Where's the pork in Pizza Hut's Bacon Cheese Stuffed Crust?

There's bacon in the crust. Supposedly.

Let's do another pizza review.

It's late fall, a time of early sunsets, long dark nights and extensive football viewing. What better way to warm the chill of creeping winter than with a warm pizza box delivered to the home?

And what better way to improve a warm box of pizza than with stuffed crust? What better way to improve Stuffed Crust Pizza than with bacon?

Pizza Hut seemed to have followed that thought process when it created its Bacon Stuffed Crust Pizza. Said pizza should be the precipice of junk food. It should deserve its own museum in Louisville, Kentucky, a place on the fast food Mount Rushmore and a spot atop every list of favorite takeout foods. It should marry cheese, bacon and crust in a union blessed by divine providence.

Unfortunately, the gods did not smile upon Pizza Hut's creation.

While one should finish a pie feeling pigged out on porky goodness, there's none of that bacon blast here. The tiny bacon bits in the crust are completely overwhelmed by Pizza Hut's salty, gooey stuffed crust. If I didn't know there was bacon in this pizza, I might have missed the meat entirely while eating.

That's simply unforgivable. Stuffed Crust Pizza is delicious in a what-did-I-just-do-to-my-body way. Bacon is delicious in the same way. Do a decent job of combining them and the result would be a heart stopper.

Instead it's a heart breaker. I can't get past what might have been here. Two sporks out of five.

Little Caesars Pretzel Crust Pizza is missing from your life

Pretzel goodness in a pizza. What more do you want?

Unless you make a habit of trying different Hot-N-Ready pizzas at Little Caesars, you probably haven't tasted Pretzel Crust Pizza.

Change that. Right now.

This is a pizza suited for children, adults who are young at heart and anyone else who likes pretzels. If you're a kid who eats nacho cheese, you'll like it. If you're an adult who buys SuperPretzels from your grocer's freezer, you'll like it. If you're willing to visit Auntie Anne's at the mall when you need a snack, this Pretzel Crust Pizza is worth trying.

Here's Little Caesar's recipe for the pie: Take pretzel dough crust, top it with a "creamy cheddar cheese sauce" that tastes like it belongs in a Velveeta commercial, put on a layer of shredded cheese, toss in some pepperoni and throw a heaping helping of salt on top of it all.

There's not a single thing there that doesn't qualify as sinfully delicious.

Here's the recipe for eating it: Find a $5 bill, get a humongous drink to take the edge off the salt, and sit down with someone who's not a food snob.

That's right, this pizza is only $5. For that price, how can you not try it?

The snotty people of the world will turn up their noses as they hurry off to find some expensive and unsatisfying foie gras. Let them go. Find someone who's not afraid to eat cheap and split this pizza with them. You'll feel greasy, you'll feel salty, and you'll feel happy.

Five sporks out of five, Little Caesars. Pretzel Pizza! Pretzel Pizza!

Back in the saddle at CiCi's Pizza

Welcome back, foodies! I'm delighted to report that after nearly two months of impromptu summer vacation, the food critique is back with new reviews. I spent time away from the blog to recharge my chewing muscles and empty my stomach, so I'm once again ready to shoulder the heavy burden of eating for your enlightenment.

My hollow stomach didn't last long -- the first of our new reviews focuses on CiCi's Pizza, an all-you-can-eat smorgasbord of pizza, pasta, soup and salad. I visited the restaurant for the first time last night, and as of this moment I still feel full.

You may have heard of CiCi's. The chain, which currently has branches in 35 states, frequented television airwaves for a while with advertisements claiming endless pizza, pasta, salad and dessert for "under five bucks."

Inflation seems to have reared its head since that ad barrage first reached the East Coast, because CiCi's now promotes itself as a buffet for "five bucks and change." I paid a still-bargain-priced $5.49 for the buffet at CiCi's Syracuse location, plus an additional $1.49 for a drink.

