What's Better, Bad Pizza or No Pizza At All?

As you can see, the X-axis (the horizontal one, for those of you who don’t remember your high school maths) represents the amount of the pizza that I consumed. The Y-axis, “Level of Enjoyment,” is a bit more subjective. Let’s say that 10 represents total dining nirvana, 0 represents accidentally touching your tongue after changing a dirty diaper, and 5 represents the point at which you start thinking to yourself, “there has got to be something else to eat around here.”

Kashi's Sicilian Veggie pizza ($6.99, Whole Foods) started off with some promise. Not the best frozen pizza I’ve ever tasted (CPK’s five cheese and tomato, in the pre-vegan days), and not even the best frozen vegan pizza (Amy’s roasted vegetable), but a solid contender. It looked more or less exactly like the photo on the box, cooked evenly all the way through, and had a pleasant aroma. Solid crust – crispy on the outside and chewy in the middle. I’m not a huge fan of eggplant, the key topping here, so the initial bite didn’t rank so high, but otherwise I anticipated a solid pizza experience.

After that first bite, though, a funny thing happened. Each successive bite got less and less enjoyable. As shown above, by the time I was 1/3 of the way through it I was past the point of considering my other options and sinking fast. I started taking off the toppings, which improved things a bit (note the slight upwards trend between 40-50 percent eaten), but the real redemption came roughly at the halfway mark, when I doused the thing in Sriracha rooster sauce. I wonder if there is a food that could not be improved by applying a liberal dose of this magical, wonderful condiment of taste-enhancing perfection? I think not. The enjoyment trend turned immediately, and sharply, upwards, nearing a state of edible bliss as the ratio of pizza to hot sauce decreased towards a 1:1 equilibrium. In fact, the last “bite” – the highest-rated and most enjoyable – was little more than me licking the excess Sriracha remnants from my thumb and index finger.

Overall, I’d have to say that this was a pretty disappointing pizza. I certainly wouldn’t buy it again, although I might give it another chance if someone gave me one for free. The real winner here? Sriracha, once again proving that if brown is the new black and thirty is the new twenty, then hot sauce is the new ketchup. [[justin]]