Over 30 years I’ve been a loyal Dominos customer, always ordering the same pizza.
The last one I got was okay, but arrived luke warm. Disappointing but, y’know, once in a while things ain’t quite right, I can handle it.
Friday we ordered our standard order and it was truly awful. It was hot, but that’s the only good thing I can say about it.
The tomato sauce was different. It was bitter and nasty, and there was too much of it, so you’d sometimes get a whole mouthful, yuck!
We always order and pay for ‘extra cheese’, AND know what that should look like through years of purchasing the exact same pizza! The pizza we got had too little cheese for a pizza ordered even WITHOUT extra cheese!
The dough was not nice either, it was doughy, or undercooked, or something. Def different from the usual and def unpleasant!
The combined effect of not enough cheese, too much nasty flavoured tomato sauce all on disgusting undercooked dough made for a truly awful pizza experience.
I didn’t bother to complain since it was just so wrong, in every single way, it’s hard to believe it was a one off. Plus you could tell from just looking at it there was way too much sauce and very little cheese. So whoever made it thought it was acceptable even though it even looked really awful. And they didn’t care.
With that, I am 100% done with Domino’s. When you lose a loyal customer of 30 years you have really screwed up, in my opinion!
I don’t order from Domino’s, but I notice they are running commercials featuring how they are refurbishing their stores. My reaction was, “Since you guys are mostly known for delivery, who cares?”
I maintain that pizza chains are not good or bad, individual locations are. In some places Dominos is the “good pizza chain”, in some places Pizza Hut is, and I suppose, in principle, there could be places Papa John’s is (although I have never been to any of those places ).
Little Caesars is okay, but their Crazy Bread is still to die for. And their former owner was an extremely nice guy. Like the exact opposite of Papa John, whose main concerns seemed to be finding his father’s old Camaro and whining about the ACA.
Leaffan, what do you think of Boston Pizza? I quite like it because they don’t scrimp and their crust bears no resemblance to their pizza box. Their locations include Pembroke and Kanata.
I’m lucky to live in a big city. I just opened my food delivery app. There are 253 open restaurants that will deliver to my location, and 48 of them feature pizza.
Not a chain place in the bunch.
I have my favorite, they make a classic cheesy saucy NY style pizza but with a paper thin crust. It’s awesome.
Although I confess that every now and then I miss Pizza Hut - nostalgia mostly - but there’s not one in delivery range.
My only experience with Boston Pizza is seeing the name on the boards of a hockey rink on TV, and I live in Boston. Where did they start, and why that name?
Disagree. Papa John’s is by far the worst. Not even a question. Domino’s used to be the worst of the bunch, but they got edible when they changed the crust a few years ago. Papa John’s is still as awful as it ever was.
My experience is people are broadly divided into two categories:
Food snobs who insist they only eat things that very particularly adhere to their tastes
Gluttons like me who will eat 2 day old domino’s that fell on the floor and wasn’t picked up for 2 hours.
That being said, despite my ability to happily eat basically anything, if I’m “ranking taste”, I’ve found plenty of long-standing, staple “Mom & Pop” joints that have been in business for decades and make forgettable, sometimes very bad pizza and have usually worse service to go along with it than a typical chain.
The thing about pizza is all the Type 1 people in the world tend to be really picky about pizza. Crust isn’t just how they like, too salty, not salty enough, sauce isn’t the right point on the spectrum of sugary to savory, the cheese isn’t the right cheese for pizza, the cheese is used too liberally or not liberally enough, x topping isn’t how they like it and etc. So when they find the one random Mom & Pop that emulates their little snowflake tastes, it’s suddenly The Best Pizza Ever (TM.)
I have a coworker like this who I’ll occasionally mention “Hey I went to x” for lunch, sometimes a pizza place, sometimes a local sandwich shop, sometimes a new Greek place that opened. He invariably will respond “had it, yeah they suck because x [pedantic minor complaint]”, and then suggest another local place that he judges perfect. I’ve tried his recommendations before, he’s certainly pickier than me, but his selections to me, have never been “best in class.” Which goes to my broader point–a local Mom & Pop just needs the right price to keep enough of the Gluttons like me coming in, and enough of the snowflakes who believe their recipe is the “One Recipe True and Godly” to remain open. But this is no guarantee of actual quality or even good behavior. A lot of Mom & Pop places are ran absolutely atrociously.
Yeah, when I managed one we used to keep a tin on hand. Typically, we’d open it to make an order and wind up throwing the rest away, as they’d go bad before the next request. When we stopped carrying them, the indignant calls were hilarious:
“How dare you! I ordered anchovies all the time!”
“If that were true, you’d know we stopped selling them two years ago!”
Thing is, they’re actually pretty good on a pizza. I think most people have never even tried them - I never had before I worked there.
Since it has become a debate of sorts I will agree that Papa Johns is worse than Dominos. As a kid Pizza Hut was my favorite but as an adult it is too greasy. I may have had Little Caesars only twice in my life (although I did meet the owner very briefly in the 90s) so I can’t rank that one.
Maybe that’s why there is always a special deal going on with Domino’s because people don;t buy it that much. I do know their selection of beverages is not something I would drink
Treveling was a Mountie living in the Edmonton Alberta neighbourhood who purchased a franchise in Penticton British Columbia, where he met accountant George Melville. They purchased the whole sheboo and took it big.
Seems like a weird thing to ding them on since Coke products are at 85% of restaurants (13% selling Pepsi products, 2% are places God has turned his back on and are forced to sell Royal Crown).
The worst pizza I ever had came from a mom & pop in Charleston, IL (Eastern Illinois University) that I can’t remember the name of. But the crust was like a Saltine smeared with ketchup, oily burnt cheese and cheap tasting toppings. I guess having a college community kept them in business despite the terrible quality even with 3-4 other competing pizza places.
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