The New Domino’s Pizza Recipe: An Extended Taste Test Review From Both Coasts (And an Appreciation of Domino’s Exquisite Online User Experience)

Mary HK Choi: Really quick background question: were you prompted to eat Domino’s because of their new ad campaign?
David Cho: Oh for sure, I’d been watching those commercials for the last couple of weeks.
Mary: Me too.
David: They make a really compelling argument!
Mary: Agreed. There’s something about contrition that makes me want to throw money at it.
Mary: Was the line “When they said our sauce tasted like ketchup it broke my heart” what got you?
Mary: Because it definitely did me.
David: Not to mention the guarantee.
David: What percentage of people ever actually follow through with something like that, to go to the trouble of saying, “I’M NOT SATISFIED WITH THIS PIZZA, GIMME MY MONEY BACK”?
Mary: So from a business standpoint you respect their G also?
David: Yeah, I just like when brands prey on people’s laziness by making promises that seem to mean more than they actually do.
David: Very savvy.
David: I also like 40% more herbs in the sauce.
Mary: Numbers.
David: Numb3rs.
Mary: You love numbers.
David: I LOVE CBS HOUR-LONG DRAMAS!
Mary: GAY.
Mary: Final background question: How often did you eat Domino’s before the new formula?
David: Not much really.
David: My fast food pizza allegiance lies with Papa John’s.
David: I think I would eat anything covered in that garlic butter.
Mary: Even more so than the mom and pop fold ’em up New York pizza parlors?
David: 95% of the pizza in this city is not as good as Papa John’s, based solely on the garlic butter.
Mary: POWERFUL statement. And one I do not totally disagree with.
David: But let me qualify that comment by saying that it’s really like comparing apples and oranges.
Mary: Right. Like how Taco Bell is not Mexican food so much as its own food group.
David: But I just say that because a lot of uppity people sleep on Papa John’s because they’re like, OH I HAVE TO GO TO LUZZO’S OR DI FARA’S OR WTF-EVER.
Mary: Right. We are excluding all pizza parlors you have to wait forever like an asshole for, because that shit is some fetishistic annoying “foodie” shit.
David: I mean I get that it’s delicious, but Papa John’s has its own charm and delicious-ness too!
Mary: Of course and you and I are lazies so we like when they bring it to us, and bring lots of it.
Mary: With SAUCE!
Mary: So let’s talk about the damn pie.
David: I once went to a friend’s house 20 blocks away one time because Papa John’s doesn’t deliver to my neighborhood.

PART ONE: THE SAUCE. 40% MORE HERBS T/F???

Mary: TRUE.
Mary: And by “herbs” I mean, things that make it taste like it has more layers of flavor.
Mary: Because who knows if they are real herbs.
David: YERP
David: It’s better though!
David: Right?
David: It tastes more like something!
Mary: BUT.
Mary: More salty? T/F?
David: VERY MUCH MORE SALTY.
Mary: Better for sure.
Mary: And slightly more sweet.
David: YEAH
David: HERE’S A WORD OF ADVICE TO ANYONE WHO’S THINKING OF ORDERING A DOMINO’S PIZZA
Mary: Yes?
David: Do NOT get Italian sausage on it unless you are prepared for a very high level of salty AND sweetness created by the combo of the sausage and sauce.
Mary: YES.
Mary: Which was my folly, for half my pie.
Mary: Let’s discuss crust.
Mary: Because we should’ve worked outside in.

PART TWO: THE CRUST. THOUGHTS?

