Is Little Caesars Food? Or Why Little Caesars Works Better Than Any Diet Pill

I get it. You’ve read today’s title and already feel unbridled rage. Personally, I like to think it’s from Little Caesars, but I know it’s because I’m talking about pizza. This topic has not gone well on Bloggin Hood before, yet we’re going to that well again. Likely I’ll be digging myself into a deeper hole than last time. Don’t bother sending Lassie; I’m ok going down with the truth.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again – pizza is perfectly ok. It’s an adequate meal. There’s nothing wrong with pizza at all. It’s also not the end all of cuisine. There’s a million ways to consume dough, sauce and cheese – you certainly picked one of them. Congratulations. I just don’t see what’s so special about it. It’s a 7/10, 8/10 with the right toppings.

Pizza might be your favorite food, and that’s fine. Everybody has their own opinions, no matter how incorrect they may be. And trust me, the responses I heard from the article linked above where strong. Many people thought this was my dumbest argument of all time. Well, Van Gogh failed to sell a painting while he was a alive and he was a genius. I’m not directly comparing our talents, but which one of us is still producing content?* ¹

Now that you’re good and riled up, I thought this would be the right time to share even more of my pizza tasks which didn’t make the original post. Some people poke the bear. I prefer to stab, then twist.

Deep Dish Pizza is not a pizza.

Names can be misleading. Deep dish pizza is no exception. Have you ever seen one of these things? It contains more dough than a bakery. In fact, I’d argue that deep dish pizza is a savory cake instead of pizza. It’s tasty, and has all of the components of a pizza, but there’s no way this is actually pizza, I’m sorry.

Determining what qualifies as a pizza reminds me of an episode of Chopped. On a pizza only episode, a contestant made a pizza soup. When questioned, he passionately claimed that pizza is a state of mind, and anything can be a pizza. The judges were impressed by his passion.

Well that’s extremely stupid. A pizza is a freaking pizza. You can’t make a soup with tomato and cheese and say it’s the same thing. Nobody is putting pie crust on top of a salad and calling it a cobbler, are they? I sure hope not. Also, pizza soup sounds like an Chunky Soup variety nobody asked for.

Likewise, you can’t bake four pounds of dough with tomato sauce and cheese and call it a pizza. Deep Dish it’s in on creation, and probably has 400% of your daily carbs per slice. But sure, enjoy your savory cake. Nobody is going to stop you. Millions of people watch 90 Day Fiancée and there’s been no arrests over it yet.

Fun fact, that chopped contestant moved on to the second round, where he decided to make a pizza. Unfortunately, his pizza sucked and he was eliminated. No wonder he made a soup.

Pineapple is not a pizza topping.

I think pineapple is a delicious and versatile fruit. Not only is it delicious on it’s own, it enhances plenty of other foods. It makes a great ingredient for a salsa. Baked hams aren’t the same without some pineapple rings. Of course, it’s best used in desserts. Have you ever have a Dole Whip? It’s half of the reason people enjoy going to Disney. And while there’s multiple flavors of Dole Whip today, everyone knows the best is the OG – pineapple. It’s an extremely underrated fruit.

But, do you know where pineapple doesn’t belong. Alongside a bed of cheese, tomato sauce and dough. Fruit does not belong on a pizza.** ² The flavors do not mesh together. I understand Hawaiian pizzas are universally sold, but that doesn’t make them good. Candy companies continue to make grape flavored candy, and everyone knows those are inedible poison. Keep you fruit and your pizza separate, like a human being.

And may God have mercy on the poor souls who eat dessert pizzas covered in fruit. We have pie. Just eat a frigging pie.

Sauce less pizzas are just cheese bread.

This is another decision I don’t understand. Good pizza has three components – sauce, dough and cheese. Toppings are always appreciated, but a cheese slice functions just fine without them. Why then are people choosing pizza that don’t have sauce on them?

The textbook example of this is a white pie. A white pie, as you might have guessed from the name, does not have tomato sauce on it. Instead, it focuses on the dough and cheese. Surely there must be a sauce on there right? Restaurants don’t serve bread without butter, so any self respecting pizzeria must include something with their white pie.

Oh, it appears that olive oil is the closest thing to sauce on this pizza. Well, that’s a choice.

