FoodGeek: Pizza Hut's Doritos Crunchy Crust Review

The topping chosen to complete this review was part of the ‘Meatlovers’ range.

I’m driving home from the local Pizza Hut, gliding through an almost empty trail of road. The smell of pizza wafts through my car, a can of ice-cold Mountain Dew splashing around in my cup holder. I can’t resist any longer. I have to at least have a chip. Just one chip off the Pizza Hut Dominos Crunchy Crust. Just one. Sadly, though, the next sensation to reach my brain was one of confusion. See, despite what I imagined, the flavour I was experiencing wasn’t one of a raw Dorito. No, this chip was burnt, it disintegrated in my mouth. It tasted like death.

I try another chip, then another, but they all taste the same. Bitter. Burnt. Awful.

I love Doritos. I mean, I seriously freaking love them. It doesn’t matter if they’re Original or Nacho Cheese flavour, if I was given a single food which I could eat, safely, for eternity it’d be Doritos (as long as I’m also given a drink). I guess, in theory, that simply means I love corn chips. And yet, even if the Pizza Hut Doritos Crunchy Crust was simply a generic corn chip baked into a pizza, I’d still hate it. For sure. It’s practically my two favourite things formed in a single transaction, and yet that half-pizza I just ate was seriously the worst thing I’ve ever eaten in my life. Genuinely.

The Doritos Crunchy Crust is an abomination, to the point where I just threw out the second half of the meaty pizza. This is coming from a person who just recently retweeted this tweet.

My dad gets it. pic.twitter.com/xEx2LCDAOU

— Dan Ryckert (@DanRyckert) December 22, 2014

I love all pizza. Even the ‘bad stuff’. And I don’t use that word, abomination, lightly either. But seriously, this pizza was bad. You’re better off buying a regular pizza and a bag of Doritos, and mixing it yourself, because this wasn’t a pizza. It simply didn’t taste like one.

See, the Crunchy Crust doesn’t use a traditional stuffed crust structure.

On a regular Cheesy Crust, or even the recent Hot Dog Crust, the ingredients of the crust are literally baked inside of it. You can’t even see the cheese or the hot dog until you either bite down on the crust, or until you look at the slice side-on.

Unlike the Cheesy Crust Pizza Hut pizzas, the Crunchy Crust is simply a regular pizza base. The usually hidden Crust ingredients, the Cheese, and in this case the Doritos, are now glued by fire onto a regular pizza base. If you peel off the cheese on this pizza, you literally have a regular pizza.

And this is a fatal flaw for the Crunchy Crust. Baking the ingredients externally means the usually interesting textures and flavours of a Stuffed Crust are instead presented to your tastebuds as a burnt, bitter mish-mash of disaster, with each ingredient in a war to be the worst thing you’ve ever eaten.

On top of that, this poor design choice ruins the entire pizza. Unlike the usually efficient Stuffed Crust varieties, half of the already average slice of pizza is taken up by the terrible ‘Crunchy Crust’, the now external cheese and chips. The remaining triangle, where your topping is placed, is simply so small that you can’t help but pick up some of the crust with your first bite. Even if you just buy the Crunchy Crust to try it out, and don’t want to commit to the idea of a Doritos pizza, you’re sacrificing a solid amount of land mass.

Perhaps this might have been a better idea if it wasn’t burnt. Maybe that was just caused by a busy day at the particular restaurant of choice. It is Boxing Day after all. But beyond that, I equally wonder whether this is a widespread issue of the Crunchy Crust. Whether it’s simply impossible, under the tight deadlines of a take-out + delivery pizza place, to give this complex specimen the care it deserves. It’s either a scale issue or an isolated issue.

But ignoring the possibility of this being a bad batch, this is my simple warning to you: don’t be a hero. Don’t be a joker. I know, it’s hard to resist drinking a Mountain Dew while chowing down on a Doritos-branded pizza. Heck, you might even be playing Call of Duty in the process. But don’t ruin this precious holiday season with a terrible slice of pizza. It isn’t worth it. Just buy a regular Pizza Hut pizza. Heck, even get the Cheese or Hot-Dog crust (if they still do that). Or just buy a pack of Doritos from your favourite convenience store and put it on a regular pizza. It’ll look, taste, and feel better.

Because the Crunchy Crust looks, tastes, and feels like a poor choice of pizza. Save yourself the trouble.

FoodGeek is an experimental look at the world of food from the eyes of your local neighbourhood TechGeeks. If you like what you see, let us know. Or if you know a crazy food, let us know where to try it via tips@techgeek.com.au.