When I first started this website, I wanted to write about all the cursed bullshit the restaurant industry cranks out. And while I may have strayed a bit from that original mindset, Pizza Hut’s new (ok, I’m actually almost a month late on this? In my defense I was busy with that whole Boston thing at the time.) Stuffed Cheez It Pizzas seem to be a return to form, joining GarfieldEats and caramel covered French fries in the annals of “oh god oh fuck.”
Pizza Hut, of course, is no stranger to mash-ups that probably shouldn’t exist. Who could forget 2015’s Hot Dog Stuffed Crust Pizza? God, I wish I could forget. I still see it when I close my eyes.
While I doubt the Stuffed Cheez It Pizzas will be haunting my nightmares anytime soon, there’s definitely an element of “who thought this needed to exist,” so I figured it would still be worth checking out. I opted to get the plain cheese variety, as I felt it would be truer to the Cheez it vision than the ones with pepperoni in them.
Isn’t that cute- they get their own special little Cheez It box.
My first impression is that they kinda look like big fried ravioli (and not, for some reason, Big Cheez It). And honestly, these things really do have more in common with ravioli than they do pizza when you think about it.
The crust was flakey like the interior of a Cheez It, but was much softer, which was a little disappointing (given the flakiness, maybe empanada is the best way to categorize this?). The cheese inside is exactly the same as the cheese in the stuffed-crust crust, which I guess I generally like even though it has sort of a “melted, but not really” texture that lets you know they did something to it to keep it from oozing all over the place. The Cheez It taste was present, although not as strong as I assumed it would be from the smell. I also found that it was all around not as salty as I was expecting it to be. And while the marinara sauce was really nothing special, it was a welcome reprieve from the onslaught of cheese.
It’s sort of in the same vein as the Doritos Locos Taco: combine a junk food and a fast food and get something that’s just kinda reminiscent of the source materials and leaves you saying “yeah ok, that’s food.”
Was it alone worth the trip to Pizza Hut? I mean, I- surprisingly, as I honestly don’t like Pizza Hut all that much- don’t regret it, aside from the fact that I lost all motivation to do anything more than write two sentences of this, and then spent the rest of that day playing Pokemon. Oh, that and it made my car smell like fucking Cheez Its.
