boudreaulicious wrote:My college-age stepson LOVES Jacks pepperoni. Best thing I can say for it is that it’s very thin and plastic wrapped so I can fit a bunch of them in the freezer w/o taking up much real estate.

Back in college I wasn't especially discriminating (pre-"foodie" era, NOBODY was that discriminating). I'm pretty sure I went through a 6-month period eating a Tombstone pizza every day (back when I could do that and not gain an ounce).

Eastside Pizza Cafe out of Warrenville makes the best frozen pizza I have had, bar none. I read about them in a Tribune article a few months back when Old Town Ale House determined if they were able to serve frozen pizza, the COVID-19 restrictions/laws (at least at that time) would allow them to re-open. The selected Eastside Pizza Cafe as their supplier.

It is really, really good. High quality ingredients, lots of different toppings included a couple white pizzas, and everything crisps up super well in the oven with no special steps or hitting it with a broiler before serving. So far, the only problem is that they are $9 each at Whole Foods. I've read online that they might also be sold at Woodmans and/or Sunset, but I haven't confirmed it either way. I also called Eastside directly hoping they might have a factory store or something where the pizzas are more reasonably priced...but no reply from them yet.

Next time I am in the vicinity of Warrenville, I'm definitely going to scout it out and see for myself.

For now, I've loaded up from when Whole Foods had all frozen pizzas 50% off a couple weeks ago...that'll hold me for a bit!

[quote="DClose"]Eastside Pizza Cafe out of Warrenville makes the best frozen pizza I have had, bar none. I read about them in a Tribune article a few months back when Old Town Ale House determined if they were able to serve frozen pizza, the COVID-19 restrictions/laws (at least at that time) would allow them to re-open. The selected Eastside Pizza Cafe as their supplier.

It is really, really good. High quality ingredients, lots of different toppings included a couple white pizzas, and everything crisps up super well in the oven with no special steps or hitting it with a broiler before serving. So far, the only problem is that they are $9 each at Whole Foods.[/quote]

Eastside Pizza's are good. But better is Bill's Pizza and Pub in Mundelein. The frozen ones are only available at the store and a couple of Whole Foods and Sunset markets. They are $14+ at Whole Foods. My wife and son love the double crust cheese.

PizzaHolic67 wrote:Memory is everything....sometimes things aren't as good as we remember.
I made Appian Way a few years ago (not frozen, I know) , but it was horrible. Then I got Kraft Pizza Set from Canada, and it was EXACTLY as I remembered(when it was available in the US in the 70's).

My Mother and her brother made Appian Way pizza at home during the 1950s. It was so prized, there would be bitter fights to make sure they each received the same amount of pizza.

Back in the late 1960s, my Mom bought Appian Way pizza to revisit her memories. I recall the kit consisted of a flour mixture to make the dough, pizza sauce and cheese to sprinkle on. I don't recall it being very good.

My Mom can really sell the idea of these highly prized memories of Appian Way Pizza. Apparently these memories were shared with someone at Culinary Historians, who brought a kit to a meeting. I took it home waiting for the day to make Appian Way Pizza.

Today was the day, when I spied it in the pantry taking up space it did not deserve. I made this pizza with more care than it deserved. I added water to the flour mixture, stirred until it came together, then carefully pressed it into a thin layer of a 12-inch pizza pan. Instead of applying sauce to the dough, I laid out half the pepperoni, slivered peppers and onions. I spread out the mozzarella (there was no cheese in the kit), then laid out the other half of pepperoni, slivered peppers and onions. I then carefully dropped little blobs of pizza sauce all over the surface. My assembly was influenced by Detroit style pizzas.

This baked for 20 minutes in a 450 degree oven, though in retrospect it should have come out earlier. The pizza was brown around the edges and bubbly throughout, it looked far better than it tasted.

This may be first time a crisp pizza may have been too crisp. Mom took a few bites, then pushed her plate away. She then began examining the box wondering out loud how old could this mix be. My Dad finished her portion, then he and I split the last piece.

Lunch was rescued by a large salad, otherwise it was a dud.

I think we have reached the point where there is no more need to buy any more Appian Way Pizza to refresh our memories. I can just read this account back to my Mom instead.

Regards,
Cathy2

Edwardo's has a pretty good frozen pizza. Butera has been putting them on sale as of late for 2 for $8.88. The size varies from 24oz to 31oz depending on cheese, cheese/sausage, cheese/sausage/pepperoni. Home run inn's thin crust in the same sizes/price has also been offered.

Had our first Home Run Inn pizza the other week and thought it was very good.

I might be late to the game but I stopped at Tony's the other day to re-up my supply of the excellent de la Viuda hot sauce and saw, for the first time, frozen Massa pizza. Great curb appeal with nice slices of fresh mozzarella, cherry tomato and basil visible through the plastic wrap. Cooked up nicely, decent crunch to crust and nice ratio of toppings/crust. Wanted it to be better but overall it was pretty good.

https://www.massapizzaco.com/products

My wife and I have become big fans of the Motor City Pizza Co. Detroit-style pizzas you can get at Costco. The dough is actually fluffy and the bottom gets crisp.

