Pizza Hut Review

I have a guilty pleasure. I don't feel all that bad about it, because I think we all have guilty pleasures. This one happens to be found at Pizza Hut. Every so often, nothing sounds better than a medium pepperoni pizza with pan crust. The closest location to my home is just down the street, but I always have them deliver anyway, for two reasons:

• This location offers Internet ordering, minimizing personal contact with undesirables who might be working that night.
  
• The street in question is University Parkway in Orem, UT, where my wife and I see an accident occur almost every day.

In nearly two years of having pizza delivered to this location, I think I can accurately list things that Pizza Hut does well, and things that "need improvement".

Things That Pizza Hut Does Well

• Medium pepperoni pizza with pan crust

Things at Pizza Hut that "Need Improvement"

• Pizza with any toppings other than pepperoni
• Pizza that is not "medium size"
• Pizza with crust other than pan crust
• Anything that involves the word "buffalo"
• Anything that involves blue cheese
• Drink selection
• Ability to delivery order within quoted estimated time
  
• Ability to bring entire order on first delivery
  
• Ability to follow delivery instructions

Every order that I have made with Pizza Hut in recent years has been experimental. I don't even bother ordering any pizza other than the aforementioned medium pan pepperoni, nor do I bother with sides. Pizza Hut and their kind have introduced a variety of disastrous offerings to their menu over the years, and I have given up hoping that any of them will ever result in anything that remotely resembles success.

Tonight's adventure involved my first successful attempt to sample their blue cheese dressing. In past orders, I erroneously believed that menu descriptors such as "boneless buffalo chicken with blue cheese" meant that blue cheese would be included as a dipping sauce. Tonight I ordered something labelled "blue cheese dipping sauce", hoping that it would be true to its name.

The delivery man showed up on time, an event that has also never before occurred. Our delivery instructions state "back door only", and past deliveries involved the delivery man knocking on the sliding door in the back of the house, rather than the back door. I didn't give this guy the chance, because my wife thought she heard knocking on the door, and when I went to investigate, he was just pulling up.

He was friendly and eager to please, also a rarity. Most of their drivers make me wonder whether old mushrooms are kept around the pizza kitchen for snacking, if you know what I mean. He handed me my pizza, had me sign the receipt, and was about to head back to his car when I asked about the dipping sauce. He told me that hey hadn't said anything about dipping sauce, but that it was probably in the pizza boxes. He even stuck around to make sure, and when it wasn't there, he promptly handed me a cash refund for the sauce (okay, it was a whole dollar), told me he would be right back with the dipping sauce, and took off without even waiting for the tip that I would have given him anyway.

Twenty minutes later, he showed back up, handed me the dipping sauce, and turned to leave without waiting for payment for it or a tip. I had already decided that if he did show up with the sauce that I would tip him well, because it was obviously not his fault that the sauce had been forgotten, so I called him back and handed him his tip. He asked if I needed change (for a tip?), and I told him no.

The blue cheese dipping sauce was atrocious. The pepperoni pizza was as good as ever. The sauce isn't really anything special, but it's not bad either. The cheese certainly isn't anything to write home about. But the crust is excellent, and I have always loved the way the pepperoni comes out on their medium pizzas.

It turns out Pizza Hut can do one thing really well, and occassionally they hire good people as well. Because of this, I do have some faith that one day they can get their act together on everything else. Let's just hope it happens sooner than later.