Favorite franchise pizza

GMO415

GMO415

Well-Known Member
Messages
17,790
Reaction score
26,567
Football is right around the corner and that means gameday pizza. Who's on your speed dial?

When I was 15, I used to work at a pizzaria before there ever was a franchise pizza company. I mean real hand made pizzas. I still can see the scar on my right arm from burns I received from the pizza oven.

I have to say Costco pizza is my first choice. I heard the dough comes from NY!
 
Hmmmm I didn't think there's a franchise pizza chain that I think is all that great. We have Pizza Hut, Papa Johns and Marcos in my town. I'll eat them cause well it's pizza. Dominos is decent but that may be due to only eating it occasionally.
 
DanteEXT said:
Hmmmm I didn't think there's a franchise pizza chain that I think is all that great. We have Pizza Hut, Papa Johns and Marcos in my town. I'll eat them cause well it's pizza. Dominos is decent but that may be due to only eating it occasionally.
Click to expand...

I want to add that in my youth Noble Romans was my favorite. They used to have a lot of stores but most have closed. There's only a handful left. Now you either find them at the grocery as take and bake or at gas station food counters. Sadly the food changed as well for those options and it's not nearly the same pizza as 20-30 years ago. Maybe an actual pizza place version is better.
 
Back in the 80s before the company sold. Mazzio's Pizza. Thin cracker crust, and greasy. Mix that with Root Beer and that's golden! Though, that's dead and gone. Now, I just get NY style pizza, but that's almost all you can get now.

Though, brick oven / wood fired pizza is my preferred pizza if I can find it.
 
Here's the problem with chain pizza. Until I tried real pizza, it was fine. That's like most things, it changes your frame of reference.

The first time a had a slice in NY or the pizza made locally in Harrisburg, PA, I thought 'so THIS is pizza'?

Flash forward many years to Dallas and I try Angelo & Vito's Pizza and no chain pizza has even been good since. The owner is hard to understand since he's from Italy which just adds to the experience. He also taught me why Americans eat pizza wrong unless it's the next morning after partying. We eat it too hot. If it's made with real ingredients, particularly mozzarella and provolone house grated and not in those big packages, cheese was meant to be eaten at room temp. So, I let the last one I got there come to room temp and the difference was remarkable, the flavors were deeper and more pronounced.

I tried this same thing on Domino's Brooklyn crust pizza and it worked as well and that's my go to for chain pizza because the crust is more like a NY pizza, my favorite. But, there's a better idea.

If you've got the time, I found a work around but you need a little equipment, a pizza peel and a stone or steel. I found this pretty damn fine frozen pizza dough from the New French Company that I let thaw an extra 24 hours in the fridge and come completely to room temp before shaping it. Toss a can of San Marzano peeled tomatoes, drained, into the blender with a teaspoon of sea salt and voila, pizza sauce just like they make in Italy. Grate some cheese or just tear up some slices and lay that on, hit it with your toppings and you are ready. But wait, there's more.

If you really want to get closer to pizza joint pizza, invest in an apparatus that turns your grill into a pizza oven. Weber makes one but the one I got is made by KettlePizza and I can crank my grill for 30 minutes put the steel and this in there and the pizza comes out looking just like a wood fired one that'll cost you 25-30 in a good joint for a fraction of that. I recently upgraded to a Weber Genesis and this should work even better, this apparatus, on a grill that can get to 700, increases the temp to 1000 so you've got to watch it closely. I've not done pizza on the new grill yet and may have to wait. Cranking a grill for 30 minutes in Texas heat is as close to working in that factory that Rudy worked in. Damn, I still miss Pete.

Look, I realize that's more info than GMO asked for but I do want it noted that I DID answer the question on para 4. I was just getting ahead of the game assuming the next two threads would be "Ever Make Your Own Pizza" and "Anyone Know Anything About These Contraptions That Turn Your Grill Into a Pizza Oven"? I threw the frozen pizza dough in as a bonus.
 
Last edited:
Before there was massed produced pizzas, the little pizzaria I worked at made a killing. Considering back then, pizzas were $20 a pie. The owner once told me he cleared $50k a month! I thought, no wonder the mob funnels their money through pizza pallors.
 
I'm a thin crust guy. To me the toppings are more important than a lot of dough.

Quality at a chain often depends on the particular store. Pizza Hut or Domino's is good as long as they are conscientious about how they prepare and cook the pizza. I've got 2 Pizza Huts near me, and one evenly lays on the toppings, uses a sufficient amount of the toppings, doesn't overdo the sauce, and cooks it where the crust is crispy, but not overcooked. With the other, the sauce is slathered on too thick, the toppings are thrown on haphazard, and it might come out undercooked or overcooked. Domino's is also fine - same thing about finding the store that is most conscientious about preparation. I find less discrepancy from store to store with Domino's than Pizza Hut.

All that said, there are locally owned restaurants that I prefer, but I don't always use them because they can take more time, are further from my home, and may require parking in a crowded lot and going into a busy restaurant to pick them up.

By the way, I always pick up rather than trust a driver to get a pizza to me hot and untainted.
 
Very good pizza is getting costly and local pizza places know most people don't want to pay so they are using less costly ingredients to try and keep customers happy about the price but the pizza and other items have become garbage. Not so easy to find good pizza these days, there are always a few places out there, but i fear they will slowly go extinct or close to it.
 
