I’ve long heard that the Asian franchises of Big Box pizza companies have really bonkers pies and I had my chance to find out first hand when I was in Thailand a couple weeks ago. I got my first taste at The Pizza Company, which is based in that country. I’d been seeing posters and billboards all around town for them and lots of adverts for this funky flower-shaped pink-crusted pizza. As it turns out, this is a Lunar New Year special featuring some sort of beet root dusting. Sounds like an adventure!
Earlier that day I met a lovely couple from Canada, Marcus and Morgan. They were on their honeymoon and for some reason decided it might be fun to join me on a pizza adventure. GOOD! I needed people to eat all this so I wouldn’t have to feel guilty. We took a nice stroll to the nearest location of The Pizza Company and placed our order. The funky crust is an option for any of the menu pies so we opted for the most popular in Thailand, the Hawaiian pizza! Ham and pineapple are SUPER controversial in New York so this seemed like the most “vacation” pie I would get.
The pizza came with a cute little condiment packet containing chili powder, oregano, napkins, and some ketchup packets. So weird, but apparently people in Thailand like a little ketchup drizzle on their pizza. I saw similar packets at other pizzerias. Looks like drugs.
The pizza itself wasn’t too bad. Maybe we were just hungry but we ate the whole thing. The crust is stuffed with pork so that’s something special It made the edge really soft and pillowy. It wasn’t necessarily pleasant but it wasn’t totally gross. I say that even though looking at the picture below makes me feel a little sick. Trust me, it tasted good at the time.
After The Pizza Company, I convinced M&M to join me for yet another bizarre chain pizza. I knew there was a Pizza Hut location down the street so we headed there to try a pizza I’d heard about online. That’s right, it’s the pizza with tiny cocktail wieners as the crust! SO STRANGE we had to have it!
The pie came out looking more or less like it does in the ad. The hotdogs are on a little angle, which I wasn’t expecting. They’re sort of disconnected from the rest of the pizza but attached only at the very end. It’s hard to eat the pizza the way I normally would have, starting with the point of the slice then moving toward the edge. Instead, it feels more natural to rip off a couple hotdogs and eat them first.
This pizza wasn’t good. It just tasted salty and gross. It wasn’t even good as a novelty. The hotdogs in the crust had no flavor and the guts of the pizza were just disconnected. I’m really glad we did it, but it was really just for the extreme nature of the product. I remember hearing about this years ago and was actually quite shocked to find out that they’re still in production. People must like it! However, Morgan, Marcus, and I are not in that group.
