REVIEW: Tombstone Chili Cheese French Fry Style Crust Pizza

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Tombstone’s Chili Cheese French Fry Style Crust Pizza box describes this as hamburger, chili cheese sauce, mozzarella, cheddar, red onion, & parsley on a potato crust. Hmmmm…

French fries are awesome! Pizza is awesome! Chili cheese-flavored things are awesome! So it would stand to reason that this chili cheese french fry crust pizza would also be, you know, awesome, right?

Well, let’s start with the positives. For a lower cost frozen pizza, there are actually a good number of toppings on this thing, especially cheese. Usually, lack of cheese is my number one complaint with frozen pizzas, so I was pleasantly surprised to find this one decently cheesy. There is a good amount of meaty bits, onions, and sauce as well, although the entire time I was eating it, I couldn’t help but wish sliced hot dogs were used instead of the meatball things. Compare me to Sonic the Hedgehog, but nothing beats a good chili cheese dog!

I really like the flavor of the chili cheese sauce, too. It has a nice bite without being overwhelming or detracting from the other flavors, which is really impressive. The consistency is great, too. Thick enough not to leak or squish out when you cut it.

This pizza also smells AMAZING while it cooks. It reminded me of a Sonic chili cheese coney and tots, that perfect blend of chili, cheese, and potato was spot on.

Sadly, that’s where the pros run out, and we turn to the things I didn’t appreciate.

The French fry crust in THEORY sounds great: Innovative, unique, and like the best part of a crispy French fry. Turns out, that only applies to the very edge of the crust, unfortunately. The crispy, crunchy outer edge of the crust is PERFECT, and what I ultimately wanted from the rest of the pie: crunchy, well done fries transformed into a saucy cheese conveyance vehicle. Something about that so-called “crunchy outside, soft inside” crust is where it all fell apart for me.

The taste is aight. Not exactly French fry, per se, but definitely in the “processed potato product” ballpark. More like hash browns if I had to pick something specific. I didn’t really mind that. What I minded was the texture, which is SO. FREAKING. WRONG. It’s floppy, despite baking the pizza on the bottom rack (as instructed) for an additional 5 minutes. It’s also somehow chewy and squishy. It almost reminds me of mochi or gnocchi, and neither of those has a texture I’m excited about sharing with a pizza. My heart stopped being in it after the first bite, and I forced myself to finish my 1/4 pie serving. It took too long to chew, and it was neither pleasant nor appetizing.

If you could get past that, the “hamburger” meatball things were dry and bland and also had a bit of a weird texture to them, although not as weird as the crust.

I say this one is interesting enough to try for the novelty, but make sure you have a backup plan if the crust texture proves to be too much for you.

Purchased Price: $5.87
Size: 18.8 oz
Purchased at: Walmart
Rating: 4 out of 10
Nutrition Facts: (1/4 pizza) 330 calories, 15 grams of total fat, 8 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 20 milligrams of cholesterol, 630 milligrams of sodium, 39 grams of total carbs, 2 grams of dietary fiber, 3 grams of total sugar, and 9 grams of protein.

REVIEW: Tombstone Tavern Style Thin Crust Pizza

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Living in Chicago taught me a few important things. 1) Your eyelashes can (and will) freeze together much easier than you’d expect them to, 2) “dibs” on parking spots is a very divisive, very serious thing, and 3) the best pizza isn’t the Chicago deep dish (which, I know, I know, some don’t consider “pizza” at all) but is instead the thin, crunchy crusted, party-cut, tavern-style pie.

But what if you’re not in Chicago? Well, I’m sure you have at least one local place that tries their hand at it. Even still, if you’re like me, you like to have a frozen pizza or two on standby for an easy, cheap dinner. And if you’re even MORE like me, a general frozen pizza guideline is, “The less crust, the better.” With the exception of the best frozen pizza, period (Motor City Pizza Co.), most frozen pizza crust, to put it bluntly, sucks. That’s why I was excited when I spotted Tombstone’s new Tavern Style Thin Crust Pizza.

Tombstone tends to be one of my preferred options when it comes to the low-end of frozen pizza. The crust isn’t too thick, the sauce isn’t applied too heavily, and the pepperoni version uses round slices and the little cubed kind. When they’re on sale, and I notice it, I’ll pick one up. Would I buy the new Tavern Style again? Eh. Probably not for more than a couple of bucks.

It’s offered in two versions: The Primo, featuring pepperoni, sausage, red onions, and banana peppers, and the one I tried for this review, the Let’s Meat Up (a brief aside about products everywhere using puns for names these days: what’s the deal?) featuring pepperoni, pork belly crumbles, and, in addition to mozzarella, cheddar cheese (The Primo only has mozz). The website copy further suggests that the sauce is “zesty” and the crust is “buttery.”

While I wouldn’t necessarily call the sauce “zesty,” it was mildly noticeable. It tasted like generic frozen pizza sauce. The crust was in no way buttery. It was bland and inoffensive, but it held up fine under the weight of the… okay, there was no weight to the pizza. The pepperoni— which was your run-of-the-mill round Tombstone pepperoni— was sparse. So, too, was the application of “pork belly crumbles,” which were salty and crispy. They reminded me, for better or worse, of pre-cooked bacon crumbles you get in a bag to put on a salad. I enjoyed their presence, as they were the only thing keeping this from being a completely pedestrian and unmemorable frozen pizza. The cheese types were indistinguishable from one another; you could’ve paid me a thousand dollars, and I’d have never been able to tell you it had mozzarella AND cheddar.

I’m willing to bet these will be quickly gone, like your dibs in some neighborhoods, and not exactly missed, like the sensation of your eyes freezing together on the Montrose Brown line platform at 7 a.m. in the middle of January.

Purchased Price: $5.99 (on sale)
Size: 19.8 oz
Purchased at: Hy-Vee
Rating: 5 out of 10
Nutrition Facts: (1/4 pizza) 350 calories, 19 grams of fat, 9 grams of saturated fat, 35 milligrams of cholesterol, 870 milligrams of sodium, 31 grams of carbohydrates, 2 grams of fiber, 5 grams of sugar (including 5 grams of added sugar), and 15 grams of protein.

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