REVIEW: Little Caesars Stuffed Pretzel Crust Pizza

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I was slightly confused when I heard all the hubbub about Little Caesars introducing a new limited edition Stuffed Pretzel Crust. “I could have sworn I’ve had that before…” I thought, but it turns out I remembered merely customizing a pretzel crust pizza to add stuffed crust to it. This is the first time that “Stuffed Pretzel Crust” itself has officially appeared on the menu, and as a marketing aficionado, I’m happy to accept that as a unique new product worthy of its own celebration.

In the promotional images, the pretzel crust is a rich brown, solid, and stout, shimmering with butter and salt, reminiscent of the iconic Bavarian pretzel. What was inside my pizza box looked so different that I was initially afraid I’d gotten the wrong order. My crust seemed perhaps a tad darker than usual, but it didn’t have the deep shade or sheen I expected.

When I bit in, though, I realized it was perfectly pretzel-y; it was just more like a different type of pretzel: Auntie Anne’s. While it didn’t have a Bavarian pretzel’s telltale hue, firm snap leading to a chewy bite, or malty taste, it did boast a buttery, subtle sweetness, so perfectly complemented by its tender, fluffy texture that it practically melted in my mouth. Though it wasn’t what I expected, it paired with the stuffed crust beautifully. While the doughy pretzel crust didn’t have an overwhelming flavor, it had a noticeable aftertaste. That was well-balanced by the simple, mild cheese inside, which was soft enough that it paired perfectly with the pillowy crust yet never became gooey.

There are a few options on the website for how to order your Pretzel Stuffed Crust; taking the first option as a subtle endorsement, I went with Cheese Sauce & Pepperoni. I must confess I imagined the cheese sauce would be a small cup for dipping the crust into, like how many restaurants offer soft pretzel sticks with cheese dip as an appetizer. It wasn’t until I was partway through a surprisingly mild-tasting slice that it hit me: the cheese sauce wasn’t on the side, it was replacing the tomato sauce on the pizza!

This may sound counterintuitive, but I think the fact that it took me so long to realize this shows how well it worked. The cheese sauce blended perfectly with the cheese topping, bringing a unique creaminess. While tomato sauce usually adds some savory depth, the pretzel crust means that this pizza is covered in a generous, tongue-tingling smattering of salt that already provides plenty of complex flavor, so I appreciated that the sauce was more mellow in comparison. Its color reminded me of Velveeta cheese, but the taste wasn’t so tangy, more like a bland nacho cheese. This plainness also allowed the pepperoni to particularly pop.

First, I was surprised by how my Stuffed Pretzel Crust looked, but by the end of my meal, I was only surprised by how much I enjoyed it. It would be nice if the promotional images were a bit more accurate, but the decadent feeling of combining stuffed crust pizza with my favorite airport treat was way worth the slightly mismatched expectations.

Purchased Price: $9.99
Rating: 9 out of 10
Nutrition Facts: (Whole pizza) 2660 calories. No other nutritional information is available on the Little Caesars website.

REVIEW: Good & Gather Collabs Ann Kim Pickle Pie Pizza

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The box for this Good & Gather Collabs Ann Kim Pickle Pie Pizza says it’s a “Product of Italy.” I’m a little skeptical about that because, as a country known for its fine cuisine, I’m not sure a pickle pizza is something folks in Italy would be proud of. Sure, consume enough bottles of Sangiovese, and that pride might go out the window. However, this product has another P surprise — potato chips.

I’m not going to lie. The idea of a pickle and potato chip pizza sounds great. I did enjoy pickle-flavored ice cream, so I guess the chances of me enjoying this is not far-fetched. However, the pickles here are pretty poor. They don’t taste like the dill ones in a cheeseburger. Instead, they remind me of the pickled plum in the middle of my bento’s rice. Okay, 75 percent of you may not have experienced Japanese ume, but it’s the only way I can describe its sour flavor.

While the pickles mostly get lost in the ranch sauce, cheese, and potato chips, it’s still noticeable enough to bring down the bites with it. However, their flavor, thankfully, doesn’t get absorbed into the rest of the pizza, so simply removing them made things taste better. Without them, the combination of crust, potato chips, mozzarella cheese, and ranch sauce brings back tasty memories of dipping potato chips into French onion dip. I enjoyed the pizza at this point, and this really should’ve been the Good & Gather Collabs Ann Kim Potato Chip Pie Pizza.

While its flavor sans pickles was surprising, I was equally surprised about how pleasantly crispy the wood-fired crust’s exterior was at the ends.

However, what was 1,000,000 times more surprising than that was how crispy the potato chips were after being frozen and then heated on top of a layer of cheese and a sauce. They were like I pulled them straight out of the bag. How in food science did this happen? Is it because the instructions say to let the frozen pizza sit at room temperature for 15 minutes? Did the cheese’s oil deep fry the chips and revitalize their crispiness? Is this a “Product of Italy” because it’s the only country allowed to do this magic?

