!!! Faux-Posh Pizza Double Review !!! Maximum WOW !!!

So it looks like fancy pizzas are the new 'in-thing' in the mass pizza delivery world. How exciting. Call your children to tell them. If you don't have children that's fine, just record a video of you telling them to show your future baby the moment it pops out of your/your wife's/your girlfriend's/some girl's vagina.

At least this is the information I'm gleaming from Domino's and Pizza Hut's recent foray into 'not-obviously-crap' pizzas. I like the idea of companies watching the rise and fall of pizza trends. I'd like to think there are such things as pizza trends. It's nice to imagine they have charts and graphs measuring the popularity of various toppings all pinned up in their boardroom, so they know what kind of pizza is most likely to be the biggest thing on the pizza scene since someone decided to stuff a crust. There must be countless meetings where a bunch of pizza bigwigs discuss what new, so-hot-right-now, pizza is going to be the pizza equivalent of the music industry's seemingly relentless attempt to cash-in on the pedo-pound. They're searching for their very own Justin Pizzber. That's not a great pun, but I needed to lighten the mood quickly because mentioning pedophiles is rarely good for morale.

ANYWAY. Here's a couple of pizzas that, despite the fact they were obviously thought up in a horrible, corporate factory somewhere and are made of shit, are trying to convince me they're Fancy-Pants McCheese. Like they think I'm stupid. I'm going to prove I'm not stupid by writing about them. Could a stupid person write an irritating, pointless review to be read by perhaps a dozen people? I think not.

Domino's Gourmet Range: Rustica

So this is Domino's attempt at class and it's a bit like the pizza equivalent of MTV's G's to Gents. Did you ever watch that? It was like a hip-hop version of Tool Academy. You didn't watch that either? Good for you. Basically they just took a bunch of loser dickheads who all thought they were major players in the game and told them to start wearing ties. Not that that's bad advice, it's just that some people look so uncomfortable in a tie you wish they'd take it off because it's making your neck itch. 

That's pretty much what's going on here. Domino's are dressing one of their regular pizzas up in a fancy suit and telling me he's a changed man. As if just because they're using 'SunBlush' baby tomatoes, the maxi-stodge base isn't going to turn my belly into the digestive equivalent of a motorway pile-up. As if having something as unconventional as spinach on there is going have me reassessing my belief that all Domino's ingredients are actually made from the same Play-Doh-like substance and all the guy at the shop has to do is paint the different toppings the right colour. No way buddy. Not happening dog. I'm like the girlfriend of a recently released convict who got banged up for domestic battery. "You ain't never getting in this house no more! No way, no how!"

Pizza Hut: Primo Italiano

'Primo Italiano'? Seriously? That's the best name you could come up with? It sounds like when you're on holiday and your Dad talks in an accent because he thinks that will help locals understand him. If that has ever happened to you, then don't worry, I don't know that because I was hiding behind a lamp post, watching, while your Father argued with an Italian traffic warden outside the airport. I'm not stalking you, or following you and your family and that dipshit boyfriend of yours around while you're all on holiday. That would be weird. Anyway, plane tickets to Tuscany are too expensive at this time of year and I know you might think you saw me when you were at that market trying on that bracelet but try and remember I have a very generic face. It could have been anyone. Anyone except me.

Anyway, this pizza can do one. It's like those guys that go to bars alone in tacky suits and sit there sipping a lime and soda and barging their way into girls' conversations. They reek of cheap perfume and I imagine they get home at 2am and try and call their mother and when she doesn't pick up they have a crank and stay up all night entering those TV roulette shows. I feel sorry for those guys. I don't feel sorry for this pizza though because it's just a pizza and therefore has no feelings, only cheese.

Verdict:

When you polish a turd all you end up with is a polished turd. Which admittedly is better than a normal turd, (it's all nice and polished for God's sake!) but it is still a turd and you wouldn't want to put it in your mouth. Which is exactly what I did with these two pizzas. But then I am by no means a good example of someone who makes sensible decisions concerning what to put, and not put, in their mouth (not much homo).

