MPizzablog 04/03/10 Domino's thin crust pizzas
One thing that MPizzablog is, is an independent, honest, non-affiliated with any food company, supplier or restaurant, non-biased (tho a tad distrustful towards Detroit & New York style pizza; this is a Chicago-area blog) completely non-compensated blog that uses no photo editing other than color adjustment due to the webcam, and uses all-new original pics for each blog entry, sans the pizza box pic; if a repeat (this particular box has 3-22-10 stamped in red on the bottom & this being April 3, 2010). The rule here is every single pizza is eligible for review or critique, whether its a frozen pizza to a crappy homemade pizza that could basically be fake cheese & ketchup on a saltine cracker, carry out or even half of a slice of leftover pizza from a restaurant.
I’ve eaten a lot of pizza since I started on April 26, 1987, and the worst was always the shitty-ass pizza served at my childhood schools that was shitty dough with diarrhea-style grease red sauce, full of big air bubbles and the cheapest fake cheese known to exist that sank into a putrid pool at the crust’s lowest elevation. I can’t believe I was actually pissed one Thursday 11 a.m. morning hour during the 1987-88 school year, that I threw up about 10 minutes until lunchtime that was the month’s Pizza Day for that shitty pizza, and I had to be taken home without my pizza slice. As for pizza chains, there’s lots of them in the Chicagoland area, and to me, Domino’s has always been ranked the worst. Terrible tasteless crust, cheap on cheese, dry, plain sauce, gritty sausage that wouldn’t pass as dog food, pepperoni pizza that made me want to choke to death on it. It always ranked worst to me, even behind Little Caesar’s. But apparently Domino’s got tired of the universal bitching of how they really suck, some self-respecting employee actually tasted a Domino’s pizza, or got tired of [I assume supposed] declining profits, decided to actually do some food quality control and actually put an ounce of effort into making flavored food. I’ve seen the commercials for the new sauce, new crust & herbs, but figured it’s just another empty promise gimmick.
Tonight the deal of two medium pizzas with two toppings for $5.99 each was placed. Both on crunchy thin crust that measured 1/8th thick, was crunchy, smooth on the bottom and was decent. The “new robust sauce” on both has some zest to it, and some hints of green herbs but still was on the dry side. The cheese was a shredded Provolone cheese that at a normal serving, was again cheap in distribution and barely filled out in 1/16” to 1/8th’s thick. I’ve never seen in person a Domino’s pizza that cheese was the main ingredient like most local pizzas are, so that wasn’t expected, but it did have a nice mild-sharp flavor.
One pizza was roasted red peppers and Italian sausage, and the other was pepperoni & mushrooms. The red peppers were 1” by ¼” strips, were very soft and had a pleasant pepper taste; and was covered in a green spice that smells a lot like thyme and/or basil or green spice blend that had a nice greeny Italian aroma, but definitely not oregano, tarragon or rosemary. The Italian sauce actually resembled like real pizza sausage; was in chunks, firmness and flavors you actually expect from pizza. On the other pizza, the pepperoni was 1 ½” wide, and seemed like a standard spicy pepperoni but better than I remember by Domino’s standards. The mushrooms were fresh and smelled good & were actually cut ¼” thick; unusual for fast food pizza but was very sparse & was no one that one chunk per 3” x 2” party-style slice, totally about 8-10 in all. The pepperoni’s covered some ground, tho I’d expect more expensive toppings like mushrooms & red peppers would be used less on smaller sizes.
I can honestly say these were the best Domino’s pizzas I have ever had, but the bar was set so low there was really no place to go but up. It actually tasted like real pizza, maybe a hair step above a mildly-expensive frozen store pizza, but the flavors were there and the crust was crispy & cracker-like, like a true thin crust. We don’t rank pizzas here, and time will tell if Domino’s can keep up this rare quality control, and other variety’s will have to be tried, as long as they keep putting out coupons and/or special deals, since convenience is not exactly on the highest level in this particular area, tho I seem to recall Domino’s has always had a highly-funded advertisement budget with constant commercials.