Olive oil, under no circumstance is a sauce. If you consider oil a sauce, you have heart issues. A white pie is nothing more than re-branded cheese bread. It’s basically a worse garlic bread that costs three times as much. Hooray?

Plenty of artisan pizzas also go sans sauce. Instead, these pizzas focus on using upscale ingredients and complex flavor combinations. Or, at least that’s how they sell it. Instead, it sounds like an open faced, dry ass sandwich cut into a triangle. Can’t we all agree that sauce is pretty important to the recipe? If you don’t want sauce, order something else.

Chain Pizza is only an option if you’re local pizza sucks.

This… This really isn’t a bold take at all. I hope most people agree with me here. Typically, local restaurants will be better than chain ones. I’m not knocking chain restaurants; they’ve expanded for a reason. However, most of these places are homogenized to appeal to the masses. They offer safe, and often mediocre food. Chains serve their purpose, and get the job done, but you can often do better.

It’s the same for pizza. As long as your town or city has a solid pizza place, you’re always better off going there over a chain. The benefits of chain pizza is you know what you’re getting if you’re from out of town, and the cost. Otherwise, you should 100% go local. Most, if not all chain pizza is trash. If for some reason you think chain pizza tastes better than local pizza, you likely enjoyed the Ending of Game of Thrones.

That might be the meanest sentence I’ve ever written.

There’s 3 major pizza chains. I’m going to rank them quickly, but note that “winning” the contest is like taking third place in a head to head race.

Pizza Hut – I think this is by far the best pizza chain, but the pizza has two sauces – tomato sauce, and grease. You could ring out each slice like a towel. Pizza isn’t diet food, but the Hut takes it to the next level. I remember the toppings being pretty crappy as well, but the regular pizza is alright, minus the 1/4^th cup of oil per slice. Pizza Hut slices are small, probably due to FDA requirements. If they were bigger, you’d probably have to be at least 18 to eat it.

Maid Megan says they have great bread sticks. Remember, it’s important to have side bread when you’re eating a pizza.

Domino’s – I don’t have to tell you that Domino’s is bad. The company released a series of commercials stating how bad their old pizza was. Imagine sucking so badly, you pay for ads showing how bad your pizza was. I tried to find a commercial, but there’s no proof on any major video websites. I suppose, in retrospect, trashing your own product wasn’t a good strategy.

And somehow this is still in second!

Domino’s new pizza isn’t very good. In fact, their cheesy bread is much better. That’s very concerning, since we’ve established cheesy bread is sauce less pizza*** ³ By my deduction skills, that means Domino’s sauce is atrocious. Not good for a restaurant focused solely on pizza.

Domino’s does offer other fair, like sandwiches, wings and pasta. Of course, anyone who willingly orders pasta from Domino’s should get a psych evaluation. When I first saw a commercial for it, I legit thought it was soup. Did our friend from Chopped get hired as Domino’s master saucier?

Again, they finished in second place.

Papa John’s – I’ve only had Papa John’s once. It’s was cardboard with a layer of cheese. I can’t believe this was a national chain. Better ingredients my ass. You could have the best toppings in the world, but you should start making a passable dough and sauce.

Papa John’s also has the unfortunate association with, you guessed it, Papa John. The disgraced CEO was recorded making racist comments and seems to be devolving every time he appears in public. In his last known public appearance, he gave an interview saying he ate 40 pizzas in 30 days while sweating profusely.

Was the 40 pizzas a brag, or a cry for help? Papa John should re-brand. Calling itself “Overpriced Shit Hole Pizza” would be a step up.

And there you have it, Bloggin Hood’s chain pizza rankings. Remember, never order from a chain pizza place unless you’re desperate, or drunk at 3 AM. I probably didn’t need to write the word “or” in that previous sentence.

What’s that? I forgot to talk about Little Caesars? No I didn’t. I power ranked pizza chains. Little Caesar’s does not make pizza. In fact the biggest lie in marketing is their tag line “Pizza Pizza”. What Little Caesars sells is far from Italian American fair. Instead, it sells stomach pain. If anything, Little Caesars has a “wink-wink” deal with Big Plumbing.

Did that confuse you? It probably did. But don’t worry, I have a story to explain it all, like a less blonde Clarissa.

What ha had happened was….

