It’s round but I recall the pizza at 7-Eleven as being close in taste. Haven’t had any in quite a while.
At my school, the lunch menu always called it “Tony’s pizza”. So I thought it was a local brand but Google tells me it was a nationwide rectangular school pizza supplier. And apparently, according to Garak, you can get it on Amazon. I haven’t tried it, so no clue if it stands up to our collective memories, or if they’ve de-fattened it and whole-wheated it up beyond recognition.
And I have lots of fond memories of very subpar foods from childhood. About once a year I buy some Spaghetti-Os to remind myself what it tastes like and why I don’t eat it regularly. But after 12 months or so I start thinking “man when I was five, that stuff was so good”. Rinse and repeat.
Given that the product name, itself, says “Whole Grain,” I have to imagine that it’s not as nutritionally bereft as the stuff from the past, particularly if it’s been re-formulated to fit modern school-lunch nutritional standards.
There are some pizzerias that sell rectangular pizzas sliced up into squares as “party pizza” but they were not top-drawer pizzas.
I’m guessing MRE pizza would be pretty close to a school lunch pizza but they’re awfully pricy. The troops are enthusiastic but after the infamous Four Fingers of Death, anything would taste good.
In the freezer section you will find pkgs of personal size pizzas. I think they come in 4 packs. Usually on the cheap side. Nasty enough to qualify as lunch lady pizza. Walmart won’t have them. Grocery stores only. Look at the pick-5 for $20, deals. That’s where they’ll be.
IIRC, pizza was served on Fridays at my school.
I always thought it was very subpar compared to the pizza we would occasionally eat at home (delivery or frozen from the grocery store). I ate it because that’s what we got and I was hungry.
The cheese always freaked me out. It looked kind of greyish in color and somewhat transparent.
Hmmm, given the warning* on the bottom of that page, it just might come close!
There are plenty of delicious square-sliced pizzas out there, from Italian ones to regional American ones. Anyone who puts down pizza based on its shape should really know better.
Huh. I had no idea my school cafeteria pizza of the 80s was so widely known. The kind I remember was also rectangular, as if cooked in a sheet pan. I also remember the crust being generously sprinkled with corn meal on the bottom. The crust itself wasn’t particularly rigid and crispy, nor was it soft and undercooked. It had a bite to it, but also some flop. Not super doughy or bready, either. Definitely a couple of different textures, with a ver light crunch on the outside, and a more pliable and even wet dough in the inside where it hits the sauce. The sauce I remember being straightforward, but spiked with oregano. I don’t remember pepperoni, but only chunks of sausage or plain cheese (hey, it’s Chicago, . We’re not really a pepperoni town. You’ll find it, of course, but Chicago’s favored pizza meat is chunks of bulk Italian sausage. Not the sliced kind you get out East.).
I don’t have many other memories of it, other than the closest I remember tasting that pizza again was a Sicilian slice somewhere out in Boston.
I have a cousin that actually thinks those disgusting barf filled crap logs that was known TACO SNACKS are the greatest thing ever and has wished they still made them
im told that “Cuban pizza” tastes like school pizza
although I don’t think they do it anymore but around here the student body voted in pizza huts in lot of the hs ….
I’m pretty sure public school rectangle pizza was gub’mint issued and fairly ubiquitous. I’ve also heard there is great yearning for old school government cheese.
Have you looked in Wal-Mart?
https://www.walmart.com/ip/Great-Value-Cheese-Pizza-Deep-Dish-Mini-22-4-oz-4-Count/47314791
To my recollection,this is what it looked like, exactly.
I was in a parochial school, so I don’t know if we got our pizza from the same suppliers as public schools. Our lunch came in two separate compartments, both of the same size: about maybe somewhere around 5"x8". The hot part of the lunch was in a foil tray of that size, the cold part (usually a fruit cup and something else, I’m forgetting what, in a a plastic tray. I remember pudding, jello, and things of that nature, but maybe we got that in lieu of the fruit cup.) The hot part was sealed with aluminum foil on the top; the cold part had plastic wrap (think of a Lunchables type of tray.) I don’t know if this was what was universal in public schools, too. And we had the choice of chocolate or white milk to go with it. As I remember, every single hot lunch student in my class except one got the chocolate milk (and the one who didn’t, didn’t because he had a chocolate allergy.) Good times. I remember enjoying all the hot lunches, from the tacos to the salisbury steaks to the fish and peas to the pizzas to the corn dogs.
I’ll second Ellios. Most Supermarkets also have a store brand that is sold in precut square pizzas just like the Lunch Lady used to make.
You want Elio’s Pizza.
I remember my mom complaining how bad my breath smelled every day the school served that vile stuff.
Hurt my widdle feewings, it did.
I agree that you can find something very similar in the freezer aisle at your local grocery store. Look for cheap single-serving frozen pizzas like Elios, Red Baron, probably Totinos…nothing self-rising, nothing round, nothing deep dish.
I remember some years ago when I was eating on a budget there was some kind of extremely cheap frozen food brand with offerings for $1. It was in a light blue box. Their pizza was exactly like school pizza. I’ll be damned if I can recall, now.
When I was a college student, home for the summer, and still had a crazy-fast teenager metabolism (which meant that I ate like a horse), my mom would buy these super-cheap frozen pizzas. I think that the brand name was Fox or Fox’s – I remember the box being blue, and that they were really pretty pathetic excuses for pizzas (though that didn’t stop me from eating them!)
On edit: I see that there’s something still out there called Fox DeLuxe, which isn’t a blue box, but may be the same brand. They’re still super cheap ($0.79 from a grocery distributor).
Come to think of it…if you look for pizza in the “frozen dinners” section as opposed to the “frozen pizza” section, you’ll find what you’re looking for. Terrible pizza made by companies that make frozen stuff, not necessarily pizza.
The one and only review of this product reads thusly: