I don’t really like football. But one thing that I do like is commercials. The inane situations that people in the commercials end up with or the incredulous look people give when they are offered something has always fascinated me. But the best commercials, in my opinion, are the food commercials. I love watching good food being made, prepared, or eaten, and food commercials always seemed to have to aspects to them.
So imagine my surprise when I saw a commercial for Pizza Hut that was advertising their partnership with Cheez-Its. My mother was watching football one night, and when the commercial graced our screen, I couldn’t believe my eyes. I was enamored by what I was seeing, turned to my mother, and said “I want to eat that.” Which was immediately met with a scathing glare. As if it was an affront to her character.
Why would they make this... Just... Why...
It was probably because it was from Pizza Hut.
When I was younger, the only exposure that I had to Pizza Hut was from those certificates that you got for reading books over the summer. You would get a personal pan pizza for every twenty books you logged down over the summer, and every time my brother and I achieved our goal, we would beg our parents to go to the local Pizza Hut. Each time, they would refuse to buy anything there and would just watch us eat pizza.
And I understood why; it was disgusting. One of the worst foods that I put in my mouth. The dough was always weird and the sauce was always off for some reason. I could understand why the only reason we went there was because of the vouchers. Obviously, I didn’t really have big expectations from Pizza Hut, but I did have high hopes for the Cheez-Its aspect of the food. Since I loved Cheez-It as a kid. It was a cheese cracker. Of course I loved it.
So the marriage between the two foods sounded… Interesting to say the least. The commercial always placed the “pizza” in a rather large box with some marinara sauce alongside it, so after looking at those photos, I determined that it was probably going to be more like a mozzarella stick that was shaped like a square, coated with Cheez-It breading, and fried. And for the most part, I was correct.
I went to the local Pizza Hut with my friend Katie (shout out to Katie for suffering with me), and found out that they had a pepperoni version as well as a plain cheese. We opted for the pepperoni because it seemed slightly more appetizing than the original but not by much. One thing that astounded me was how similar it was to the commercial.
Moments before disaster.
Each square was uniform in size and looked just like a bigger Cheez-It. It has its signature divot in the center (whose only purpose was probably aesthetic) and a crimped edge (which was probably used to keep all the filling in the inside). The side of marinara sauce seemed like it was a lot, but I soon realized after the first few bites, that the amount of sauce was necessary for the consumption of the square.
When first tasting the square, I initially thought “Wow. They really nailed the Cheez-It taste.” It was so strange. I probably shouldn’t have been so surprised because I thought that my theory was sound, but it was missing something that I realized that a Cheez-It needed.
So similar. So shook.
THE CRONCH. The satisfying snap and crunch of a cracker that occurs in the mouth. A feel that is flaky in and spreads the flavor of the cracker over the tongue. An essential part of any cracker that was missing from the taste.
Without it, it just seems like synthetic, cheese, amalgamation that should not be fed to others. The “pizza” was warm. Soft. There was no cheese pull that is normally associated with a mozzarella stick. If anything, the whole block just tasted like an affront to cheese lovers everywhere. Another thing that shocked me was the lack of pepperoni flavor. When looking in the inside of the square, we could see some particles of what we thought were pepperoni, but it was masked by the overwhelming Cheez-It flavor. So the different flavors (cheese and pepperoni) weren’t really necessary in the long run.
However, the reason that I would even consider this dish manageable was the marinara sauce. It had a rich tomato flavor that consumed the entire dish and overwhelmed all the other flavors of the Cheez-It. Which was the problem. A sauce is supposed to enhance the dish that you are eating. It should NOT, in any circumstance, be the only thing that you taste.
In the end, the only thing I really liked about this “pizza” was the marinara sauce.
Final Rating: 3/10 Would only drink the marinara sauce.
Bonus
While I eat these foods, I always record my initial reaction in order to see what impact it had on me for the first bite. Sometimes Google Photos creates a GIF with those videos. Here is the one from my initial reaction.
Enjoy.
These are truly sad boi hours.
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