What I Ate: January 22, 2010 (Pizza Hut)

Lunch: Ever since I tasted the smoked pork belly I made a few days ago, I thought it would go great in ramen. The best we had on hand was our Nong Shim Seafood Ramyun which we cooked with Napa cabbage and laid several thin slices of the pork belly on top after it was ready. It tasted great, but it would have been better if the rub had less sugar and it had been roasted and not smoked.

Dinner: A couple days ago we talked about how we thought Domino's Pizza's crust was fine and we didn't know if the change would make it better or not, so we started talking about trying it on Friday night (because we needed a fast dinner since we had our neighbors coming over to visit and we wouldn't have time to make dinner beforehand for ourselves). I mentioned that since Domino's started advertising their new crust, Pizza Hut stepped up an ad campaign promoting any pizza for just $10. I said, they were doing that just to entice people to buy Pizza Hut during this time when Domino's is trying to draw people to their restaurants to taste their new pizza. $10 is a good deal, especially since you can pick all the toppings you want. Somehow, in the end, we decided to take advantage of the $10 for any size, any toppings pizza deal at Pizza Hut and ordered a Super Supreme without olives (Tina doesn't like them). When it arrived, it was the WORST pizza we had ever had. It was undercooked so the crust was bland and mushy and the toppings tasted raw with the cheese barely melted. It tasted worse than your typical frozen pizza.

I called to complain and after getting transferred to the manager, he agreed to make another pizza. I told him we were going to drive over to pick it up (so we could inspect the pizza, but I didn't say that) and he said he'd throw in an order of cinnamon sticks for us. The manager looked at the pizza we brought him and apologized profusely. He explained that it looked to him that the pizza was placed in the oven but other pizzas must have pushed it further along the track so it was baked less time (about 1 pizza's length was his estimate). As you can see from the color of the crust, this one was much better made, but Tina said she preferred the Domino's Cali Chicken Bacon Ranch pizza of which Pizza Hut does not make anything similar. Maybe next time we'll try Domino's instead of getting trapped in the promotions designed to distract us.