Making It Suck

It's hard to imagine that there was much uproar when Pizza Hut introduced the Big New Yorker pizza, even among New Yorkers. While there are great pizzerias in New York, and I've been to a couple of them, standard New York-style pizza has exactly two defining qualities: it's fast, and it's cheap. Sometimes, the very end of the crust has some body; most of the time, it's a soggy, thin triangle. Occasionally, you will happen upon a pizzeria that uses sauce that tastes more like herbs and tomatoes than like something reboiled to within an inch of its life; most of the time, you will not. It is a commodity food. But, like all commodities, it is eminently predictable, and a slice is almost always better than a McDonald's hamburger, and so New York pizzerias ride their competitive advantage to quick, hot prosperity. Pizza Hut merely took the idea to the TV and the rest of the nation. Their goal, just like that of most New York pie-slingers, was to make a commodity profitable.

Chicago-style pizza has different goals. It takes a while to make. It costs serious money, at least compared to the New York $2 slice. It aspires to a fullness completely alien to Big Apple pies. (Those who wish can make an analogy to the respective citizens of those cities.) And bad Chicago-style pizza, because it has ambition, sinks to depths that bad New York-style pizza can never touch. It's a fatty flaccid mess of sloppily applied sauce, excesses of barely melted mozzarella and a crust that tastes more like that nasty mozzarella and sauce than crust. But great Chicago-style pizza is heavenly: the thick crust, chewy and rich inside, crusty and nicely oil-soaked outside; the generous layer of mozzarella, blended with other savory cheeses; freshly cooked meats and freshly cut veggies blended into the cheese; and savory, chunky sauce on top. There are very few things in this world I would rather eat.

Pizza Hut has hit on Chicago's pizza as its next moneymaker, in the form of its new Chicago Dish. Curiosity and hunger led me to try it tonight. I started out with high hopes. Perhaps, I convinced myself, it will be not the mess I think it will. Perhaps it will draw people to Chicago to try the real thing. Perhaps it will at least suggest the outlines of the Chicago pizza experience.

The Pizza Hut Chicago Dish does suggest the outlines, but it fills those outlines in with amazing foulness. The Chicago Dish's sauce is nearly inert from a flavor perspective, with an offputting, strident note of oregano. The mozzarella arrives rubbery and unsavory. (It reminded me of the time I ordered the "six-cheese" Pizza Hut pizza and could only taste two cheeses: American and white American.) The toppings are standard Pizza Hut quality—adequate, and no more. The crust, however, is the real departure: instead of being soft and crusty and rich and satisfying, it's limp to the point of barely hanging together, and still in my mouth as I write this is the crust's rancid, oily residue, reminiscent in taste of overboiled movie-theater butter-flavor popcorn additive. I'm a frugal man, but I threw the second half of the Chicago Dish pizza out.

The thought that this pizza will define Chicago pizza in many people's minds saddens me deeply. The fact that I spent money bringing it into my home saddens me even more. The fact that I've been able to spew my pizza-induced venom on the Internet provides a small bit of consolation. I'm going to go brush my teeth now. Hard.