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A part of the now defunct Tricon Restauraunt portfolio (now a part of YUM! brands), Pizza Hut pales in comparison amongst its close relatives KFC, Taco Bell and Long John Silvers.

My close friends know that I am a huge fan of Taco Bell. KFC is another form of fast food that I find irresistable — after all, the Colonel was onto something when he figured out how to combine those eleven herbs and spices. And, although I’ve never been a huge fan of seafood, I’ve heard good things about Long John Silvers. Pizza Hut, however, always seemed distant to me. As a child, there was always both a Domino’s and a Pizza Hut in town, but since Pizza Hut didn’t deliver, we rarely ordered from them. In fact, the Pizza Hut in my town had a peculiar drive thru pickup system, in which you would get a number, which would be illuminated on a giant matrix of light-up numbers when your order was ready for pickup at the drive thru window. Overall, it was an ugly device with a uselessly large array of numbers on it, and I remember it to this day.

The other thing that I remember about Pizza Hut was a peculiar experience that I had there as a child, that in a way, suggested to me that Pizza Hut was a safe and happy place — a bastion of dedicated pizza places to be admired the world over. The story goes something as follows: I was a toddler, no older than six or seven years of age. My father took me to the local Pizza Hut, where just him and I were going to eat in. We waited an exorbitantly long time for service, so long that my father began to get upset. When a waitress came by, he pulled her aside and asked if someone could serve us. She politely told us that she’d find someone to help us, and then wandered off to do her job again. After waiting again for a substantial amount of time, we still had not even placed our order yet. This entire process took literally over a half hour, and then after finally obtaining service and placing our order, it seemed that they had forgotten about us entirely. At this point, you may be wondering why this was such a positive experience for me. As it turned out, some kind of regional manager was present in the store that day — not in his normal capacity, but actually as some type of secret shopper. When he saw this entire ordeal taking place, he couldn’t help but wonder if he could make the situation right. He stepped in, and offered us copious amounts of free pizza from Pizza Hut as a way of apologizing for the inconvenience. As a child, I was incredibly happy to hear that we had essentially ‘won’ a bunch of free pizza, and boy was I excited.

Of course, aside from eating out at Pizza Hut with little league teams or other isolated instances, I was rarely a customer. Occasionally, Pizza Hut advertising would catch my eye and draw me in. I can say for a fact that before the other day, the last time I ate Pizza Hut was when they still offered the “P’Zone” (the pizza-calzone hybrid). Again, some advertising had caught my eye — Pizza Hut was offering a “buy one, get additional pizzas for $5 each” deal according to the commercial. The next day, I found myself craving the cool sauce that Pizza Hut lathers their pizza in. It was the Sunday after the heavy snows that we received, and we cautiously headed to North Troy to set our stomachs to sail on a sea of pizza.

When we arrived, all hell broke loose. We found out that the deal we had seen advertised had expired the day prior. This immediately should have triggered warning flags in our minds. After the long drive though, we just decided to order from them anyway. As huge fans of Buffalo Chicken pizza, we all opted for that particular style — at a cost of approximately $17 and change. Upon asking how much pizza that $17 bought us, we were told it would cover a 12-cut pie. A twelve cut pie, mind you.

Geneva studies the pathetic excuse for pizza with a look of sheer disgust and nausea.

We were shocked to find out that not only was the ‘buffalo chicken’ pizza nothing more than sparsely added cuts of chicken breast added to a plain pizza, but that the ‘twelve cuts’ were so lean that they could not even satisfy the appetite of a small child.

We were able, amongst the three of us, to consume the entire pie in a few minutes without a problem. This, however, was the problem. When one is already lured in with the deceptive advertising practice of running a commercial in an evening timeslot mere hours before a promotion ends (with no end date specified in any obvious fashion), it’s clear that they should simply walk away from the deal altogether and find something better. This pizza would have been worth $5, perhaps, but certainly not $17. At $5 a pie, I would even have bought more so that I could eat all week. This makes sense to me economically because I like pizza.

Jay, an environmental engineering student was amongst those to eat the pizza in question. “When you eat a slice of pizza, shouldn’t it be bigger than your dick?,” he asked.

I have, however, eaten enough pizza to know that the size of these slices is abysmally small. The pie itself measured only slightly over 12″ in diameter, barely filling its box. As someone that has lived all their life in New York, I can tell you that 12″ is not an appropriate size for a ‘large’ pizza. Even Domino’s, who I disliked because of their own stingy sizing, offers 12″ pizzas as medium-sized. Also, as an Italian, I was insulted to see pizza being exploited in such a fasion. Real New York pizza would never be served like this at any respectable place. Pizza Hut should be ashamed of themselves.

I for one will steer clear of Pizza Hut in the future because of this. I now would much rather support a local pizzeria than return to them. I was so turned off by this experience, that I had to write about it and share it with anyone that is interested.

For those that are inclined to see specific dimensions of a single slice of the ’12 cut’ pie, read on.

Tracing the pizza on the graph paper we can obtain a specific height of somewhere around 3″ if we estimate liberally to make the math easy. Using basic math we know that the area of this triangle can be represented by the equation:

A = 1/2*b*h = 1/2 * 6 in. * 3 in. = 9 sq. in.

Try to remember the last time you purchased a slice of pizza that was this small. I challenge readers to find a deal worse than this.

CONCLUSION: Avoid Pizza Hut and their preposterous premium pizza prices.