Taste test: Celebrating National Pizza Month

In honor of National Pizza Month in October, we ordered pizza for the entire office. But, since we’re always on one deadline or another—not just office workers with time on their hands to bond with one another—we made it a working lunch.

We ordered five pizzas from five local franchisees—which sounds easy, but trust us, it’s a lot more work than it seems. First of all, it required one of us to stop checking our e-mail every five seconds in order to figure out how to order pizza in the new millennium. Remember when you could just pick up the phone and call? Now some chains want you to go online and order. (This may not be breaking news for you, dear readers, but some of us haven’t ordered pizza since the last kid left for college.)

According to Papa John’s Web site, there are several stores within a five-mile radius of our office, but none that would deliver. We even called the closest store to see what the Web’s problem was, only to be told by a human that we could always pick it up if we wanted. We didn’t. The Web site made us feel too old to drive—to sign up for their birthday club, they required us to scroll through decades of years until we found our birth year. Geeze, just let us type in the year—anyone over 13, which is what you need to be to order pizza online, should be trusted to type in four numerals in the right order.

We did successfully order a pizza from Pizza Hut online. The Web site warned us that the store didn’t open until 10:45 a.m., but would process our e-mail ASAP. They did, and we received a confirmation e-mail at 10:50 a.m. They even corrected our 12:30 a.m. delivery time to 12:30 p.m., knowing that no one was going to stick around on a Friday afternoon until after midnight for a pizza delivery.

We called the wrong location for Domino’s, but the person who answered the phone was extremely friendly—and helpful. After answering our questions, taking our order and upselling us free brownie squares, he discovered we needed to be referred to another store. He gave us that number—without a passive-aggressive sigh. We received the same deal at the second Domino’s for 10 cents cheaper.

Green Mill Restaurant did deliver, but at 11:45 a.m., not noon as we requested. Again, it took two phone calls to get to the right store (maybe there is something to that Internet ordering).

We ordered the most popular combo at Broadway Pizza, a classic deluxe, from a friendly guy. No drama here: Who you called was who delivered. A nice touch was that the pizza was already cut into small squares, thus saving us time in the test kitchen.

Some of the taste-test contenders we wanted to include either didn’t deliver or weren’t in our area: Old Chicago, Boston’s The Gourmet Pizza, Figaros and Godfather’s. (We really wanted to include nonfranchises in this test, but we knew including independents, such as Punch Neapolitan Pizza, would spoil the “scientific” approach we had since in our minds they were already the winners in the taste department.)

The lack of an office oven meant we weren’t able to include take-and-bake concepts, however, Papa Murphy’s was well represented by an outstanding pizza cutter an employee brought from home.
Our fifth chain, Chanticlear, was local. It turned out to be the most expensive at $20.76, and asked the best question: “Do we need to go in a special door?” (If we had been quicker on the uptake, we would have asked them what kind of special doors they’ve had to go through for other deliveries.)We liked the pizza better than we liked the name. A couple of us agreed the moniker would be better served as a window-washing company.

We should disclose upfront that there was nothing remotely scientific about our taste test. We ordered a variety of pizzas, some hand-tossed, some thin crust, some single-topping, some with the works. Our aim was not to be fair, but to get the boss to pay for it.

Ironically, we had more debate around the tip than the taste. Our accountant wanted to tip $2, while our conference services manager/office manager pushed for $5. The rest of us tried not to choose sides since one is responsible for passing out our paychecks every other week and the other has control of the office temperature. (The $5 tip won.)

Each judge was asked to assess the pizza on taste, texture and easibility of picking off the toppings (this was in deference to not asking judges what kind of pizza toppings they liked).

The No. 1 favorite was Green Mill, with Broadway a close second (although several people thought it was a tad bit greasy). Chanticlear received high marks, including positive comments on its inclusion of cheddar cheese. The two dominate chain participants, unfortunately, fared the worse. Our judges found them to be closer to frozen pizza than fresh. Another criticism was the crust was too doughy, and overwhelmed the toppings.

Surprisingly, only Chanticlear Pizza and Pizza Hut included coupons with our orders. A wasted marketing opportunity, especially since it was going to an office building.

The only disappointment turned out to be that the delivery people all arrived at slightly different times. We had envisioned five competitors, all vying to be the first ones in the door. So much for all that hype about the pizza wars.


Les Dame Soiree

What good is a column if you can’t plug your friends? Chef Vincent Francoual will prepare a five-course French dinner with wine pairings at his Minneapolis “Eat Street” establishment, Vincent A Restaurant, Sunday, October 29, starting at 5 p.m. Le Gourmet Soiree 2006 is a fund raiser for the Minneapolis/St. Paul Chapter of Les Dames D’Escoffier. Tickets are $150 each. Contact Andi Bidwell at andi.bidwell@genmills.com or at 763-293-1342.