If you’re a dill pickle lover, this Good & Gather Collabs Ann Kim Pickle Pie won’t give you what your taste buds want. But if you’re willing to discard the pickles, you’ll still get a unique-tasting pizza thanks to the other P ingredient.

Purchased Price: $9.99
Size: 17.1 oz
Purchased at: Target
Rating: 6 out of 10
Nutrition Facts: (1/4 pizza) 290 calories, 13 grams of fat, 6 grams of saturated fat, 15 milligrams of cholesterol, 690 milligrams of sodium, 30 grams of carbohydrates, 1 gram of fiber, 1 gram of sugar, and 11 grams of protein.

REVIEW: Domino’s Parmesan Stuffed Crust Pizza

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I like Domino’s Pizza a lot but haven’t ordered it in years. That might seem counterintuitive, but there’s a good reason: I’m a stuffed crust fanatic, and Domino’s doesn’t offer stuffed crust. Or at least it hasn’t… until now. Cue the Parmesan Stuffed Crust!

It’s no exaggeration to say that I literally screamed when I heard the news. The name is a bit misleading, though: the crust is actually stuffed with mozzarella (as can also be found at Pizza Hut, Papa John’s, my grimy college dive with pizza so good I was willing to wait through multiple bar fights for it, etc.).

The parmesan element comes from a parmesan and garlic seasoning sprinkled across the crust. It’s the default for this pie but can be removed if desired… and honestly, I ended up wishing I’d done that. I prefer the simple, mild creaminess of mozzarella to parmesan’s funky saltiness, which was on full display here, so I would have liked to see the stuffed stuff stand on its own, even if that meant forsaking the namesake cheese. But I’m getting ahead of myself!

After surviving what felt like an endless wait for my delivery, I was rewarded with a pizza that was still as piping hot and pristine as if it’d just come out of the oven. My pie looked darker than I expected, but I didn’t mind since it didn’t taste overcooked. In fact, it reminded me why Domino’s is so beloved. The cheese was thick and consistently applied, neither too congealed nor too oozy; the sauce was impressively zesty, with a strong herbal taste that was way more interesting than the pizza I’m used to from other chains; the crust had the floppy, foldable texture I crave, firm enough to hold the weight of all of that goodness while still soft and supple enough not to literally crack under the pressure. But each bite, no matter how wonderful, was a mere appetizer leading up to the main course I came for.

And the stuffed crust was… nice.

Of course, since this pizza had been generating enough hype from me to power a small village, “nice” was not really the reaction I had hoped for. But ultimately, I wanted the cheese in my stuffed crust to be more solid, and this filling, though pleasingly abundant, was too gooey for me. In my opinion, the regular cheese on top of a pizza is already gooey enough, so the stuffed crust is an opportunity to bring something different to the table, and I was sad Domino’s didn’t take that opportunity! And as I mentioned, I found the parmesan unnecessary; it felt more like a marketing gimmick for extra uniqueness rather than an actual value add. Perhaps Domino’s should have considered that the reason other pizza places don’t liberally sprinkle their stuffed crusts with parmesan is because it tastes too overwhelming and distracts from the real star of the show.

But the bottom line is that stuffed crust is great! Domino’s is great! Stuffed crust Domino’s, therefore, is destined to be great! Sure, there are parts I could have enjoyed more, but this was still a dream come true—a pie in the sky, if you will, and even though it shot for the moon and missed for me, it still landed among the stars.

Purchased Price: $16.99
Size: Medium/12-inch (this is the only size available)
Rating: 7 out of 10
Nutrition Facts: Not available at the time of the review’s publication.

REVIEW: Little Caesars Bacon & Cheese Crazy Puffs

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When Little Caesars debuted its Crazy Puffs in 2024, initially available in just Pepperoni and 3 Cheese & Herb flavors, I was genuinely gobsmacked by how much I enjoyed them. The compact, dense, yet satisfyingly snackable size, novel cupcake-y shape, a textural masterpiece of the crispy edges, gooey cheese, and doughy interior, and even the amount of food that came in each order for a surprisingly reasonable price were all thrilling.

The only thing faster than me pouncing on the opportunity to review the new Bacon & Cheese flavor was the employee who handed them to me in a cute miniature box only about five seconds after I ordered them, really living up to that “HOT-N-READY” tagline! (Okay, it was more like “LUKEWARM-N-READY” in this case, but I actually didn’t mind that, as I could appreciate the flavor and texture more without a burnt tongue.)

