Pizza Hut’s Stuffed Crust Pizza was a mind-blowing idea when it first came out. Pizza fanatics rejoiced. Nutritionists cried. Dairy farmers pumped their fists and shouted, “Ka-ching!” And dairy cows yelled, “Moo!”
I was super excited about it. But after eating a slice I realized the problem with the Stuffed Crust Pizza was the fact the cheese inside wasn’t different than what’s on the pizza. So if you were to take a bite of it with the pizza, it would pretty much taste like a normal pizza with a double dose of mozzarella cheese.
But Pizza Hut is doing something different with their new Grilled Cheese Stuffed Crust Pizza. There’s a little mozzarella in there, but the big cheese is, um, cheddar.
Yeah, I don’t know what uppity artisan sandwich shop the folks who work at Pizza Hut’s test kitchen eat at for fancy grilled cheese sandwiches, but for us regular folks, our grilled cheese sandwiches have good ol’ U.S. of American cheese that’s as American as the idea of a grilled cheese stuffed crust pizza. So why doesn’t the orange goo contain it?
The crust is also topped with butter and breadcrumbs. Not a sprinkling of breadcrumbs, but enough to make some slices look like they’re connected to a chicken cutlet. They also provide a satisfying crunch that the actual crust does not.
The ends were quite flat. I don’t know if my pizza was made the right way, but it looks like a bean bag chair that lost a war between it and the butts of an entire football team’s offensive and defensive lines. I thought there wouldn’t be a lot of cheese in it, but as I pulled a slice away, a crown of orange goo peaked out from the crust.
The flavor combination of cheese, butter, crust, and breadcrumbs, doesn’t remind me of a grilled cheese sandwich, but then again, my grilled cheese sandwiches don’t use cheddar or mozzarella. But with the added garlic in the butter, it tastes more like cheesy garlic bread than a grilled cheese sandwich. That’s not a bad thing. I liked its flavor even though it was not what I was expecting. Maybe cheesy garlic bread is what grilled cheese sandwiches at uppity artisan sandwich shops taste like.
While I enjoyed the crust, I thought combining bites of it with the pizza were odd. Not gross, just different because of the cheddar. The pizza itself was typical Pizza Hut fare, so I won’t go into any further detail about that.
The whole point of Pizza Hut’s Stuffed Crust Pizza is to encourage us to eat the crust, and I think it was successful with this pizza. The crust was saltier than the pizza itself and I wish it came with a container of tomato soup as a dip, but I have to say this is the first time I felt like eating the end crust and throwing away the pizza, instead of eating the pizza and throwing away the end crust.
Purchased Price: $17.99*
Size: Large pizza
Rating: 7 out of 10
Nutrition Facts: (1 slice) 400 calories, 20 grams of fat, 10 grams of saturated fat, 0.5 grams of trans fat, 60 milligrams of cholesterol, 860 milligrams of sodium, 35 grams of carbohydrates, 2 grams of fiber, 1 gram of sugar, and 18 grams of protein.
*Because I live on a rock in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, things are a bit pricier here. You’ll probably pay less than I did. These are being advertised for $12.99 for a one topping large pizza at participating locations.