You can chip in a few extra cents for a jumbo-sized drink if you'd like, but that doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. The beverage fountain was self-serve, and no visible signs prohibited refills. Therefore, the only reason to buy the bigger cup is to avoid walking to refill your drink. And since you're probably getting up for return trips to the buffet, an aversion to walking at CiCi's is oxymoronic.

The buffet itself covers an impressive variety of pizza: Cheese, pepperoni, Alfredo, spinach Alfredo, sausage, pepperoni jalapeno, Mexican, Hawaiian, buffalo chicken, barbecue and veggie pizzas all made appearances during my time at the restaurant. There's also pasta in tomato sauce, soup, salad, bread sticks, dessert pizza and brownies.

All the variety aside, CiCi's is worth visiting for the bread sticks and brownies alone. The bread sticks, while not of gourmet quality, were wonderfully pliant and avoided the nefarious pitfall of gnaw-till-exhaustion chewiness. They were topped with a tasty Parmesan cheese and had a nice, moist consistency -- although I don't want to think about how much oil was doused on them.

Speaking of moist, the gooey brownies stole the show. This came as a bit of a surprise, considering I only bit into a brownie after several gut-busting trips to the buffet for main-course items. Even so my first bite of brownie made me want to hollow out some space in my leg for an extra round of dessert.

The center of the brownie was delightfully gooey and contained that sweet-but-not-too-rich chocolate flavor that best ends a good buffet dinner. Powdered sugar smothered the top, serving more to provide a textural balance to the moist innards than to add any actual flavor.

Oh yeah, there was pizza, too. As I mentioned, the range of pizzas is laudable. Unfortunately, CiCi's much-ballyhooed macaroni-and-cheese pizza didn't make an appearance on the buffet. Some patrons were special-ordering it by the slice, which is a nice option, but I'd like to have seen it under the heat lamps.

The buffet pizzas were of the 12-inch variety, which produced small slices perfect for sampling. CiCi's got it right. Buffet pizza shouldn't have giant, belly-filling slices, which make it too hard to jump between different varieties.

For the vegetable eaters out there, the salad bar was basic but workable. Iceberg lettuce, red onions, banana peppers, croutons, bacon bits, carrots and a standard array of dressings were all offered. It's really just a nice way to accompany your bread sticks, though.

The strength of the bread sticks and brownies help propel CiCi's to a rating of four sporks out of five. The restaurant's strengths are easy to spot: good variety, great dessert and spectacular pricing. You'd be hard-pressed to find a similar array of food for seven bucks.

Still, there's room for improvement. More accessible macaroni-and-cheese pizza and a pumped-up salad bar would be the icing on CiCi's cake -- or the powdered sugar on the brownies.

An alien idea: Planet Fitness Pizza Night

If you live in a region with a Planet Fitness, you might be aware of a peculiar perk at the gym chain: Pizza night.

On the first Monday of every month the gym is filled with more than treadmills and weights. Slices of pizza are laid out so you can exercise your jaw muscles as well as your biceps.

The idea always seemed self defeating to me. Why sweat it out for hours on end only to undo your hard work with artery-clogging grease and cheese? But being a member of a different gym, I only gave it passing curiosity -- an cock of the head through the telescope, if you will.

Well, I've re-relocated from Central Pennsylvania to Central New York and joined up with a new gym -- Planet Fitness. Yesterday was my first visit to Pizza night, forcing me to confront the peculiarity head-on.

I have to admit I was pleasantly surprised.

It certainly wasn't my initial impression that won me over. I forgot all about pizza night until I arrived at the door at 6:30, ready to work out some built-up energy from a day spent sitting behind a desk at work. Instead of being greeted by the gym's familiar "come hyperventilate with me" scent of exercise and sweat I was bowled over by the heavy smell of pizza crust. It wasn't appetizing at the time.

The juxtaposition of Italian food and my workout also failed to sway my opinion. Nothing about seeing fellow gym-mates milling about the entrance chewing on cheesy dough made me want to squeeze out an extra set of triceps extensions or finish another mile on the exercise bike. Here too my nose took the lead in the dissatisfaction. Exercise plus pizza smells equals the urge to vomit, not the desire to stuff your face.