For a while I'd been a fan of the Gino's East deep dish: cheap, and a reasonable approximation of the restaurant pie. But they've gone downhill. They no longer offer the sausage slab, only crumbled; cheese-only has been hard to find, and the flavors just aren't good: the crust tastes pasty, the cheese and sausage bland. It's almost like they've been buying stuff from the packaged Uno's supplier.

The Detroit style pizza at Costco is pretty good.

Speaking of...(I haven't had the Motor City frozen pizza yet)
https://www.eatthis.com/news-people-losing-it-over-costco-frozen-pizza/

I dont get the hype. They (Costco's Motor City pizzas (for those who can't look to the previous post for the reference)) are decent, in a stouffers french bread pizza kind of way, but they (Costco's Motor City pizzas) dont get nearly to the level of legit Detroit style. Maybe if you got a slightly smaller pan so that the pizza touched the edges and oiled it up and added extra cheese to the edges it might be better. I have only had the cheese. If you want a bready Sicilian style, they (Costco's Motor City Pizzas) are probably at least as good as any other frozen product, but my family is unanimous that it is too much bread and would prefer a good old home run inn (which is clearly a different kind of pizza).

-Will

WillG wrote:I dont get the hype. They are decent

May I make a suggestion. When there are multiple pizzas, restaurants, emus etc in a thread instead of They name the place, item or thing.

I make a concerted effort to do this very thing, sometimes I miss, but am acutely aware of the Mystery of the They.

My 2 pennies

WillG wrote:I dont get the hype. They (Costco's Motor City pizzas (for those who can't look to the previous post for the reference)) are decent, in a stouffers french bread pizza kind of way, but they (Costco's Motor City pizzas) dont get nearly to the level of legit Detroit style.
-Will

Thank you for the review. I was eyeballin those things remembering the hype I'd heard. I passed them up, but made a mental note to do more research.

seebee wrote:

WillG wrote:I dont get the hype. They (Costco's Motor City pizzas (for those who can't look to the previous post for the reference)) are decent, in a stouffers french bread pizza kind of way, but they (Costco's Motor City pizzas) dont get nearly to the level of legit Detroit style.
-Will

Thank you for the review. I was eyeballin those things remembering the hype I'd heard. I passed them up, but made a mental note to do more research.

Thanks for the clarification, Will. A few products had been discussed recently and I also was not sure which one you were referring to.

I think with frozen pizza, people often assess it through the lens of their low expectations, rather than by comparison to delivered or other forms of fresh. That's why people sometimes appear to be overly enthusiastic about it. "Hey, this doesn't suck as much as I expected it would" morphs into "wow, this was really good."

=R=

WillG wrote:They (Costco's Motor City pizzas (for those who can't look to the previous post for the reference))-Will

My post was not directed to Will specifically. I apologize to Will If my simple suggestion caused him angst anxiety or if he felt ill will.

In these trying times of crime pestilence politics restaurant closures and ultra high AVB beer I’d hate to be the straw that contributes to someone’s back pain.

ronnie_suburban wrote:I think with frozen pizza, people often assess it through the lens of their low expectations, rather than by comparison to delivered or other forms of fresh. That's why people sometimes appear to be overly enthusiastic about it. "Hey, this doesn't suck as much as I expected it would" morphs into "wow, this was really good."

=R=

My assessment has morphed into:

1. For the price, will it be better or worse than a Little Ceasar's 5.00 pile of trash?
2. For the price, how much worse will it be than a few dollars more for a frozen Classic Crust HRI?

My sweet spot is somewhere around the frozen Jewel "Signature Select" Self Rising Spicy Italian Snausage for $2.99 or less. IMO - it's just as good as a Little Ceasar's, but if a reg HRI is 6.99, I'll go the cheaper route, for no real reason other than I'm a cheap bastage.

Now that I am emotionally stabilized after Gary's vicious assault, I should clarify that I am not saying that the Motor City pizza is bad, it is actually quite good for frozen pizza, particularly for the price. I just dont get all the internet people getting the vapors over it. It is decent but not sponge worthy, though obviously others disagree, and everyone should probably try it for themselves.

-Will

WillG wrote:Now that I am emotionally stabilized after Gary's vicious assault

Sigh. I feel like a jerk. How about I send you a box of Thin Mints and a bottle of Barefoot Moscato to soften my guilt.

seebee wrote: My assessment has morphed into:
1. For the price, will it be better or worse than a Little Caesar's 5.00 pile of trash?
2. For the price, how much worse will it be than a few dollars more for a frozen Classic Crust HRI?
My sweet spot is somewhere around the frozen Jewel "Signature Select" Self Rising Spicy Italian Sausage for $2.99 or less. IMO - it's just as good as a Little Caesar's, but if a reg HRI is 6.99, I'll go the cheaper route, for no real reason other than I'm a cheap bastage.

