REVIEW: Papa John’s Double Cheeseburger Pizza

Papa John's Double Cheeseburger Pizza

Being fortunate enough to live in an area with a large number of mom ‘n’ pop pizza shops, I’ve seen the cheeseburger pizza road before. (But not an actual Cheeseburger Pizza Road – if I saw that, I would move there immediately.)

I’ve found that small pizza joints tend to have a wider variety of toppings and, thus, a wider variety of specialty pizzas, ranging from cheeseburger to taco to gyro to something with pine nuts and Hoisin sauce. Okay, I made up the last one, but it’s not out of the question.

Comparatively, most chain specialty pizzas and toppings in general are pretty pedestrian. I consider myself lucky if I can even get white sauce as an option. If they do decide to branch out, it tends to be towards Crazy Town, like shoving hot dogs or seven different cheeses into their crusts. In fact, a lot of the insanity in chain specialty pizzas involves shoving shit into the crust. I’m looking at you, Pizza Hut.

Papa John’s went a different direction with their Double Cheeseburger Pizza, however. They put the crazy on top, not in the crust.

Papa John's Double Cheeseburger Pizza Slice

Here’s what Papa John’s has to say about the Double Cheeseburger Pizza: “Featuring a zesty burger sauce covered with a double layer of 100% real beef, dill pickle slices, fresh cut roma tomatoes and 100% real cheese made from mozzarella.”

I have several points of contention with this description. Let’s start with the burger sauce.

Papa John's Double Cheeseburger Pizza Burger Sauce

First off, the words “zesty burger sauce” are both generic and sound like they should be about five miles away from my pizza. Upon tasting, I uphold this idea. On its own, the flavor of the sauce was distinctly mayo mixed with ketchup, aka the poor man’s Thousand Island dressing. Call me crazy, but fresh-from-the-oven hot mayonnaise is not appealing.

Next we have the double layer of real beef. “Double layer” is a questionable quantity, and that really showed here, as I found the beef pieces to be rather sparse. Furthermore, the pieces of beef were small and remarkably flavorless, which is a bad trait for a pizza that’s supposed to taste like a burger.

Papa John's Double Cheeseburger Pizza Pickles

The tomatoes and cheese were just fine, but the real issue was the pickles. While the beef had a weak showing, the pickles certainly made up for it in spades. It appeared that Papa John’s used the same pickles you’d find on a regular fast-food burger, which sounds promising on paper but did not translate at all to a burger party in my mouth.

I could not escape the pickles. There was a slice in every bite. After I’d done my duty for the purposes of this review and eaten the pizza as-is, I tried removing the pickles in an attempt to have a slice of pizza that did not taste like a jar of brine. It was impossible. Even with the pickles themselves gone, the juice had been absorbed deep into the crust.

I would like to officially rename Papa John’s Double Cheeseburger Pizza to Papa John’s Precariously Plentiful Pickle Pizza. With sad beef, warm mayo sauce, and so many brined cucumbers that it made me want to make about 15 Pickles the Drummer jokes throughout this review, I cannot in good conscience call this a cheeseburger pizza.

To use a forced basketball analogy, Papa John’s Double Cheeseburger Pizza needs to work on its fundamentals. For right now, I’m benching it.

(Nutrition Facts – 1/6 of a small pizza – 260 calories, 130 calories from fat, 14 grams of fat, 4.5 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 25 milligrams of cholesterol, 600 milligrams of sodium, 25 grams of carbohydrates, 1 gram of fiber, 4 grams of sugar, 8 grams of protein.)

Item: Papa John’s Double Cheeseburger Pizza
Purchased Price: $6.00 (on sale: regular price $12)
Size: Small
Purchased at: Papa John’s
Rating: 2 out of 10
Pros: I got it for 50 percent off. The tomatoes and cheese were fine. Metalocalypse. I only ordered a small. If you put pickles on everything you eat, this is your dream come true.
Cons: Pickles overtook everything. A chain restaurant that left the crust alone but still made an awful specialty pizza. Warm mayo/ketchup sauce. I wish I was actually good at basketball. The double serving of burger was a double serving of sadness.

