I once had a dream that Pizza Hut here in the U.S. offered a pizza with large crispy mozzarella sticks as the end crust. When I woke up and wiped away the drool from my mouth, which ABSOLUTELY DOES NOT happen all the time, I realized it was all a dream, and the bodily fluids stopped coming out of my mouth and started rolling down from my eyes.

Pizza Hut’s Mozzarella Poppers Pizza is not the pizza of my salty dream. Instead of edges that are entirely made of crispy, breaded cheese sticks, the large pizza has 16 1.5-inch mozzarella-filled squares plopped onto and baked with the regular crust, and spaced out so that there will be two of them on each of the eight slices. The menu item also comes with two containers of marinara sauce for dipping.

It doesn’t take much effort to pop off the poppers from the pizza, which doesn’t have the iron grip that’s shown in promotional photos. Their breaded exteriors are seasoned with garlic, onion, parmesan, parsley, basil, and oregano, and they have a subtle crispiness. Thanks to the seasonings, I could eat them without dipping them into the sauce, but they taste better with it.

The cheese wasn’t gooey, and it tastes similar to what’s in the chain’s original Stuffed Crust. If you’ve had a mozzarella stick, you know what you’re getting here.

Now, you could eat the poppers and end crust separately, leave them attached and eat them with the rest of the crust, or, if you don’t eat that part of a pizza, remove the cheese-filled squares and let the remaining bread rot forever in the hell where all the other discarded pizza crusts go to burn into charred lumps that’ll never be eaten. Sorry, remembering another dream I had.

If you like to eat crusts, I’d recommend leaving the poppers on to make it a little more tolerable, because the bread directly underneath them gets a little moist, probably due to the heat between them.

I have to admit the dough the poppers are sitting on with my pizza looks a bit undercooked when compared with the golden brown mozzarella poppers, but its texture and taste was fine while eating. Okay, the taste was super dull, but thankfully the two marinara containers have enough for the poppers and most of the remaining end crust. But it would be less boring if the poppers are left on.

As for the non-crust side, I ordered a modified Supreme, and it tasted like a…Pizza Hut Supreme Pizza. SURPRISE!

Overall, Pizza Hut’s Mozzarella Poppers Pizza is a bit ho-hum. The poppers themselves are a nice appetizer when dipped in marinara, but if you do that to all of them, you’re left with a crust that’s more bland than usual.

Of course, that could’ve been avoided if the edges were only mozzarella sticks or if the poppers were a topping. Yes, poppers as a topping was from another dream.

Purchased Price: $21.99* (Supreme)
Size: Large
Rating: 6 out of 10
Nutrition Facts: (1 slice – Supreme) 460 calories, 23 grams of fat, 10 grams of saturated fat, 0.5 grams of trans fat, 55 milligrams of cholesterol, 990 milligrams of sodium, 44 grams of carbohydrates, 2 grams of fiber, 2 grams of sugar, and 20 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.