Domino's: Duluxe with Double Decadence 'Basil Burst' Base

I've been really lazy and not put up a review for a while. I'm not going to apologise, I don't owe you anything, I never agreed to do these at a specified rate, so leave me alone and please stop hassling me about it.

Obviously no-one has actually hassled me and there have been precisely zero concerned e-mails asking if I'm OK or if I've choked on a stuffed crust or OD'd on cheese or some other Darwin Award worthy death. I'm fine, no need to worry non-existent fan base.

Speaking of bases, Domino's have got quite creative with their previous 'Double Decadence' idea, which, in case you're blissfully unaware, is when they slip a thin layer of cheese between two thin crusts effectively turning the whole thing into a giant, revolting sandwich. The Domino's creative team, no doubt operating from a dark tower lined with human heads on spikes, in a forest filled with bats,  have taken this concept one step further, (which, if you're keeping track, is two steps too far). So now, instead of just boring old cheese they've generously given us the option of the 'Basil Burst' base. Despite sounding like a headline in the obituaries section of the CBBC newspaper, it is in fact something far worse and not nearly as funny.

I didn't actually check the ingredients of the 'Basil Burst' filling, but I don't think I need to because I'm fairly sure it would look like this:

Soap (64%), Salt (22%), Green Plasticine (9%), Regret (5%), Not Basil (>1%).

Basil Burst eh? More like Basil Worst! Don't worry, my New Year's resolution is to finally come up with one genuinely funny joke. I think I'll manage it eventually, I've got a good feeling about August.

2 out of 10

Domino's Tandoori Hot on 'Dominator' Base

I didn't expect this pizza to go very well and was trying it more of an experiment than because I wanted yet more cheese. For a start, and I know I've said this before, I feel 'Dominator' sounds a little threatening. Like there's a chance that when I open the box, this pizza will jump out and rape me, and in a way it did. Mercifully, with cheese instead of a penis.

In case you're blissfully ignorant of what a Dominator base is, it's when Domino's try and smuggle even more cheese into you by stuffing not just the crust, but the entire pizza with an extra layer of cheese. Sometimes I imagine my mouth as the U.S./Mexican border, Domino's as a Columbian drug/cheese-baron and their pizzas as poor South Americans who have been bullied into swallowing condoms full of cheese to try and sneak past me. Like I'll look at the pizza and be all "Yep, everything seems to be in order. Move along please" but secretly there's all this extra cheese they think I don't know about. Obviously I do know, because I can taste it and it's gross. It's like Dairylea but with herbs, i.e. not really cheese.

I've made up a not-very-funny pizza/music joke:

Q: What's the Big Pink's favourite pizza delivery service?

A: Domino's!

LOL Edmonds or what?

4 out of 10

Domino's Half 'n' Half, Mighty Meaty/The Sizzler

Domino's have three different pizzas that all have 'meat' as their theme. There's the Meateor, the Meatzza Pizza and the Mighty Meaty. I'm pretty sure they're all more or less the same thing. I suspect what happened is that they came up with three meat-based names and couldn't choose between them so instead made extra pizzas. I'd like to be the guy who has the job of coming up with the names for Domino's pizzas. Some of them sound quite threatening. The extra hot Meltdown: The Revenge for example. I don't know what kind of thing a pizza would want to avenge? Maybe you ate its mother? Or perhaps disgraced its family's honour by not finishing its uncle? (This depends on whether or not pizzas consider being eaten as a good or a bad thing). Either way, being spicy is a pretty poor form of revenge. Imagine if, in the Godfather, instead of the whole horse head in the bed prank they just put a chilli in the guy's sandwich. Don't mess with the Don or he'll make your lunch too spicy.

Recently I've ordered my Domino's on the thin crust because I found the regular base too stodgy but I might revert back because sometimes I think the base of the tray has got stuck to the bottom of the pizza and I've accidently eaten it. I haven't, it just really, really tastes like cardboard.

6.5 out of 10