Taste Test: The Pizza Hut P’Zolo

© Pizza Hut, and they’re wel­come to it.

IT’S NOT a spelling mis­take on my part. That really is the name of the new abom­in­a­tion to crawl from Pizza Hut’s industrial-strength microwave: The P’Zolo. I have no idea what it’s sup­posed to mean or whether the errant apo­strophe stemmed from a speck of fly shit on the mar­ket­ing department’s paper­work or a des­per­ate effort to appeal to the urban mar­ket. Whatever the gen­esis of the name is, it’s just another layer of stu­pid­ity on top of an already stu­pid idea. The above pic is a Pizza Hut pro­mo­tional shot…

…and this is what you actu­ally get when you open the box they come in. Ev picked up two for me on her way home: the Italian Steak and the Buf­falo Chicken. They come with a hot pot of mar­in­ara sauce and one of ranch dress­ing, which is sup­posed to be served cold but is in fact warmer than the mar­in­ara.

Once removed from their card­board box, which a) prob­ably tastes bet­ter and b) should be used to bury these in, you can see how they’re glisten­ing with grease. My cam­era is now covered in oily fin­ger­prints, another reason why I should have videoed this Taste Test. Fig­ur­ing that it didn’t mat­ter which one I tried first as they’re both basic­ally a short­cut to clogged arter­ies, I picked up the Italian Steak P’Z’O’lo. Wait, wasn’t P’Zolo the demon who pos­sesses Linda Blair in The Exor­cist? No, that was Pazuzu. My bad, but after look­ing at these I think I can be for­given for the mis­un­der­stand­ing.

I’m guess­ing that Pizza Hut must be employ­ing a former Ginster’s Pas­ties worker as their proud tra­di­tion of leav­ing a good inch between the filling and the crust has made its way to Amer­ica. It was only after tak­ing a couple of bites that I real­ised the steak tastes and feels more like sliced mush­rooms than actual meat. I think there’s cheese in it but it’s so bland it’s barely mak­ing its pres­ence felt except as a slight goopy tex­ture. The “bread” it’s wrapped in is on the tough side and the grease leak­ing out the sides is not a pleas­ant sen­sa­tion. Ver­dict: Fail.

Here’s the Buf­falo Chicken one, which resembles a car crash wrapped in a tramp’s blanket. It’s just as greasy as the Italian steak P’Z’o’lo and the spi­ci­ness over­whelms any fla­vour that pro­cessing might have acci­dent­ally left in the chicken. Again, it’s just… meh. It’s not crap, it’s not great, it’s just thor­oughly aver­age in every way apart from the salt con­tent (I don’t know what that is and I don’t want to). A $3 each they’re cheap and that cheapness shines through in the oily pat­ina and all-round crap­ness.

Amaz­ingly the P’Z’O’l’o is sup­posed to be a dir­ect com­pet­itor to Subway’s sand­wiches. You know, because when you think “healthy eat­ing” the first place that springs to mind is Pizza Hut. The advert­ising tagline is “See ya subs”, some­thing so silly it’s bey­ond belief. Sub­way, for all its faults, offers pretty healthy food at decent prices - prob­ably the only way to get an unhealthy sub is to go for the bacon and melted cheese vari­ety and even then you can stuff it full of fresh veget­ables. The idea that greasy, tough dough barely filled with melted cheese, meat that’s prob­ably 60% filler, a bucket of salt and Christ knows what else is going to chal­lenge Sub­way is ludicrous.