I’ve only had Little Caesars once, during a weekend trip with a fantasy football league. That was one time too many. Leagues members had talked about getting Little Caesars on Friday and planned to load up so we’d have food all weekend. I thought this was a joke. I mean, who would willing eat cheap, chain restaurant pizza for an entire weekend.

As it turns out, 11 of of 12 people in the league.

Our calls rolled up to a Little Caesar’s at 7 PM on a Friday. Two members walked in, requesting 12 (!) Hot and Ready Pizzas. We did not call before we got there to give a heads up at the order. Both people walked out with 6 pizzas within 30 seconds. I’m not sure how the credit card machine read the purchase that quickly. The door didn’t manage to close before my friends exited the building.

That was the first warning sign. Any “pizza place” with 12 pizzas ready to go is either mass producing poor quality food, or have no customers. I think this location had the former, but I wish it was the latter. I also really wish we ate anything else.

The total for all of this food? $65! That included tax. How in the world does the company make money off of these? Well, I have a lot of theories, but we’ll get to those later. I will give Little Caesars this – their pizzas were certainly hot and ready. I just strongly disagree with calling them pizzas and not a cleansing agent.

That night all 12 league members chowed down on copious amounts of pizza and booze. Immediately, I know that this “pizza” was God awful, but I’m a team player. I ate two slices so I’d have something in my stomach and then did plenty of people in their early 20s did – read a few chapters in my bible and went to bed by 9:30**** ⁴.

The next morning, 11 of the 12 league members were feeling great, likely because the booze was still flowing in their veins. However, poor Bloggin Hood’s stomach was on life support. Now, I understand the booze didn’t help, but I have an iron stomach. Few things cause me any digestive troubles, including booze. Unfortunately, Little Caesars Hot and Ready broke my impenetrable defenses. For the rest of the weekend, my office was a small half bathroom. I spent enough time there to count the titles on the floor…twice.

This, sadly, continued after the weekend, and rolled through the week. Needless to say, I had two cubical at work this week. All this from two slices of imitation pizza. Taco Bell would have been Pepto Bismol in comparison.

Of course, it’s not fair to judge a restaurant based on my experience. Perhaps it was a bad reaction and if I went back, everything would digest smoothly.

But let me be clear, I would eat a bowl of gravel for every meal before I’d ever eat another slice of Little Caesars rancid fare. As horrific as the week was following eating the “pizza”, the worst part was the taste. Somehow, those two slices haunt me more than counting the titles and praying there was more toilet paper in the house.

But how could one company make such a simple dish this poorly? Well, I’m glad you ask, because I have plenty of reasons.

Cost

Even I have to admit that Little Caesars isn’t expensive. Times are tough, and not everyone can afford takeout for more than a special occasion. Little Caesars allows anyone to take home a full pizza for $6 (it was previously $5, but like I said, times are tough). Considering you don’t have to wait, even if you want 12 pizzas for some godless reason, it’s very convenient. Gee Bloggin Hood, quick and affordable sounds awfully good.

Yeah, it might, but you still have to eat it. That unfortunately, it where Little Ceasars struggles.

To make a $6 pizza, costs are going to be cut. Each of these pizzas aren’t getting the care and attention needed to be good. For $6 dollars, you should feel lucky if your pizza is cooked.

The ingredients are suspect at best and you aren’t going to get a lot of them. I can’t see any Little Caesars going heavy on the sauce or the cheese. The only quality control is making sure the bare minimum of supply is used with each pizza. You’re getting a hell of a lot of dough and an accent of sauce and cheese, if you’re lucky.

Speaking of toppings, why would anyone get meat on a Little Caesars pie? If you’re paying $6 for an entire pizza, you aren’t getting the prime parts of the animal. Joe Exotic gave his employees better meat**** ⁵. If you forced to eat at the “restaurant” stick with the plain. Then again, maybe you’re a big fan of hooves and organs. I don’t know your tastes.

Cheese

Cheese isn’t very cheap. I’m confident that you aren’t getting a fair amount of cheese on each of these pizzas. However, the Little Caesars Pizza had a unique taste.

Unique doesn’t mean good mind you.

Curiosity got the best of me. I knew this wasn’t a standard cheese blend, but couldn’t place what the cheeses were. Considering my first and last serving came a decade ago, I had to check the Little Caesars website for answers. I’m shocked it wasn’t a Tumblr page. Per the web page, each Hot and Ready pizza uses a blend of Mozzarella and Munster. Well, that’s a new one. I’ll admit, I had my money on Velveeta and American.

While every standard pizza in the universe uses mozzarella, who uses frigging Munster cheese? Even the name sounds unappealing. Well, as it turns out, this seems to be a Caesars exclusive. Most Italian kitchens use Mozzarella as a base. Depending on the location, you may see Provolone, Cheddar, Parmesan, or Pecorino Romano. These cheeses have different flavors, and their inclusion varies on recipes. Each are staples in Italian cooking.

You know who’s not on that list? The homeboy Munster. Nobody uses or likes Munster. It doesn’t even sound like a cheese; it’s pronounced like a 3 year old trying to describe something scary. This is the cheese at the supermarket nobody ever purchases. Nobody, except Little Caesars of course. Maybe this is how the keep their cost down. Supply chains give Little Caesar’s hundreds of pounds of Munster cheese for pennies. If true, Little Caesars is getting hosed on the deal.

Consider this – Blue Cheese is actual mold and millions prefer it to Munster. Good job Little Caesars. I too would rather eat mold than your product.

Dough

The Little Caesars website is one of the best comedic reads you can have (after Bloggin Hood). It’s full of hilarious quips. Here’s one of the highlights – the website claims each restaurant makes their own dough. That might be the funniest thing I’ve seen since the Prince Sketch on Chappelle’s Show.

Let’s pretend that this is true, and Little Caesars isn’t using store brought dough that expires four years ago. Wouldn’t this explain so much? The best pizzas start with the dough. It takes time, effort and care to make a good dough. Without this, even the best sauces and cheese can’t disguise poor quality dough. Little Caesars doesn’t have passable cheese or sauce so the dough shines through. And be shines, I mean stands out due to the atrocious quality.

If Little Caesars made their own dough, it would be a rush job. There’s no way the restaurant has time to let the dough proof and rise. They’re too busy mass producing monstrosities with cheese nobody wants. This dough is being made, set aside for seconds and then rolled into a vague, circular shape. There’s no time for symmetry, especially not for $6.

The website states that each kitchen has a bag of flour in it. Do they want credit for having an essential ingredient in their kitchen? Also, does having flour confirm they create their own dough? The bag doesn’t have to be open for them to pilfer discarded dough form local, superior restaurants. Even if Little Caesars was making dough, the only ingredients in it would be flour and water, and with the $6 cost, I’m not confident in the water.

But again, let’s be honest, they aren’t making the dough. I don’t know they’re stealing it from trash cans, but I mean, think of the savings…

Sauce

This sauce frigging sucks. Shit’s terrible.

Gimmicks

When every component of your pizza is substandard at best, you need gimmicks to compete. Sure, the $6 Hot and Ready is successful, but even that’s not enough, I’d gladly pay double the cost for, you know, edible food. Little Caesars had created numerous gimmick pizzas to drum up sales.

Pretzel Crust

About a decade ago, fast food restaurants beamed obsessed with pretzel buns. Every burger joint offered a sandwich with one. Soon, these were removed from the menu. Nobody wanted nor needed a pretzel bun. If people wanted to eat pretzels, they would do so without it being paired with cheese, beef and vegetables.

A few years after fast food restaurants admitted the pretzel idea failed, Little Caesars had a brilliant idea. What if they replaced their normal crust with pretzel dough? Incredible.

Now, I understand the idea. Little Caesar’s standard crust is like a slightly less seasoned tree bark. Unfortunately, the company didn’t realize that nobody wants this pretzel bullshit. I assume their marketing team is also in charge of making the dough daily. Not to mention if the pizza place struggles with pizza dough, why would they make a good pretzel dough? Needless to say, this flopped.

Bacon Wrapped

Little Caesars again tried to cover up their awful dough and crust. This time, they used bacon, a universally beloved item. The commercials claimed each pizza contained over 3 feet of bacon. Who the hell ever measured meat amounts in length instead of weight? This was a horrible sign.

There’s also no chance this bacon was cooked correctly. If you’re wrapping bacon around pizza crust, it’s raw, and not pan fried. The bacon would cook in the pizza oven. This creates a greasy, soggy pizza dough and crust, with rubbery, fatty bacon. If anyone can ruin bacon, it’s Little Caesars. Plus, it’s definitely not premium bacon. I’m not saying it’s hoof bacon, but if the horseshoe fits…

This bacon wrapped pizza had numerous commercials, including hiring a “Bacon Lawyer” to explain that claimed the pizza was perfectly legal.

