Okay, maybe junk food junkie hasn’t really gone away since I’ve been gorging on fried chicken sandwiches from fast food places, but whatever. Junk food is on the menu today as the fattening continues! And what better way to keep up the descent into XL sweats than with some pizza! YEAH!! PIZZA!! And why not go with one of the original pizza sluts with Pizza Hut. It’s great how it rhymes.

You know, with all the mom & pop and trendy pizza places in SF I hadn’t been to a Pizza Hut (or Domino’s or Little Caesars or whatever) since, well, since the last time I lived in NC some thirty years ago (or more). And now seemed like a good time to try them out since they brought back something they are calling Detroit style pizza. Yep, leave it up to a fast food chain to jump on the square pizza bandwagon, no matter how late to the party they are!

I’ve been down this route before as square pizza started to make its mark in SF like two years ago. I even managed to hit up a couple spots (during pandemic too!) and you can check them out here and here. It’s buttery, pillowy, focaccia like dough with your usual, and not usual, toppings. After seeing the commercials for it during every sporting event recently, I thought, fine, I give in to the marketing and will try the damn thing.

And there you have it. A square eight slice pizza baked with the cheese and toppings on the bread and then the sauce ladled over the top. That is their thing, the sauce over the top, something I haven’t really seen on the Detroit style pizzas of SF. I all honesty, I was kind of on board with this as I am big on “easy sauce”. Some places just drench a pizza in it. Here, it is pretty much all in one spot and you can scrape some off it you think it is too much. But let’s talk about that sauce first.

The biggest issue I had was it tasted sweet. Not like fresh tomato sweet, more like, we added sugar to this sauce to cover up the fact we use canned tomato sauce and possibly other frozen ingredients that have been de-thawed. While I won’t go on total record with that idea, I am just going by my experience from the innumerable fast foods joints I’ve had the “pleasure” of working at. But yeah, it was sweet, and noticeable. Which again will be a good reason to have it just on top as I can take it down to where it is just a hint of flavor instead of taking over a whole bite flavor. It really is a good thing it is not baked in.

Yes, I got multiples to try a variety and see what their consistency was. The pepperoni does have tons of crispy pepperoni on it so they’ve got that. They also cover it completely in cheese, also a plus. Same with the other one above that had sausage, mushrooms and green pepper. So thumbs up for the toppings.

This is another one I got. Yes, three different pizzas and no, I did not eat these all by myself (could have, but didn’t). I had Ms. M and her fam lend a hand on some of it. This one had chicken, mushrooms and green peppers. The toppings were not quite as plentiful this time except for the green peppers. They must be in season. Beyond that, how was the crust?

Well, as this style of pizza should go, it should be pretty focaccia like. Fluffy, pillowy clouds of risen dough with baked in buttery goodness. It wasn’t exactly that. These did seem a little flatter and not risen as much as some others I’ve had. It also tasted very yeasty, giving it notes of being like a beer bread. Though with all that yeast in there, I’m surprised it did not have the rise I was expecting. It is still softer and doughier than a standard pizza so they are almost there. I’m guessing either the recipe was off or whoever was making the dough this time around got their measurements a little bit off. Maybe the yeast got too hot? Too cold? Who knows. When you are making this many pizzas things can go awry sometimes. The edges at least still had the kind of buttery crunchiness you would hope for, so there was that.

I guess as far as fast food pizza go, I didn’t not not like it. Ultimately this is baked bread and melted cheese and sometimes it is hard to go too wrong with that combo. Kind of along the lines of the joke I know I’ve told before, “pizza is like sex, when it is good, it is real good and when it is bad, it is still pretty good.” Which is pretty much how I feel about this pizza. I wouldn’t go out of my way to order this again, but if I was at a tailgate or Super Bowl party or something and it was there, I would probably have a slice or two. I can wash it down with some beer and scrape off that sweet sauce and go all in on the meat, cheese and bread—the basic food groups of sporting events. For now I’ll just venture out in search of those mom and pop pizza shops here in NC and see how they measure up. Who knows, maybe I’ll come across someone doing a pimento cheese pizza with bacon and collard greens or something. Not that’s a Southern reinvented thing!