The pizza quality didn't do much for me either. It also wasn't hot. I suppose lukewarm slices are to be expected since they're available all evening.

My opinion of pizza night only changed after a decent stint on an exercise bike. It was about 7:30 p.m. and I'd yet to eat dinner. My blood sugar was plummeting, and I needed a jolt. Pizza was there to save me, offering an unmitigated dash of sustenance when my body and brain were feeling fuzzy.

Sure, it probably set my waistline back a few days. And I'm still not completely behind the Pizza night idea. Yet having tried it, I'm much more at peace with the concept than I was before.

The verdict is still out. For right now Pizza Night gets an undecided two-and-a-half sporks out of five.

Perennial Pizza

It can be said that all things should be done in moderation. Subsequently, I, your humble food critic, took a one week vacation from my summer vacation activity of reviewing food. I return with my reviewing batteries recharged and a new need for reviewing delectable inexpensive foods.

I work a long, difficult eight-hour day filled with many trying naps and difficult lounging. Subsequently, I am always hungry come lunchtime. Every Friday, several of my coworkers and I try to sample a different eating establishment. Often, our exploration leads us to all-you-can-eat buffets and other such smorgasbords. Last Friday, we found ourselves at the Pizza Hut lunch buffet.

The interesting Italian icon of pizza has, of course, been translated into many different American versions. We all know that pizza in the United States is hardly an Italian food, and pizza hut pizza is quite possibly the farthest cry from true Italian that one can find in a pizzeria. However, “gatherin’ round the good stuff” is not necessarily a bad thing. Although pizza hut pizza is not my favorite interpretation of the pies from Europe’s most famous boot, I cannot say that I find the pizza offensive. It has a solid blend of cheese, sauce, and golden crust. It is, of course, amazingly greasy and requires either a strong stomach or multiple cloth napkins (for dabbing grease) to eat, but this is an affliction of all pizza chains. It is not simply a Pizza Hut problem. I find the Pizza to be totally inoffensive, although one could make the argument that it is less than memorable.

The lunch buffet operates on a unique principle at “The Hut”. Most buffets have a specific menu that corresponds to a certain time and date. For instance, the Old Country Buffet may have fried chicken on Tuesday at dinner. If the chicken runs out, it will be refilled in the same place on the buffet. Pizza hut operates on a different principle. They rotate their pizzas. There may be a thin crust supreme pizza offered in a spot. After this pizza runs out, it may be replaced by a pan pepperoni pizza. This makes eating at the buffet a dynamic experience. One can approach the bar filled with excitement and anticipation, as he or she does now know what foods to expect. Breadsticks and the salad bar are consistently offered in the same place, as is a dessert pizza, but the other pizzas are rotated, seemingly at random. I find this unique execution to be somewhat charming.

Unfortunately, there are also drawbacks to this style of “buffeting”. One cannot always find the pizza that they wish to eat. For instance, I have a true penchant for pepperoni, yet I was confronted with the inability to grab a slice of pepperoni pizza at several critical eating junctures. Although the pizza rotation allows for obscure pizzas such as the buffalo chicken pizza to be offered in greater variety, it also limits one’s ability to continue to eat a favorite type of pizza.

One other unfortunate drawback to the buffet is a fallacy of every all-you-can-eat offering around the country. Simply put, it is far too tempting to overeat. In addition to the fact that chronic overeating can cause obesity, isolated incidents can cause discomfort, nausea, indigestion, and every other ailment that Pepto-Bismol claims to remedy. (Interesting factoid: Pepto-Bismol is listed in my spellchecker)

I must say that I enjoyed my experience at the Pizza Hut lunch buffet. Although the pizza will not satisfy the true “Italian Stallions” in America, it is a solid offering. The pizza rotation has its own unique advantages and drawbacks, and I enjoyed sampling many different types of pizzas. Based on this information, the buffet earns a commendable three and a half sporks out of a possible five. I may even return to the buffet afterwards. I shall just have to pack some Tums as I gather round the good stuff.