Jan 11 2009
Pizza Hut Disappointment
I don’t know if this was the case everywhere and they’ve just been plucking these places, or if they always only existed in certain parts of the country. I’m talking about sit-down Pizza Huts. When the sit-down Pizza Hut opened in my neighboring town of Bloomsburg in the late 80s, it was like a certain awesomeness had arrived. My girlfriend turned me on to the fact that we don’t have these in LA, only small huts for pick up/delivery. The Pizza Hut of our youths was a pretty cool place. It looked cool inside, it was Pizza!, and it was part of the Book-it program in elementary or middle school. For every book you read you got a star or sticker that went on a button or card (can’t remember exactly), and then when you filled your button or card, you got free pizza at Pizza Hut! Me and my girlfriend decided to go back to my childhood Pizza Hut to remember the good times.
Holy crap.
Let me list off the disappointments/NOT the way it was when we were little:
- I thought there used to be more booth areas in the center of the Pizza Hut. Now it is filled with tables in the center and booths only on the sides, making it less cozy/classy. Not that Pizza Hut was every a classy establishment hah, but still.
- I don’t remember the people who worked there to be so bummish, but that could well be my childhood self not caring/noticing.
- The personal pan pizzas weren’t served in the deep metal pan that they used to be! And where is the spatula to scoop the pieces out onto your plate? Instead, they were handed to me by the waitress, who’s thumb/fingers were touching the Pizzas on the plate as she put them down.
- The pizzas didn’t seem to taste as good as they used to. <– Could be a number of control factors throwing that off. The bread sticks were flat out horrible though, no question.
- THE LEVEL OF DIRTINESS in there. There was constant sweeping and trash removal going on around our table (always fun while eating). I kept feeling debris hitting my leg from the girl’s sweeping. I don’t know where the fuck they were sweeping all this shit as there was constantly garbage all over the ground.
What a disappointment, what a shit-hole. Check out my gallery of camera-phone shots below the fold.
Also while doing some background research into this blog post, I discovered that Pizza Hut “uses a silicon based chemical, Polymethylsiloxane, as an additive in their cheese. This chemical has not received final FDA approval as a safe food additive.” (link), yuk.
The outside, lookin good so far
Kinda dirty in there
Right next to our table
Entrance sign
January 11th, 2009 at 2:13 pm
Yeah, that was a bad time.
January 11th, 2009 at 6:38 pm
Dang, looks like a sleazy bar. As if that wasn’t bad enough they’ve started calling it “Pasta Hut” over here from now on! Although actually I don’t know whether that’s a complete name overhaul or a part of just what they use on their menu or something as the commercials are still using referring to it as Pizza Hut. I think basically it was for them to say that they now serve pasta as well as pizza, mind you I haven’t been there in a while so I don’t know what name they are actually using in the restaurants itself.
January 11th, 2009 at 8:31 pm
What do you define as “LA”? The Pizza Hut near my house in the South Bay has dine-in, and I’ve been to sit-down locations within the last year in Santa Monica and the Thousand Oaks area. Orange County doesn’t count, of course, but I know of two such Huts in the Irvine area also.
It’s probably the case that many newer Pizza Huts are only delivery/carry-out (not counting “Pizza Hut Express”), and that some of the old locations are scaling back. There was another one in my area, which I hardly ever went to, that I just found out no longer has dine-in.
I’m sorry to hear that your experience was so disappointing. I have similar fond memories from when I was a kid, including the magic of “Book It!” — free pizza for reading books!? Sign me up!! Thankfully, the one near my house, which I’ve been going to since I was a kid, hasn’t fallen as far. It still has the booths, tastes fine, and is clean. I don’t think it’s as popular anymore, but I’ve gone to pick up pizza when some kids’ sports teams have been there, and it was quite lively.
The nicest Pizza Hut that I’ve ever been to is in Bangalore, India. Pizza Hut is a more upscale establishment there (still cheap in U.S. dollars, though), so they’ve got nice cutlery and cloth napkins, for example. That particular one is two stories and has a shiny pizza elevator that brings the pies to the upper level. (Think: ambiance of a nice CPK, with the food of Pizza Hut.)
Oh, and at some of the Indian Pizza Huts, the waiters randomly break out into a Bollywood dance number.
Finally, regarding polymethylsiloxane: Wikipedia doesn’t say that Pizza Hut uses it, it says that The Milkweed claimed that it’s used and that it’s not FDA approved. For what it’s worth, that publicaton later retracted the article, posted a letter from the cheese supplier who stated that they don’t use that chemical in their cheese (anymore, at least), and an article showing that it was in fact an FDA-approved additive.
I know that there’s a lot of yucky stuff in most fast food and processed food, so if it’s not that chemical, it’s something else anyway. Still, I feel that the Wikipedia article is a bit one-sided on that particular issue.
It’s notable that Pizza Hut is now advertising that they use “real, honest ingredients in every pizza” and that their meat and sauce is “all-natural”, with no mention of their cheese or crust. I could only find PR mentions of “all-natural mozzarella cheese” and “organic” crust in specific reference to their “The Natural” pizza.
Hopefully someday we won’t have to be so worried about this stuff …
January 11th, 2009 at 9:18 pm
No, the OC does not count. But I think Thousand Oaks is not part of LA either. LA is the valley. Haha, just kidding. It’s what you think it is. I’ve just barely ever been to that strange fog of war covered part of the map known as the South Bay. It’s a hard time trying to find a Pizza Hut restaurant in the valley, west LA (don’t remember seeing the Santa Monica one), downtown, hollywood, inland empire? Places where I’ve lived around. And you don’t see them much in the OC either now that you mention it, not that we’re counting it. IHOP & Denny’s no problem, Pizza Hut sit-down, don’t see it. See tons of the tiny carry-out ones, but that’s about it.
That Indian Pizza Hut looked awesome. As I was watching and enjoying those dudes dancing, I was saying “damn, look at THEIR floor!” hehe.
I struck out the part about the polymethylsiloxane. I checked out the citation in Wikipedia, saw that it was uncontested, figured it was more fast food BS, but I should have done more research into it. Thanks. I’m surprised the Wikipedia entry wasn’t fixed when the truth came out, so I fixed that too, and don’t feel as bad about the pizza I ate.