As four distinct variants that nonetheless have many key characteristics in common, I like to think of Pizza Hut’s new line of Oven-Baked Pastas as quadruplets. Each flavor has a unique personality, but they share two crucial features, perfectly smooth penne pasta and a top layer of thick, baked-ziti-esque cheese. Two are adorned with Alfredo sauce, two don a sweet red sauce, and all four are delicious in their own ways. Serving size-wise, one order of any of these pastas would make a good meal for one person – maybe even with leftovers if all that cheese is too much for you! – but the portion is so filling that I can definitely see it as a shareable appetizer/side/snack too.
Cheesy Alfredo
I worried this might pale in comparison to the chickened version; it turns out I needn’t have. This pasta was swimming in a gooey, creamy, downright decadent copious sea of sauce so bright white it looked positively pristine. (Though I am slightly confused how such a wonderful garlicky flavor could come from something whose handy-dandy online ingredients list only notes garlic under “Contains less than 2% of the following.”) Our friends at Pizza Hut were not kidding when they dubbed this one “cheesy,” and I’d say swapping meat for all that extra dairy is a worthy tradeoff.
Rating: 9 out of 10
Nutrition Facts: (1 order) 880 calories, 48 grams of fat, 31 grams of saturated fat, 1,180 milligrams of sodium, 84 grams of carbohydrates, 5 grams of sugar, and 30 grams of protein.
Chicken Alfredo
If anything, the poultry felt paltry compared to its queso’d cousin. I described the cheesy Alfredo sauce as “gooey,” but the same can’t be said here, with the sauce relegated from main attraction to mere sidekick. The ostensible star of the show, that chicken, packs a hefty herbal aftertaste that I couldn’t immediately put a finger on, but apparently is courtesy of dried parsley. However, its distribution in my batch was sort of spotty —- some bites came with a dime-sized dollop, some with more like a silver dollar, and most with no chicken at all.
Rating: 7 out of 10
Nutrition Facts: (1 order) 930 calories, 49 grams of fat, 32 grams of saturated fat, 1,340 milligrams of sodium, 85 grams of carbohydrates, 5 grams of sugar, and 37 grams of protein.
Italian Meats
The main meat in mind is sausage, and Pizza Hut’s offering is a perfect fast food specimen; chunky, juicy, zesty, and abnormally (like, almost scarily) tender. Because this is Italian meats, not Italian meat, I should also mention the presence of pepperoni. But, hidden directly under the cheesy coating, it was pretty handily obscured both visually and taste-wise. I also need to take a moment to appreciate the sweet red sauce, so pleasantly mild and yet so simply tasty that it felt like a hug for my mouth. I usually find pasta with red sauce a little boring, but this was more than enough to hold my interest.
Rating: 8 out of 10
Nutrition Facts: (1 order) 860 calories, 37 grams of fat, 15 grams of saturated fat, 1,640 milligrams of sodium, 97 grams of carbohydrates, 17 grams of sugar, and 36 grams of protein.
Veggie
I liked this one more than I expected. I mean, not more than I liked any of the others, but still! The toppings were kind of random (sure, green bell pepper, black olives, and “diced Roma tomato” are pretty normal to find in a pasta separately, but all of them at once?), yet they mingled well. That gently sweet sauce and rich cheese were perked up by the refreshing pepper, which also provided a texturally delightful snap, while the tomato offered a surprisingly intense and unsurprisingly delicious burst of flavor, and the olives… well, I could have done without them, but their flavor was subtler and less briny than I typically fear, and I must give them credit for adding some nice umami undertones.
Rating: 6 out of 10
Nutrition Facts: (1 order) 640 calories, 16 grams of fat, 8 grams of saturated fat, 1,170 milligrams of sodium, 99 grams of carbohydrates, 18 grams of sugar, and 17 grams of protein.
If you’re still not convinced to give one — or all! — of these a try, I should also mention that each comes with an order of breadsticks. Yes, that means that in the course of writing this review, I acquired twenty breadsticks, so if you need me, I’ll be busy trying not to devour them all in one sitting.
Purchased Price: $8.99 each