QUICK REVIEW: California Pizza Kitchen Limited Edition Spicy Chipotle Chicken Crispy Thin Crust Pizza

California PIzza Kitchen Limited Edition Spicy Chipotle Chicken Crispy Thin Crust Pizza

Purchased Price: $5.99 (on sale)
Size: 14.1 oz.
Purchased at: Safeway
Rating: 5 out of 10
Pros: Pleasant sweet and smoky sauce with a hint of lime. Nice crispy crust. Long list of toppings (white meat chicken, roasted corn, black beans, poblano peppers, fire-roasted red and yellow peppers, cilantro, mozzarella, parmesan, asiago, and romano cheeses, and a spicy chipotle lime sauce). Preservative-free crust.
Cons: Not spicy at all. It would make the Spicy Chipotle Chicken pizza available at California Pizza Kitchen restaurants cry because this frozen version is a poor representation of it. Nice long list of toppings didn’t translate into a pizza with a complex flavor. Not a lot of chicken. Had to manually move toppings to get an even distribution.

California PIzza Kitchen Limited Edition Spicy Chipotle Chicken Crispy Thin Crust Pizza Closeup

Nutrition Facts: 1/3 pizza – 270 calories, 80 calories from fat, 9 grams of fat, 4.5 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 30 milligrams of cholesterol, 570 milligrams of sodium, 31 grams of carbohydrates, 2 grams of fiber, 3 grams of sugar, 15 grams of protein, 6% vitamin A, 8% vitamin C, 20% calcium, and 10% iron.

QUICK REVIEW: California Pizza Kitchen Limited Edition Greek Recipe Crispy Thin Crust Pizza

California Pizza Kitchen Limited Edition Greek Recipe Crispy Thin Crust Pizza

Purchased Price: $5.99 (on sale)
Size: 14.3 oz.
Purchased at: Safeway
Rating: 5 out of 10
Pros: Wonderful crispy crust. Preservative-free crust. Lots of veggies, especially olives and tomatoes. If you don’t eat meat, you may like this pizza. Decent source of vitamin A and calcium. Ready in 12 quick minutes.
Cons: ALL I CAN TASTE AND SMELL ARE OLIVES!!! (Okay, occasionally, I could taste parmesan, spinach, and a little bit of garlic.) Tomatoes give the pizza a juicy texture. Red onions were flavorless. Didn’t notice the tzatziki sauce. Some lamb might’ve been nice. A serving is a third of the pizza…who’s going to cut a pizza into an odd number of slices? I suck at fractions.

California Pizza Kitchen Limited Edition Greek Recipe Crispy Thin Crust Pizza Closeup

Nutrition Facts: 1/3 pizza – 300 calories, 130 calories from fat, 15 grams of fat, 5 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 20 milligrams of cholesterol, 550 milligrams of sodium, 30 grams of carbohydrates, 2 grams of fiber, 2 grams of sugar, 10 grams of protein, 20% vitamin A, 2% vitamin C, 20% calcium, and 10% iron.

REVIEW: Pizza Hut 3-Cheese Stuffed Crust Pizza

Pizza Hut 3 Cheese Stuffed Crust Pizza

Pizza Hut knows we all have the internet, right?

Because how can they consider their new 3-Cheese Stuffed Crust Pizza to be the latest and greatest they can offer in the United States when many of us know about–via the internet–a pizza they introduced in the Middle East last year with cheeseburgers as the outer crust, which still hasn’t made its way here. I mean, if this was the 1980s and they released a pizza with cheeseburgers as the outer crust in the Middle East, I’m pretty sure no one in the U.S. would’ve found out about it, unless someone was fortunate to have a Middle Eastern pen pal.

But it’s not the leotard and leggings 80s, it’s 2013 and information spreads easily. When actresses climb out of a car awkwardly, their upskirt photos are posted all over the internet within minutes. When the Boston Red Sox won the World Series, their Wikipedia page was updated within seconds after the final out.

Yes, I’m upset.

This should be a review about a pizza with frickin’ cheeseburgers, but instead I’m writing about a pizza with three cheeses in its crust. I mean, that would be impressive if that was the most cheeses they ever put into a crust, but it’s not. Remember their Crazy Cheesy Crust Pizza? Well, that had five.

But enough of my desire to see that pizza-cheeseburger hybrid in the United States. And it’s not as if other countries now have it…

Wait! What the fu…! Ugh. Seriously? Whatever.

