Review: Pizza Hut Dinner Box & Pizza Hut Wings

No matter where you go in my town, you are never more than a few minutes away from a pizza joint. Almost all of them are small, family-owned Mom & Pop operations, and while most of them are pretty good, the quality varies. I guess you'd expect that from any sampling of businesses. So the thing is, while you might think that in a town with more than a hundred pizza restaurants within a 10-minute drive (I'm not kidding) there would be no excuse to go to Pizza Hut. You'd be wrong, though, because when it comes right down to it, Pizza Hut makes a fairly decent thick-crust pie that falls somewhere in the middle range of 'za quality. Thus, there are times when I'm just looking for a cheap, fast, edible pizza and Pizza Hut is on the way home...and there ya go.

That's how I wound up at Pizza Hut the other day. I was on the way home but had to make a couple of stops. Supermarket, pharmacy...hey, there's Pizza Hut in the same plaza; I'm running late and that would make a quick supper without dishes to do...ah, what the hell, right?  So I stopped in and ordered one of their heavily-advertised $10 Dollah Holla Box and a side of wings.

It's always a cheap shot to compare the restaurant's food photography with the actual food that you unwrap at the table, but seriously, the local Hut didn't even try to make my Dinner Box conform to the photo:

Holy shit, Pizza Hut. The pizza is overdone, the breadsticks are darker than Snooki's chemically tanned ass, and there's no marinara dipping sauce. 

Also, I should mention that this pizza is really, really small.

Okay, my bitching set aside, there were good points too.  If you're a fan of thick-crust pizza, there is plenty to love about Pizza Hut. They have a really good, thick, breadychewy crust, the kind that the sauce sort of just melts into, and they paint the edges with oil before shoving it into the oven, so it comes out with this awesome crispy rim. They're not stingy with the cheese (and they never put too much on either, so there's just the right balance of cheese and crust and sauce.) Yes, the 'za-drones left mine in the oven a few minutes too long, but  that didn't damage the overall experience. Lynnafred loves the breadsticks, both the sweet and savory version, and she also somehow enjoys the frosting Pizza Hut throws in with the cinnasticks despite the strange plastic-like flavor and consistency. And, in all fairness, the Dinner Box was perfectly adequate to feed our family of three adults, which is not bad for ten bucks. I'm not going to recommend it, though, unless your local Pizza Hut does a lot better job than mine at putting it together the way Pizza Hut HQ envisions it.

Now let's talk about Pizza Hut's wings.  Let's just say that there's a good reason that the place is called "Pizza Hut" and not "Wing Hut." 

The sauce is nothing special. It's obviously been formulated to appeal to as many potential customers as possible, which explains why the "Buffalo Burnin' Hot" sauce was not really that burnin' hot. They sure were salty, though.  Hugely salty.  Almost inedibly salty.

And, at the risk of sounding like an old joke ("The food is horrible here. And such small portions!") the wings are tiny. Just something to keep in mind in case you like Buffalo Salt Wings and are expecting generous joint sizes the way you'd find them in your favorite local bar.