This entire thread is puzzling to me. I mean, on the one hand, we are asking what chain pizza is best? None of them should be the correct answer here but it's not. LOL........ We are fortunate here, where I live, to have a Pizzeria, just around the corner that makes home made NY or Chicago Style Pizza. Pizza is really good so we never order chain pizza. During the times that we don't have Pizza from our local joint, we make our own. We have a Pizza oven here, at the house so we actually have home made pizza, make our own sauce, buy home made dough from the local pizza joint and dress it up how we want, put our own toppings on the Pizza and make our own. We used to do this with the kids, when they were little and it kinda grew up to be like a family party thing, where we would invite the extended family and just line up dough and have everybody make their own personal pizza. Get together, drink some beer and eat pizza, play cards or shoot pool or watch a fight, whatever it was. So for us, that's what we do with the whole pizza thing. How ever, if I had to buy chain pizza, it would probably be Pizza 9, which is a local Pizza Chain.

Mostly though, why eat Pizza at all? Surely you guys have a grill, even if it's just a little one. Hell, you can have a burger or a steak or BBQ Chicken instead. Why not Grill!?
 
GMO415 said:
Before there was massed produced pizzas, the little pizzaria I worked at made a killing. Considering back then, pizzas were $20 a pie. The owner once told me he cleared $50k a month! I thought, no wonder the mob funnels their money through pizza pallors.
Click to expand...
Really a cheap item to make.
 
GMO415 said:
When Little Caesars first came out I liked their pizza, but the thought of pizza premade and sitting around doesn't entice me.
Click to expand...
Interesting concept they began with as it was based on two principles, cheap pizza because the target is kids and make the sauce sweet because the target is kids.

They applied the Pepsi principle that they used against Coke, make it sweeter. That's the reason I don't like it but when my boys were young, that was the only pizza they wanted.
 
ABQCOWBOY said:
This entire thread is puzzling to me. I mean, on the one hand, we are asking what chain pizza is best? None of them should be the correct answer here but it's not. LOL........ We are fortunate here, where I live, to have a Pizzeria, just around the corner that makes home made NY or Chicago Style Pizza. Pizza is really good so we never order chain pizza. During the times that we don't have Pizza from our local joint, we make our own. We have a Pizza oven here, at the house so we actually have home made pizza, make our own sauce, buy home made dough from the local pizza joint and dress it up how we want, put our own toppings on the Pizza and make our own. We used to do this with the kids, when they were little and it kinda grew up to be like a family party thing, where we would invite the extended family and just line up dough and have everybody make their own personal pizza. Get together, drink some beer and eat pizza, play cards or shoot pool or watch a fight, whatever it was. So for us, that's what we do with the whole pizza thing. How ever, if I had to buy chain pizza, it would probably be Pizza 9, which is a local Pizza Chain.

Mostly though, why eat Pizza at all? Surely you guys have a grill, even if it's just a little one. Hell, you can have a burger or a steak or BBQ Chicken instead. Why not Grill!?
Click to expand...
Ya wanna pizza, ya don't wanna burger or steak, only a pizza will satisfy the craving.
 
CouchCoach said:
Ya wanna pizza, ya don't wanna burger or steak, only a pizza will satisfy the craving.
Click to expand...

No, you want a Pizza, I want a steak. To me, every day, all day, twice a day, if I could manage it. LOL........

Don't get me wrong, I love Pizza but to me, Pizza is more a Basket Ball Season thing or a take the Grandsons to Lunch kinda thing. Football, to me, is a plan a meal, make a meal and share it with the kids kind of thing. Football around our house is a family thing. It's an opportunity for us to have the kids and the Grandkids and just enjoy it all with some good food. I guess it's a different kinda thing in my mind. Kinda weird how you view one sporting event as opposed to say, another right?
 
ABQCOWBOY said:
No, you want a Pizza, I want a steak. To me, every day, all day, twice a day, if I could manage it. LOL........

Don't get me wrong, I love Pizza but to me, Pizza is more a Basket Ball Season thing or a take the Grandsons to Lunch kinda thing. Football, to me, is a plan a meal, make a meal and share it with the kids kind of thing. Football around our house is a family thing. It's an opportunity for us to have the kids and the Grandkids and just enjoy it all with some good food. I guess it's a different kinda thing in my mind. Kinda weird how you view one sporting event as opposed to say, another right?
Click to expand...
Yep, baseball is all about hot dogs and peanuts to me, never bought either at a football game.

Basketball and hockey are all about nachos at AAC in Dallas. And Pavarotti. Took my wife to see him the last time he performed in Dallas and before the performance began, this 300 lb guy in overalls walked in front of us eating nachos. Should have taken a pic of the guy.
 
Back when I was in High School we had a place called Shakey's Pizza. I loved it. Now they only have them on the West coast.

I liked Pizza Inn back in the day also but we don't have one of them either now.

I ususally stick to local pizza places now. The only chain I eat at is Papa Murphy's.
 
Khartun said:
Back when I was in High School we had a place called Shakey's Pizza. I loved it. Now they only have them on the West coast.

I liked Pizza Inn back in the day also but we don't have one of them either now.

I ususally stick to local pizza places now. The only chain I eat at is Papa Murphy's.
Click to expand...
Shakey's was the first real chain and my wife's uncle played banjo in the band at the one in Tampa for years. It was a very unusual place, felt like you were at a theme park.
 
I manage a local Mom and Pop pizza joint so most times I tend to stay away from chain pizza. But back in the day Pizza Hut{80s and before}had very good pizza. Most forget they used to be a sit down restaurant and had a great product. Also as someone else mentioned Shakey's used to be good.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Staff online

Members online

... and 82 more.
Total: 993 (members: 182, guests: 811)

Latest posts

Forum statistics

Threads
465,472
Messages
13,877,467
Members
23,791
Latest member
mashburn
Back
Top