Mary: David.
Mary: DAVID.
David: Yes, Mary?
Mary: Crust!
Mary: I detected more yellowish butter flavor crystals.
David: You’re doing the crust a disservice
David: If you get this new pizza, the crust is THE KEY.
Mary: I agree.
Mary: And it’s TASTY with the new sauce.
David: The highest praise I could give this crust is that it tastes like BREAD STIX™.
Mary: This is absolutely accurate.
David: Isn’t that what we always want from our pizza crust though?
Mary: Well, you and I do. we’ve discussed that we prefer this to the “cracker” crust.
Mary: Texturally as well. Good pushback. Toothsome, as it were.
David: JUST LIKE I LIKE MY WOMEN.
David: Which actually isn’t true at all.
Mary: I know.
Mary: You like rexi bitches.
David: BE SUBMISSIVE LIKE A GOOD ASIAN LADY KTHXBAI.
Mary: AND THIN THIIIIN.
Mary: Actually not like that second “thin,” it’s too fat.
David: So final answer: Domino’s crust is nothing like girls that I want to date and the one’s that your mother wishes you were more like.
Mary: YES. And yellow.
Mary: Question.
David: Yes’m.
Mary: There wasn’t however a cheese element to the crust right?
Mary: Because now I am getting confused because the bread stix do.
David: No cheese, all garlic I thought.
David: Buttery and garlicky.
Mary: Agreed.
David: Well, there’s two things
David: 1) bread stix.
David: 2) CHEESY stix.
Mary: Right.
David: Yeah, so a bread stick/x can just be with the glaze and the taste.
Mary: OK. Correct. Let’s talk dough as a different factor from crust.
David: Not different at all.
David: Which I’m OK with.
David: My pizza palate isn’t like the ones of pizza bloggers where they talk about “the hole.”
Mary: I thought it was sturdy and good.
David: Yeah, tasted fine.
David: DID NOT BREAK.
Mary: OK. Let’s talk cheese.

PART THREE: CHEESE. IS IT DIFFERENT?

David: So the last claim of the Domino’s commercial is that they’re using higher quality cheese with a blend.
Mary: I thought it was a more complex cheese flavor than the usual white epoxy cheese that they use.
Mary: It didn’t taste like, say, a fresh buffalo mozz because that expectation is crazytown.
David: How do you think it compared as an “upgrade” compared to the sauce and crust though?
Mary: I did not think it was as marked an upgrade as crust and sauce.
Mary: BUT also a little saltier.
David: Are you sure that wasn’t your sausage or sauce though?
Mary: The one thing I did notice was there was less cheese.
Mary: But I ordered mine in Los Angeles.
David: Really? Mine had a TON of cheese.
David: My roommate commented that it was almost “too cheesy”
Mary: Mischief’s afoot.
Mary: I always pick off all the cheese.
Mary: Rearrange all the fixin’s.
Mary: And then redistribute the cheese.
Mary: But in LA I did not have to.
David: So I guess the takeaway is don’t order pizza from Domino’s in LA?
Mary: Also, you’re right. I have no idea about sausage saltiness as a factor for the cheese. Because that sausage salt cauterized my tongue into one giant pulsing tastebud.
David: Wait, do you do that with pizza here?
David: Like you go to a pizza place and rearrange the pizza to your likings?
Mary: Yes.
Mary: All the time.
David: Oh gosh.
David: Your hands must get GROSS.
Mary: Well sure.
Mary: But I am a disgusting eating partner.
Mary: At least, I blot and then redistribute.
David: So high maint.
Mary: And then I start wheedling whoever I’m with for their crust before anyone has gotten there.
Mary: And maybe have some of their drink because I love fountain soda
David: Oh man.
David: Sidebar?
Mary: Yes.
David: I was at the Subway on Houston and Mott the other day
David: And I got a $5 footlong and some dude was trying to go get a refill at the fountain soda machine.
David: And the proprietor was like, “No, 50 cents for a refill!”
David: I found that for some reason very, very disturbing.
Mary: You should.
Mary: That’s deplorable.
Mary: It’s like 3 cents worth of syrup for fuck’s sake.
David: I KNOW.
David: They also don’t have three types of “meat” in their Cold Cut Combo, but don’t get me started.
Mary: Did you know that in Starbucks they won’t give you a refill if you’ve ever stepped outside with your cup?
David: The economy is ruining our fast food.
Mary: I used to just carry the one 20oz cup from sbux to sbux and get refills for a dime.
Mary: I also used to totally want kidney stones obvi.
Mary: ANYWAY. Let’s talk about my folly and then move to our favorite thing about D’s.