But now, I am being assailed by this description of Little Cæsars {misspelling corrected}.
As far as national pizza chains go, Little Cæsars is yards ahead of others, including P@p@ Johns (deliberately recoded so it doesn't appear in search results), whose politics I loathe and thus will never again have, even were you to offer me a 'free' slice.
I am not just scribing this because - when I was running the indoor soccer team, I had very good relations with Stu Meyer, the acting Gen. Mgr. of the Detroit ROCKERS (where a handful of our best players, including Pato Margetic, wound up when we could no longer afford them), who reported directly to Mike Ilitch. If we had gotten ownership of the franchise, Little Cæsars was on the list of potential sponsors.
The Little Cæsars shop at 4810 W. Diversey was opened about the time I took delivery of the 1987 Chevrolet Sprint. It is still there.
Complain about corporate pizza as much as you want (and obviously, I have taken a direct shot at another), but I will not tolerate the description of Little Cæsars pizza as "a pile of trash". An image which will not be posted here would reveal a three-meat treat pizza bought there within the past six days.

Pudgym29, you are absolutely right, Little Seezers is yards ahead of the national chains I've tried, except for maybe Jet's, but I've only had Jet's once. I can't say I have had anything from Pizza Hut in 20 years to compare to Littul Squeezers, but I'll take your (or anyone else's word) for it, in order to save myself the trouble of comparing. Papa John's and Domino's, I've had each once well within the past 10 years, Domino's most recently in August of 2018 in Long Island, NY (don't ask, very late night after a concert in an area that had NOTHING open for delivery,) and I wholeheartedly concur that Littel Seizures is superior for the price. So, my calling it a "5.00 pile of trash" needs to be qualified much better, in that it's a 5.00 pile of trash that's better than a 9.00 complete piece of poop from one of the other joints. I have a Littal Sneezers within walking distance of my front door, and I probably grab one of their piles of trash once every few months. I'm truly not a hater, and I honestly appreciate their product, and give credit to the little niche they've very successfully carved out. They truly are yards ahead.

On a whim, I bought a Motor City Pizza Co. 5 Cheese Bread Stix product in pizza form. My kids and I were very pleasantly surprised by how good we thought it was. This led to a purchase of their actual pizza. No one liked that. Something about the meats used. They didn't taste like real meat.
But the Bread Stix was worthwhile. FWIW

I was at Woodman's this past Saturday and I noticed they have a curry pizza (Curry n Crust) which I have never seen as a Frozen Pizza choice sold at an American grocery chain.

https://www.facebook.com/CurrynCrust/

Whole Foods has 50% off all of their frozen pizza through 11/2 for Prime members. The only thing I saw at the Green Bay Evanston store that was really picked over was the 365 pizza. Is the 365 pizza any good?

Tried the Table 87 Margherita Coal Oven slice from WF. Pricey at $4.99, a little more palatable at half off. Surprisingly good for a NY style slice. Crust had nice chew, ratio of sauce/cheese was just right and had great flavor. Solid 8.5/10.



The Amnon's slices at Costco (16 slices for about $18) are a better deal, and the crust has good flavor, but the cheese/sauce is just okay in taste and proportion. 6/10

About 13,000 pounds of frozen pizza made by Home Run Inn Frozen Foods is being recalled because of potential metal contamination.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/08/15/business ... index.html

Is Palermo's going down for the count? Mariano's had them on "close out" and now they're gone. Our Jewel is also pretty wiped and down to one or two varieties. With a few extra toppings their Primo Thin were our frozen pizza of choice. The stores we've tried still show on their web site.

Connie's Frozen Pizza-

Am I totally wrong here? I could have SWORN that Connies frozen used to be very similar style to Home Run Inn - thicker, denser, crust with a good amount of salty flavor. I bought a regular Connie's frozen sausage recently, and it was a standard issue, thin, crackery run of the mill frozen pizza. I kinda thought HRI, Reggio's and Connie's had the same kinda thing going on.

polster wrote:I was at Woodman's this past Saturday and I noticed they have a curry pizza (Curry n Crust) which I have never seen as a Frozen Pizza choice sold at an American grocery chain.

https://www.facebook.com/CurrynCrust/

I'm sort of late to the game on Woodman's, I've only stopped in to the one in Kenosha and even then just to pick up a few things. I recently had a little more time to kill and went to their frozen pizza section which is monstrous - easily the biggest selection I've ever encountered in one location. They had Eastside Cafe for a good price and also Pep's, which I was anxious to try because it was the follow-up company for the guy who started Tombstone. It was just "fine" but not great. I've been chasing the dragon for a sauce with fennel, just like the old pre-Kraft Tombstone, but no luck.

Had some Kirkland frozen pizza today and enjoyed it.