New Dominos: Worst Pizza Ever.

Let me preface this by saying that I'm actually a bit of a food snob, and wouldn't normally eat this so-called "food." But I also take a kitchy pleasure indulging in junk and fast food from time to time. And so...

Anyone watching TV these days has perhaps seen Dominos Pizza's new advertising campaign, a mea culpa to the public where the company's management admits to previously having bad pizza. Having been bombarded with these ads over the course of the past several weeks, my roommate and I finally succumb to our curiosity and went by a Dominos to pick up two medium pies and give it a shot.

It's hard to express in words what a bad idea this was. (But here goes...)

Even before my teeth sank all the way through my first bite, the pizza was already nauseating, though I wasn't able to identify why until my second bite. At first, I wondered if the green peppers had gone bad, but, while they were lifeless and seemed as though they had been frozen, they weren't the source of the real problem. There was a rotten, artificial odor that pervaded the surface of the pizza. And then I figured it out: the crust.

More specifically, the new "garlic and herb" coating they've added to the crust. It had the taste and smell of artificial butter topping and slightly rancid oil, mixed in with stale garlic powder. A quick visit to Dominos' ingredients page confirmed my analysis:

Enriched Flour (Wheat Flour, Niacin, Iron, Thiamine Mononitrate, Riboflavin Folic Acid), Water, Malt, Sugar, Whey, Malted Barley Flour, Yeast, Soybean Oil. Zzesty Blend: Butter Flavored Oil (Partially Hydrogenated Soybean Oil, Soy Lecithin, Artificial And Natural Butter Flavoring, Vitamin A Palmitate And Beta-Carotene for Color), Imitation Parmesan Cheese (Water, Modified Food Starch, Casein And Or Caseinate, Partially Hydrogenated Soybean Oil, Cellulose Powder, Salt, Sodium Phosphates, Stabilizers [Mono And Diglycerides, Guar Gum, Carrageenan], Natural Flavor, Lactic Acid, Sorbic Acid [As A Preservative]), Onion And Garlic, Spices, Salt, Lactic Acid, Butter Flavor, Tomato Powder, Bell Pepper. Dextrose, Citric Acid, Extractive Of Paprika And Lemon And Orange Oil With No Greater Than 2% Calcium Silicate And/Or Soybean Oil Added to Prevent Caking, Corn Meal (used in preparation).

Not one, but TWO forms of artificial butter. "Zzesty" blend? What, because you were afraid of being liable for using "zesty?" How pathetic.

Aside from that nauseating topping, the crust itself was doughy and flavorless, the sauce sparse and under- seasoned, and the cheese thin and lacking any punch. The pepperoni should have been called "meat rounds" - it lacked any discernible taste and had the consistency of plastic - and the vegetables were just sad. The only topping which even remotely had any flavor was their Italian sausage, but even that was only just mediocre - no spice at all.

And when I say "nauseating," I'm not being hyperbolic. I felt sick after eating the pizza, which I only finished because I was 1) really hungry and 2) hate wasting food, even when it's only "food." Even now, hours later as I write this, I still feel sick and lethargic.

The sad thing is, they had a real opportunity here. It's been well over 2 decades since I've had a slice of Dominos pizza, but this new ad campaign was so refreshingly "honest" that it actually made me curious enough to give it another try. Even though we KNEW it was going to be awful, we wanted to see if they had made it slightly more palatable.

But instead of simply improving the product by using higher quality ingredients and preparation methods, they decided to go with a gimmick. Herbed crust. And in doing so, they actually took a step backwards, made their pizza worse, and ensured that I, and undoubtedly others, will never eat Dominos again.

And some of us will even go on to blog about it.

(Hashmarking #newpizza sends your Twitter comment right to their "Pizza Turnaround" webpage. Like so!)

Totonno's NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Fire Shuts Totonno’s, Legendary Coney Island Pizzeria - NY Times, 3/16/2009

I whispered the first "no" quietly, as shock and horror filled my heart (and stomach). My next was a Shatner-esque wail; Totonno's, the best, and longest continually-operating pizzeria in America, had closed.

I lived in Brighton Beach, at the southern tip of Brooklyn, for 10 years; a mere 10 minutes worth of hops, skips and a jumps from historic Coney Island, where Totonno's was located near. Their pizza, a thin crust, coal-fired, brick oven was perfection due to it's lack of perfection. The aged, sooty oven would leave blackened, but not burned, marks across the bottom and circumference of the crust, and the heat variations caused the rim to rise, pucker and brown in different spots, making each pie truly unique. Yet the flavor and texture were perfectly uniform, not too crunchy, not too soggy, just perfectly firm and chewy. Fantastic mouth feel. Their dough contained extra salt, which gave it an extra punch. Their sauce, rich and sweet, was made in a back kitchen that looked like any old kitchen in someone's house, and sat unpretentiously in a large steel bowl on a wooden work table. Their mozz, always fresh.

Also lost will be the atmosphere - the walls were packed with articles and photographs of celebrities and politicians (of an unfortunately and decidedly conservative bent) who had visited the small shop over the decades. The faded seaglass tint of the walls and the rigid, small wood booths - all lost.

Of the inside, she said: “It’s pretty bad. It’s a lot of damage. I have to redo the oven, because the water got into the bricks. We’re going to fix that, rebrick it.”

But, she said, this has been done many times before, to repair cracks. “I promise you, it’ll be the same exact pizza,” she said.

When Mei Lei Wai, the hands down best Chinese roast pork buns in all of the United States, was closed last year by the health department (bastards), I had a similar reaction. There was a great Times blog about it as well. But Mei Lei Wai re-opened, and the quality of their buns survived intact, and in my opinion, they were actually better than ever.

Totonno's plans to rebuild as well, but I'm concerned, because a while back they opened an expansion branch in Manhattan, a big, large modern restaurant in Grammercy, where the pizza, supposedly made the same way, just plain sucks. So when they say they're going to rebuild the oven, I'm concerned that whatever X-factor that made their pizza so wondrous is going to be lost in transition. I'm hoping the rebuild of the oven is minor and that they resist any urge to "improve" or modernize the appliance.

I feel like I'm being punished for liking a new pizzeria, Rizzo's, in my new neighborhood of Astoria. But she was always number two, Totonno's - she means nothing to me! You were always my number one! Always!

KHAAAANNNNNNNNNNNN!!!!!