Fast Food Pizza, Ranked Worst To Best

Some things in life never change. Inarguably, death and taxes will be with us forever, or at least until the sun blows up into a red giant and consumes the earth. It’s also unlikely people will stop loving pepperoni or grabbing slices of pizza at Costco. These are just realities, folks, much like the reality that when you’re really, really tired and sick of everything on Friday night, you’re going to order fast-food pizza.

But which fast-food pizza? That’s the question and one that my family and I set out a few months ago to answer definitively. Heretofore, the four of us — one husband, one small boy, one small girl, and one writer — had been diehard Domino’s fans, so we were dubious that any other pizza could be as good. As it turned out, we weren’t really wrong, but we weren’t totally right, either.

Coming to this conclusion was a long journey. It required trying six or seven pizzas at all four of the major American pizza chains: Domino’s, Little Caesars, Papa Johns, and Pizza Hut. After trying everything that one joint had to offer, we moved on to the next; and after trying all four, we were finally ready to rank them head-to-head, like some kind of giant, cheesy cage match. The results might surprise you.

We weren’t really sure what to expect when ranking Pizza Huts from styles worst to best because it’s a pizza chain we didn’t know that much about beforehand. As it turns out, there was a reason for this because Pizza Hut is just kind of meh. This statement should be taken with a grain of salt, though, because no pizza from Pizza Hut was really that offensive to us, and the original pan crust was actually a pretty exceptional experience.

Why did we like the pan crust so much? Hard to say. However, I can tell you that we tried it last out of six crust styles, at which point we were absolutely bursting and had no desire to see another pizza ever again. Thus, the fact that we still ranked the pan crust first definitely says something. It was just that good: chewy, airy, and perfect for dipping. The hand-tossed crust was pretty good as well, and it surprised me with its nice flavor and texture, given that I’ve spent most of my life avoiding pizza crusts just like this one. If you’re going to order from Pizza Hut, either of these options will do the trick.

In general, though, Pizza Hut was the chain with the least amount of flavor and creativity. It’s perfect for a kids’ birthday party, but honestly, if you’re just trying to feed yourself on a busy weeknight, you may as well go the frozen pizza route. It’s cheaper.

Perhaps the most surprising entrants in our fast-food pizza ranking were the many Little Caesars pizza styles. The Husband and I had for years believed that Little Caesars was a low-quality pizza option, better suited to college parties than to working parent weeknights. We assumed it was basically bad frozen pizza, with a delivery fee. When it came time to order a Little Caesars, neither of us really had a clue how to go about it because we couldn’t remember the last time we’d had it. High school, maybe? Never? We still have no idea.

Whatever the case, it surprised us, and in a good way. Little Caesars had fairly tasty toppings, nice sauces, and a delicious blend of mozzarella and Muenster cheese that they used on everything. In fact, if I had to choose one cheese from any fast-food pizza chain, it would be this one. The Muenster added a creaminess that plain mozzarella just can’t match, and I will probably dream about it forever.

When it came to crust, Little Caesars was similarly revelatory. Typically for the genre, thin crust was not very good. The stuffed round crust and round crust were both OK, though the fact that we ranked the cheese-stuffed crust behind the plain version was weird. Ultimately, we just didn’t want to spend any time on the round crust whatsoever, and stuffing it with cheese just made for that much more chewing. However, the DEEP!DEEP! dish stuffed crust, Detroit-style deep dish, and stuffed crazy crust were all delicious. I can now definitively say that you can safely order from Little Caesars for a crowd.

Like I said, this fast-food pizza chain has our whole heart, which is why we gave it a thorough treatment, ranking every component of Domino’s pizza from crust to toppings. We absolutely assumed that it would be our favorite, and in a way, we were right. While Domino’s certainly brought some disappointments, it was the most reliable pizza chain in terms of every pizza component: crust, sauce, cheese, meat and veggie toppings, and dips.

However, there were revelations. We were not, of course, surprised to discover that the gluten-free pizza wasn’t great because it’s not great anywhere. People have been cultivating wheat for millennia for a reason, and leaving it out has predictable results, which isn’t Domino’s fault. Among the less predictable disappointments were the thin crust and the New York-style crust, which we had formerly assumed was our favorite. As it turned out, however, the pan pizza was amazing, and the stuffed crust was really good, too — both better than the New York style.

Domino’s also offers tons of sauces, cheeses, and toppings, contributing to the wide range of options at this pizza joint. While such freedom enables you to build many different kinds of pie, it doesn’t actually enable you to create the best one on the market, an honor reserved for our No. 1 contestant. Still, if you’re trying to build an overall pizza buffet for a lot of people, go for Domino’s because it has the most options.

The easiest way to sum up our pizza ranking experience is that it was not easy. Partly, the problem is that yours truly has had a whole lot of pizza in her life, so therefore recalling exactly which components of which pizza were most pleasing at any given time can be a challenge. Happily, these last few months of taste testing proved a notable exception in my pizza-eating career in that I took detailed notes every time. This helped us really do a deep dive into what was best where and ultimately devise an overall ranking.

If I had to sum this chain up in a single sentence, I would say that Papa Johns pizzas are pretty good but not great. In general, most of the crusts we tried earned a shrug. The exceptions included the epic stuffed crust and the garlic epic stuffed crust, to which the regular version could not hold a candle. The latter was absolutely peerless. Indeed, I called it “the best pizza crust I’ve ever had in my life” in the original post, attributing its deliciousness to witchcraft. I remain true to this belief today.

The head-to-head ranking takeaway is that if you are looking for the single best pie in fast-food pizza history, our family will tell you without hesitation to get the garlic epic stuffed crust — even the Small Girl, who found it a bit too salty. You can get it with traditional tomato sauce, though we chose alfredo sauce, and we were not sorry. At the very least, this pizza is worth trying once in your life. (And monthly thereafter. Just saying.)

It is, at this point, probably clear that it’s impossible to keep bias out of any ranking of fast-food pizza, at least in our household. For one thing, one of these options was our favorite, so you have to assume that gave it an edge. However, we did find that we were wrong about which style of crust we preferred at Domino’s. We also found that, of every style out there, our favorite came from another pizza chain, so it’s safe to say bias did not define the ranking entirely.

What did define it, rather, was the crust. Although we certainly took everything else into account, from sauces to cheeses to toppings to extras such as dipping sauce, the crust was at the heart of all our decision-making. Why? Because without a good crust, you just don’t have a good pizza. Even if you’re the type to discard your pizza ends entirely (which is crazy because, hello, have you never heard of garlic butter?), the crust still provides a foundation for all the sauce, cheese, meat, mushrooms, and whatever else you need to do pizza. Simply put, the crust is critical and, therefore, the only real basis for comparison. Moreover, while there were differences among sauces and cheeses, mozzarella only changed so much from establishment to establishment, so nothing else provided a true method of discernment.

So much for the What and the Why. As for the How, we determined which pizzas were best, we took a pretty basic committee approach. For each taste test, we all tried the crusts with and without cheese and then decided how we felt individually before discussing them together. Occasionally, things got contentious. On one memorable occasion, the phrase “Only a monster likes deep dish best!” got hurled across the room … and it wasn’t a joke. Mostly, though, we came to amicable agreements about which options we liked best at each chain, then used that as the basis to do this ranking.