Pizza Hut 3 Cheese Stuffed Crust Pizza Closeup

The three cheeses stuffed into the outer crust of this pizza are mozzarella (boring because it’s all over the rest of the pizza), white cheddar (the albino brother of regular cheddar), and provolone (my first cheese option at Subway). The Pizza Hut 3-Cheese Stuffed Crust Pizza is a hand tossed-style pizza and you can get whatever toppings you want on yours, but I ordered mine with pepperoni because I’m as boring as the mozzarella, white cheddar, and provolone stuffed into the crust of this pizza.

Let me move away from the stuffed crust for a moment and talk about the rest of the pizza, which won’t be much because it’s just the normal hand-tossed Pizza Hut pizza. If you’re not familiar with their hand-tossed pizza, it’s thinner and not as crispy as their pan pizza. As for the sauce, cheese, and pepperoni, it’s the typical stuff you’d find on any Pizza Hut pizza.

Now back to the stuffed crust.

Pizza Hut 3 Cheese Stuffed Crust Pizza Super Closeup

Seeing the large puffs on the edge of the pizza, might make you think that each one of them is stuffed with cheese, but they’re not. If you’re an optimist, you’d say they’re half-full of cheese. But if you’re a pessimist, you’d say they’re half-full of air. The combined flavor of the three cheeses is a nice change of pace from the typical mozzarella in the original Pizza Hut Stuffed Crust Pizza. Each cheese has a mild flavor so one isn’t going to overwhelm the others. When combined they have a decent flavor that does entice me to eat the crust instead of throwing it away, feeding it to birds, or use them as horns on my head while my friends and I play pizza crust bull and pizza box matador.

However, I don’t see myself ever buying this pizza again. Yes, it’s an improvement over the previous stuffed crust pizza, but I can’t help but think they could’ve done more to encourage non-crust eaters to scarf down the additional carbs. Maybe include a dipping sauce, like they did with their oddly familiar looking Pizza Hut Cheesy Bites Pizza? Or, since the stuffed crust is half-full of air, why not stuff a little sauce, meat, and veggies. Or maybe do something crazy, like attach cheeseburgers.

(Nutrition Facts – 1/8 of a pizza – 300 calories, 160 calories from fat, 17 grams of fat, 9 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 50 milligrams of cholesterol, 880 milligrams of sodium, 34 grams of carbohydrates, 3 grams of fiber, 1 gram of sugar, and 16 grams of protein.)

Item: Pizza Hut 3-Cheese Stuffed Crust Pizza
Purchased Price: $16.99* (for one topping)
Size: Large
Purchased at: Pizza Hut
Rating: 6 out of 10
Pros: Flavor of the three cheeses is a step up from the usual mozzarella in the original Stuffed Crust Pizza. Ample pepperoni. If you enjoy Pizza Hut hand-tossed pizzas, this one will not offend you. The internet. The Pizza Hut cheeseburger crust pizza. Playing pizza crust bull and pizza box matador.
Cons: Stuffed crust is half-full of air; could’ve used that space to fit more ingredients. Could’ve also used a dipping sauce. Still waiting for Pizza Hut’s cheeseburger crust pizza in the U.S. Doesn’t beat the record for number of cheeses in a Pizza Hut crust. Looks like a Pizza Hut Cheesy Bites Pizza. Having my upskirt photos posted on the internet.

*Because I live on a rock in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, things are a bit pricier here. You’ll probably pay less than I did.

REVIEW: Pizza Hut Crazy Cheesy Crust Pizza

Pizza Hut Crazy Cheesy Crust Pizza

Pizza Hut likes to do things differently. In the past, they’ve been known to shove hot dogs inside of their pizza crusts, or even decorate the perimeter of a pie with cheeseburgers. It seems that Pizza Hut has once again decided to deviate from the traditional pizza crust formula with the introduction of the new Crazy Cheesy Crust Pizza, which was launched in the United States on April 3 and will be available for a limited time only.

The Crazy Cheesy Crust Pizza encircles a pizza with cheese pockets containing a blend of five different cheeses: asiago, fontina, mozzarella, provolone, and white cheddar. For just $12.99, hungry citizens all over the US can purchase a single topping Crazy Cheesy Crust Pizza. Today, I was one of those citizens.

As my stomach growled with unimaginable voracity, I picked up the phone and dialed my nearest Pizza Hut. The exchange went something like this…

Pizza Hut Employee: Pizza Hut. How can I help you?