At first glance, these Puffs really didn’t look different from the original pepperoni-less ones since, in terms of size, color, and texture, the small, craggy bacon bits happen to look a lot like burnt bits of cheese. But, unexpectedly porky and salty for its modest quantity, the taste of the bacon actually reminded me a lot more of ham. This was an interesting change from the original flavor lineup, and the difference was solidified even further when I made it to the middle of my first Puff and encountered the sharp taste of the small, slightly congealed poof of cheddar-forward filling.

It had a nostalgic school lunch quality, reminding me of a rounder, less-likely-to-scald-the-roof-of-your-mouth Hot Pocket. While that was fun, the cheddar’s taste was harsher than I would prefer. It was noticeably different than the cheese on top of the Puff, which seemed to be Little Caesars’ usual familiar blend of mozzarella and muenster, forcing me to realize that when it came to my enjoyment, the cheese on top stayed on top.

That being said, the things I loved so much about the original generation of Crazy Puffs persisted here. The interior had a delightful chewiness (my order was slightly dry, but I’m willing to chalk that up to the natural hit-or-miss nature of chain restaurants), and those edges were still crispy, this time so pronounced that they made the center of the Puffs look dramatically sunken in, which made them even more fun to eat.

I ultimately preferred the original flavors, but that wasn’t so shocking or disappointing since they set such a high bar: in the grand scheme of pizza products, the Cheese & Bacon Crazy Puffs perform nicely, and if my local-ish Little Caesars was more conveniently located, I would love to try them again. It’s not easy to find something that combines portability, a solid portion, a reasonable price, a short wait time, and a delicious taste on top of all of that, so these are nothing to roll your eyes at. (They may, however, be something to roll your eyebrows at, at least if you’re Eugene Levy—go watch his fun Super Bowl commercial for these and you’ll see what I mean! Little Caesars is not liable for any eyebrows that escape in a flurry of zany adventures while consuming their products.)

Purchased Price: $4.34
Size: 4 Puffs
Rating: 7 out of 10
Nutrition Facts: 740 calories. Other nutritional numbers are not available at the time of writing. < p/>

REVIEW: DiGiorno Thanksgiving Pizza

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It seems to me that in recent years, more food companies have been embracing Thanksgiving dinner as a collective meal to put in other foods. Sandwich shops have been offering turkey, stuffing, and cranberry sandwiches for a while. And this year, DiGiorno has pizza-fied the classic November meal!

DiGiorno’s version omits the stuffing, however, and combines turkey with the ingredients of a green bean casserole. The pizza features roast turkey, green beans, crispy onions, dried cranberries, and gravy. The non-Thanksgiving elements are mozzarella and cheddar cheese, all topped on a Detroit-style crust. Just bake for 23 minutes, and you have a warm meal ready.

Let’s start with the star of the show: the turkey. I was worried the turkey would be gristly or rubbery. But nope, it has a pleasant chew and flavor. It’s not quite what you pull out of the oven on Thanksgiving, but it’s close.

The green beans are fine. They’re slightly crispier than canned green beans. If you don’t like green beans, you will wish they weren’t there. For me, I could take them or leave them.

I don’t really notice the onion’s crispiness, but I can taste their presence. The savory flavor I associate with green bean casserole permeates the pie.

The dried cranberries impart a bit of sweetness to the otherwise ultra-umami dish. I’m glad cranberries got represented. But if you don’t like pineapple on pizza, maybe they’ll be too much for you. At least they’re tarter than pineapple.

The gravy has a nice texture, but there’s something about the seasonings in it that tastes a little odd to me. Not bad, just weird. Maybe my palate is just too unsophisticated. The oddness might also come from the crispy onions.

I’m picky about cheese, so I’m glad they opted for the tamer options of cheddar and mozzarella. That way, it can keep the feel and definition of pizza, even though it’s Thanksgiving, without being too tangy. And the crust might be the best part: soft, slightly chewy, just a little sweet.

I love to eat leftover pizza cold, and I’m happy to report that DiGiorno Thanksgiving Pizza is at least as good cold as it is heated.

I’m really happy this pizza exists. Your family will be mad if you serve it instead of an actual Thanksgiving meal (and it would break the bank to serve a crowd), but it’s a fun product to eat on a random cozy November night or bring to a Friendsgiving. It’s only available at Kroger-affiliated stores, but I hope it will expand to other retailers in the future.

Purchased Price: $9.99
Size: 20.6 oz box
Purchased at: Smith’s Marketplace
Rating: 7 out of 10
Nutrition Facts: (1/4 pizza) 400 calories, 21 grams of fat, 6 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 25 milligrams of cholesterol, 480 milligrams of sodium, 40 grams of carbohydrates, 2 grams of dietary fiber, 5 grams of total sugars including 3 grams of added sugars, and 12 grams of protein.

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