Pizza Offerings ‘Totally New’ At The Hut

This week I reached out for a “totally new” large pan pizza from Pizza Hut. Actually, all of Pizza Hut’s pizzas, including hand-tossed and thin crust, have undergone a bigger face lift than Joan Rivers.

Total calories: 267 per slice. Fat grams: 11. Here’s the blueprint: tomato sauce, “real mozzarella cheese” and your choice of toppings on a thick, pastrylike crust. I went with green peppers and sausage.

Isn’t it a troubled world when a pizza joint brags that it uses “real” cheese?

You’ve probably caught Pizza Hut’s TV commercials for its improved pizzas with “bigger veggies” and “chunkier meats.” I have a problem when a product brags that it’s new and improved, especially when it’s something like pizza.

If Clorox were to come up with new and improved bleach, I might think, “OK, they’ve discovered a breakthrough in chlorine molecular technology.”

But when Pizza Hut says its pizzas are better now because it uses fresh vegetables and meatier meat, that’s telling me, “Our old pizzas were junk. We used canned mushrooms and cheap pepperoni, and you finally got wise to us.”

Whatever the motive, I’m thankful Pizza Hut is making amends. My pan pizza was surprisingly delicious. I used to scrunch up my nose at quick-delivery pizza. Anything that takes only 30 minutes can’t be any good, I thought, except for “Seinfeld.”

The crumbled sausage was darker, which I took as a good sign, and the peppers were bigger chunks than before. The crust, made fresh twice a day, was sweet and thick.

I did make an amateur blunder, though. I threw out my Sunday newspaper before clipping the Pizza Hut coupons. This resulted in me becoming the first customer ever to pay full price for a pizza.