Me: Hi, I’d like to order a Crazy Cheesy Crust Pizza.

Employee: …a what?

Me: A Crazy Cheesy Crust Pizza.

Employee: Do you mean…a Stuffed Crust Pizza?

Me: No, I mean a Crazy Cheesy Crust Pizza.

Employee: *silence*

Me: It’s a new pizza that was released yesterday. Do you have it?

Employee: Oh, umm…please hold.

After being placed on hold for a short while, the employee returned and allowed me to finish my order, assuring me it would be thirty minutes until my pizza arrived. I was nervous, worried that the delivery person would hand me a pizza box containing a normal, non-crazy pizza.

I can only imagine the chaos that occurred at that Pizza Hut when I hung up the phone: employees running every which way, knocking over boxes of crusts, cheeses, and sauces, searching for some sort of clue to help them learn what exactly a “Crazy Cheesy Crust Pizza” is, and exactly how one can be prepared. Soon, a riot begins, and a few unfortunate individuals lose their lives while searching for the Crazy Cheesy Crust Pizza recipe.

(A moment of silence for the victims of the Great Crazy Cheesy Crust Pizza Massacre of 2013.)

The thirty minutes I spent waiting for my pizza were long and trying. Eventually, the delivery person arrived, and I gave him the cash in exchange for his Cheesy Crust. I opened the box, and found myself standing before a pizza somewhat shaped like a chrysanthemum. Extending from the main body of the pizza were sixteen cheesy prongs, begging to be devoured. I could wait no longer; I picked up my first slice and took a bite.

Pizza Hut Crazy Cheesy Crust Pizza Slice

The main pizza portion of Pizza Hut’s new Crazy Cheesy Crust Pizza offers few surprises. The sauce is Pizza Hut’s usual sweet tomato sauce, and the cheese provides a pretty standard mozzarella taste. The crust, however, is noticeably thinner than a standard Pizza Hut pizza’s crust, providing a bit less support, which leads to a sagging slice. However, this might not be deemed an issue for fans of Domino’s and Papa John’s.

Pizza Hut Crazy Cheesy Crust Pizza Pocket

The real difference shines through with the pockets of cheese. Whether eaten before the rest of the slice or after, the five cheese blend tastes noticeably different compared to the rest of the pizza. The lack of sauce in the pockets really serves to highlight the flavor of the cheeses. I was unable to identify the unique flavor of any of the five cheeses. Instead, the five cheese flavors blend into one uniform taste, which comes through as slightly sharper than the standard Pizza Hut mozzarella.

The texture of the cheese inside the pockets is nearly identical to the texture of the cheese in the main body of the pizza, though slightly more spongy. I was hoping that the crust surrounding the pockets would be crispier than the rest of the crust, but it was softer than expected, most likely moistened by the cheese that sat inside of the pockets.

The pizza, though slightly overcooked, was still pretty satisfying. I imagine it would be best eaten straight out of the oven, with the cheese inside of the pockets still slightly melted from the heat. As the pizza cools down, the cheese becomes more spongy and less appealing in general.

Overall, the Crazy Cheesy Crust Pizza was a pleasant deviation from the standard pizza offered by Pizza Hut, but I feel like the inclusion of the cheese pockets was not enough to warrant a repeat purchase of this pizza. Its flavor is not a significant improvement over the standard pizza’s flavor, and in my opinion, Stuffed Crust is a much better option for those pizza fans looking for that extra cheese kick. All things considered, I encourage any cheese-lovers out there to try the Crazy Cheesy Crust Pizza while it lasts!

This review is dedicated to the victims of the Great Crazy Cheesy Crust Pizza Massacre of 2013: Michael “Cheesy Crust” Robinson III, Edward “Big Eddie” McPizzaPants, and Sergeant Tony O’Sauce. Our love goes out to their friends and family.

(Nutrition Facts – Not available on website.)

Item: Pizza Hut Crazy Cheesy Crust Pizza
Purchased Price: $12.99
Size: Large
Purchased at: Pizza Hut
Rating: 6 out of 10
Pros: An enjoyable pizza. Five cheese! Cheesy prongs.
Cons: Sagging slices. Five cheese flavors blend into single flavor. Unappetizing when cooled down. Cheesy massacres.

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