Forget Pizza Hut!! (Chicago Town Deep Dish Pizza)

Member Name: hypno06

Product:	Chicago Town Deep Dish Pizza
Date:	06/08/09 (92 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: An excellent, cheap, tasty pizza!

Disadvantages: Calorie laden - but who cares!

Once a week, or thereabouts, we have a pizza on our menu plan. With such an active family, we often have to get different people to different locations for varying activities.......but all at the same time, and none of those activities taking into account the fact that I can never seem to get away from work on time!

So, when we expect one of those days, pizza is usually the perfect dinner - quick and easy to cook, filling, and it doesn't matter whether it is eaten between school and sport, or later in the evening when we finally collapse on the sofa!

I don't have any particular pizza loyalty - there are usually offers on differing brands at the supermarket, so I just tend to pick whichever has the best multibuy offer each week. If no one has an offer, we go for the Tesco Value 99p for a big cheese and tomato pizza.

This week, I was drawn towards the Chicago Town stuffed crust pizza....before I wondered whether it would actually fit in our holiday villa's oven.....so instead, I came away with individual sized Deep Dish Pepperoni Pizzas.

These looked to be good value - £1.39 each for a 9 inch pizza. And as they just needed cooking for 20 minutes or so on gas mark 5/190 degrees centigrade, it was a nice easy dinner. I bought one pizza for each of us.

No baking tray is needed, so these pizzas cause the minimum of hassle to cook - no looking for a suitable tray to put them on, just put them straight onto the oven shelf.

For the next twenty minutes or so, you will smell the pizza cooking - we chose pepperoni pizzas and you could definitely smell the spiciness of the pepperoni as the time went by - we were more than ready for our dinner by the time it was cooked as the smell had only served to make us more hungry!

Three delicious pizzas were therefore served up to three hungry people - and boy did they look good. I am not a pizza connoisour but I would certainly say that these are every bit as good looking as anything you would order from Pizza places such as Dominoes or Pizza Hut. They are deep filled, with the crust "hugging" the pizza around the side, and keeping the substantial topping in. The topping was plentiful, with a good layer of sweet tomato sauce, with a thick layer of stringy melted cheese, followed by a very good amount of pepperoni - two types of pepperoni are used, one slightly stronger than the other.

You really do get a very good amount of topping on these pizzas, and they cannot be faulted for that in any way whatsoever.

Onto the taste, then - you are advised to leave these for a minute or so, before eating, to avoid burning your mouth, as the topping does get very hot. I would agree with that, having had more blisters on the roof of my mouth as a result of being too impatient with pizza-eating, than from any other type of food! So, take a moment before you tuck in.

My moment of waiting passed, and the first thing that you realise is that the pizza base and topping are so thick you can only cut smallish bits, otherwise they won't fit in your mouth - this pizza is going to last a whole lot longer than I originally thought!

The taste is excellent - the base is light - crispy on the outside, but still fluffy inside. The sweetness of the tomato sauce complemented the tangy spiciness of the pepperoni perfectly. The pepperoni itself was not particularly strong - flavourful, rather than hot and spicy, so if you are looking for something that will blow your head off, then this is not it - but if you want something that is tasty and yummy, this will fit the bill nicely!

I cannot fault it on the taste - and would certainly buy it again.

My only problem, and it isn't really a problem, was that I couldn't finish my pizza! By the time I was half way through, I was struggling - this is a deceptive pizza, and really is more substantial than I had expected.

This is good news though - because my £1.39 pizza in future, will feed more than I had expected - add a bit of salad, and you can serve up half a pizza and some salad and have a really good meal. Add chips and salad, and you can easily serve up a quarter of a pizza to each person - it really is that filling - and you have a very good value meal. £1.39 for a pizza of takeaway quality........that could serve 4 people as part of a main meal......that is good value if you ask me.

So, I will definitely be looking out for these in my local supermarket in the future. They also do a margharita (plain cheese and tomato) version, which I will also be happy to try.

These are available from the freezer section of your supermarket - why not keep a couple in reserve for when the kids bring their mates home?

Calorie laden - a quarter of a pizza contains 307 calories - pizza is never going to be on the "top ten diet foods" list, but everything in moderation and all that.

The pizza contains no artificial flavours, colours, and no hydrogenated fats.

Further information can be found at www.chicagotown.com.

Summary: Full of taste from brim to base!