$12? Did they sprinkle gold on the bacon?

I mean, thanks, I guess? I feel bad for the actor, who forever was branded the bacon lawyer. Granted, he’s likely a former actor after taking the role, but still. He should have studied a more respected profession, like bird law.

Lunch Special

This is my favorite gimmick, possibly of all time. Little Caesar’s leaned into being bargain pizza. They offered four deep dish slices and a 20oz soda for $5. This is insane. Imaging trying to pass off deep dish as pizza dn not savory cake? Was anyone paying attention to the initial paragraphs?

Now, when you offer a full pizza for $6, this almost sounds pricey. But consider that the Hot and Ready are normal slices of pizza. This lunch time only deal offers 4 deep dish slices, which has more of this atrocious, gross dough you’ve come to despise. These are heavy slices. Per the pricing, the soda has significantly more value than a slice of deep dish. At least Little Caesar’s isn’t fooling themselves into thinking they have a good product.

My favorite part is this is a lunch special. Who could possibly eat four slices of pizza on lunch and pretend to function at work? You know, besides Bob Bobberton****** ⁶

There’s should be laws against this. Granted, people could split the slices, but then you’d have to admit to ordering Little Caesars to other human beings. No, if you get the lunch special, you must eat this alone in shame. But hey, at least the former Bacon Lawyer can afford a filling lunch.

Final Rant

In New York City, every block has a pizza place. Some are fantastic, and some are terrible. The most infamous of these bad pizza places are dollar pizza shacks. These hole in the wall establishments serve poor quality slices for a dollar. While plenty of people buy slices from these establishments, the customers know what they’re getting. Dollar pizza is terrible; each slice is a rubbery, greasy disaster. Sure it tastes like pizza, but similar to how cherry candy taste vaguely like a cherry.

Little Caesar’s business model offers a full pie for $6. That’s only .75 a slice (good math Bloggin Hood!). Their gimmick is a souped up, cheaper dollar pizza that is infinitely worse. Other than price, there is no redeeming quality to the restaurant. And sure, you can add any topping for free per the website, but the real question is, why would you? To spit in the face of God?

In 2021, we’re no longer trapped to only one restaurant option. There are plethora of pizza options everywhere. You don’t have to be in New York to get an affordable slice. And Hell, even if your local pizza is bad, it’s not Little Caesars bad, so that’s a plus. I’ll give Little Caesars this, it doesn’t have Papa John associated with it, so that’s good. Instead, it has an out of shape Roman spouting lies that he offers “Pizza Pizza”. Even the Bacon Lawyer would cry perjury against that statement in a court of law.

I beg you, please do yourself a favor. Save yourself, your family, and yes, even the bathroom, from making this decision. If somebody asks you ‘pizza pizza?” you tell them no.

I think Hallmark Channel Darling and Mean Girl’s Star Lacey Chebert said it best.

Perhaps, this was a thinly veiled metaphor against Regina George. Or, perhaps, she was saying what we were all thinking. We should be stomping out Little Caesars from our diet and choose better options, pizza or otherwise.

Or maybe she just really hated the bald little mascot. I don’t know. It’s a movie.

1. *One of us cut off an ear, and the other has both. Do I need to keep arguing this point? I don’t think so. They should hang this post in the Museum of Modern Art.
2. **Yes, yes, I know that tomatoes are technically a fruit. But we use them as a vegetable all the time so just roll with it. People aren’t slicing tomatoes and adding them to a fruit salad, are they?
3. ***Why does cheesy bread come with tomato sauce for dipping? Isn’t that just pizza with extra steps?
4. ****This was a test in case Momma Bloggin Hood logged on. We played Beer Pong and Flip Cup till like 2.
5. *****Do people still remember Joe Exoitc? That was 18 months ago, but it feels like two decades. On an unrelated note, I probably should avoid four month gaps in posts.
6. *****Bob once brought in four slices of pizza for lunch from home. I’m not sure how he packed it, but he heated up each slice in the microwave and had multiple pates with him. He ate every speck of those slices and didn’t do a damn thing that afternoon. Then again, the pizza wasn’t affecting his job performance.