whirl. Towing along my ever-helpful husband and his equally adventurous pizza appetite, we sallied forth to attack the 28 varieties of pizza on the menu.

CiCi's crust is a step above Domino's, at least, slightly pillowy in the grandma-style vein but without discernible yeastiness or flavor. It's pretty much what I expected; as fellow Slice contributor John M. Edwards noted in his California Pizza Kitchen review, "I don't think crust is the focus of pizza chains lately, unless filled with cheese."

Instead, sauces seem to be CiCi's focus, with mixed results. Tomato sauces are a letdown across the board; the pizza sauce suffered from dried oregano overload, lending it the simultaneously overspiced yet bland taste that afflicts many a generic frozen pizza. The marinara sauce coating corkscrew cavatappi pasta was a kissing cousin to Chef Boyardee or Ragu—kids might love its pureed sweetness, but this gal was raised on grandma's homemade marinara, not that jarred stuff.

Unsurprisingly, we preferred the tomato-free pizzas, especially the "zesty" variations: ham and cheddar or pepperoni atop "zesty Parmesan ranch sauce." Though the ranch aspects of the sauce weren't immediately identifiable, the salty swipe gave a little more backbone to the tabula rasa crust. And I'll probably catch hell for saying this, but the spinach alfredo slice not only tasted of actual spinach, but it had a better, fresher flavor than the puffy, gloppy Artichoke slices beloved by a certain contingent of the NYC hipster population.

The mac and cheese pizza (also sporting cavatappi) hit the buffet line the same time as the spinach alfredo pie, and I hoped for a one-two punch of goopy comfort food pizza, kind of a TGI Friday's greatest hits pizza lineup. Sadly, the mac and cheese could have used a drizzle of that zesty Parmesan ranch to perk it up, since it came across as watery Velveeta.

The clear winner on the buffet wasn't pizza at all: the breadsticks, a cross between Little Caesar's Crazy Bread and the oily, crunchy end crust edges of Pizza Hut's traditional pan crust, melded my two favorite childhood pizza memories under a layer of salty Parmesan cheese nubbins.

It became a challenge for the two of us to see how many different varieties we could plow through before hitting food coma status, and felt pretty pleased for making it through 11 of them plus pasta, salad, cinnamon buns, brownies, and more than one helping of breadsticks. (Full disclosure: we left a few bones behind.) Just as we were sliding out of the garish yellow booth, though, the white whale appeared: "Oh no, they brought out a Sicilian." We couldn't do it.

About the author: Casey Barber is the editor of Good. Food. Stories., a freelance food writer, and a transplanted Pittsburgher making the most of the Garden State. Find her on Twitter: @GoodFoodStories

[Photographs: Will Gordon]

On Monday I wrote about Burger King's new bacon sundae, which surprised me by being very good. I had low hopes, because I don't like BK ice cream and I am skeptical of bacon's ability to fix bad food. I am quite fond of bacon on its own terms, but I disagree with the people who expect it to magically heal any and every sickly foodstuff it encounters. This stunning sundae notwithstanding, I still generally believe that bullshit plus bacon equals bacon-covered bullshit.

I'm sure you're all with me there, because you're all reasonable people who are also quite handsome: You know that slapping bacon on a poorly conceived or executed dish is just a waste of time and bacon. But what about adding the good stuff to an already successful operation?

I stand by my assertion in Monday's post that bacon has no place on a scallop, but I regret saying "bacon turns pizza into a greasy mess." It was frankly irresponsible to make a blanket statement about such a nuanced and controversial matter, and I thank Serious Eater Pipenta for setting me straight in the sundae story comments. Bacon can indeed work on pizza. Which brings us to today's topic: Can it work on a Domino's Artisan Pizza already freighted with chicken, Alfredo sauce, and a dubious legacy?

Let's get the definitional issues out of the way. First, why is this pizza "artisanal"? Because it's rectangular and thinnish of crust, silly! If you scoff at that argument then aha! you've fallen right into Domino's trap: It says "We're Not Artisans" in giant letters on the box, which goes on to explain how they "don't wear black berets, cook with wood-fired ovens, or apprentice with the masters in Italy." Huh? Let's move on. So how is this pizza "carbonara"? Because it features pork and irregular dairy, and because Domino's says so. Good enough for me. Eatin' time.

Well, the chicken was good. The fair amount of breast meat scattered atop the eight square slices was moist and tender, and it actually tasted of chicken rather than just water-injected, factory-perfected moist tenderness. It brings me no pleasure to report that the rest of the affair was less successful.

It turns out that even after we graciously cleared bacon on conceptual grounds, this stuff had the nerve to raise yet another definitional crisis: It was limp and pink and wimpy, with no evidence of having been smoked. Whether it comes from bellies, legs, or parts unknown, Domino's bacon is essentially ham. That's cool sometimes; ham's great! I liked the Domino's version in their Stuffed Cheesy Bread, but it doesn't get the job done on the Artisan Carbonara, which is marred by a floppy constitution that cries out for crisp, assertive bacon.

Slice's first look at the Domino's Artisan line found improved crusts undermined by inferior toppings. My Carbonara experience suggests that the crust has slipped to the topping level. It was grievously undercooked, which I realize can be a one-time problem caused by a harried or inexpert anti-artisan. But the intermittently blackened cheese is evidence that the crust problem runs deeper than isolated employee error. There seems to be some sort of design problem related to cooking time and oven temperature, because by the time the bottom of this pie was cooked, the top would have been ruined.

The flaccid crust was exacerbated by the goopy Alfredo sauce, which was nicely garlicky and slightly oversalted but mostly just served to gum up the works. (There was also a thin film of "robust marinara," but I wouldn't have noticed it if the literature hadn't tipped me off.) The Alfredo overload made it hard to tell if the crust had been sprayed with the standard Domino's garlic-butter-oil ointment; it didn't taste much like wheat or yeast or any other nice thing.

The cheese was lightly charred, as I prefer it, but the 100% mozzarella that Domino's likes to brag about might not be the ideal composition for cheap pizza cheese, because industrial mozz just doesn't taste like much of anything except a lot of salt and a tiny bit of sweet cream.

Domino's Artisan Carbonara failed me. The situation might not be hopeless—cut down on the sauce, improve or at least precook the bacon, figure out how to crunch up the crust so the pizza doesn't resemble a Hot Pocket from the dark days before they perfected the microwave crisping sleeve technology—but it doesn't look promising, either, since the chicken was the only isolated part of this pizza that succeeded in or out of context.

About the author: Will Gordon loves life and hates mayonnaise. You can eat and drink with him in Boston or follow him on twitter @WillGordonAgain.