PART FOUR: WE HAVE OTHER THOUGHTS ON DOMINO’S.

David: What other takeaways did we have from our respective Domino’s ordering experiences?
Mary: The customer service.
Mary: So I didn’t get the two medium, two toppings for $5.99.
Mary: Which was INSANE of me.
David: FOOL.
Mary: I know.
Mary: I got a large, with willy nilly toppings, and spent a fortune, and I got half this, half that.
David: What toppings did you get, and what toppings would you recommend?
Mary: i got pepp on the other side and almost made myself turn into jerky.
Mary: SO salty.
Mary: With olives.
Mary: Almost died.
Mary: I would actually suggest going veggies?
Mary: And I know that’s bananas.
Mary: But it’s honestly what I’d do. Like olives and onions or some shit. The sodium nitrate bombs are too intense.
Mary: I was parched for days.
David: Well. I DID get the 2 medium 2-toppings for $5.99 each.
Mary: Because you’re a champion.
Mary: And good with numbers.
David: And I got one with pepperoni and onion.
David: And the other with sausage and spinach.
Mary: OOOOH spinach!
Mary: I never do that.
David: Both of which were a little salty, but I would RECOMMEND STILL.
Mary: Interesting!
David: That brings us to what I LOVED about my Domino’s experience: ORDERING AND USER EXPERIENCE.
David: So, when you order a Domino’s online, it’s like a video game in which you make your own pizzas!
Mary: Indeed! And it’s an incredibly intuitive user experience.
David: They have this pizza that you add toppings and then when you click them they show up on the screen!
Mary: And your half toppings show up too.
David: Even my spinach decision was based on how nice the spinach looked on screen!
David: And I chose not to get black olives for that same reason!
David: It’s really incredible.
Mary: And they keep “your Domino’s” on file, which is nice.
David: I’m not sure I want people being able to trace that back to me?
David: Never leave a paper trail.
David: SO that’s great? But also?
David: They have this thing that let’s you TRACK YOUR PIZZA WHILE IT’S GETTING MADE.
David: AND THE PIZZA TRACKER IS UNBELIEVABLE.
Mary: IT IS.
David: Mine told me at what stage of preparation my pizza was in AND who was doing it.
David: LUIS CHECKED MY PIZZA’S QUALITY.

David: SERGIO DELIVERED IT.
David: AND I confirmed with my delivery guy that his name was in fact Sergio!
Mary: YES.
David: Like, isn’t this the future?
David: Has the Internet ever been used more effectively
Mary: NO.
Mary: NEVER.
Mary: Not even one time.
David: SORRY, GOOGLE.
Mary: But again, the intuitiveness? There’s something so human about being satisfied when a little bar tells you that your pizza has come out of the oven.
Mary: There’s nothing worse than having no gauge for when your order will appear.
Mary: Other than “it’s been longer than 45 minutes.”
Mary: Because whenever you call? They tell you it’s on the way. And sometimes? It’s just not. And you know it’s not!
David: If there was a way that Seamless Web could integrate this into my order of hot wings, it would be UNREAL.
David: A boy can dream I guess.
Mary: I need a little handholding with seamless.
Mary: A little personal touch.
Mary: Like SERGIO.
David: So. Final thoughts?
Mary: We will not be asking for our money back
Mary: Also, I would do this again. Even though their pasta in the bread bowl things make me want to barf.
Mary: ALSO. They do have Coke Zero? Not in fountain yet, but in bottle, and it’s good.
David: I’VE HAD THE PIZZA BREAD BOWL!
David: That’s a separate chat though.
Mary: Yes it is, you big fucking fatso grossmonster.
David: I AM SVELTE AND ASIAN!
Mary: It’s true. With a great head of hair.
David: Oh stop.
Mary: Made of pizza. Can you imagine if they did a hair test on you? “You are 89% preservative.”
Mary: Hence: YOUTH.
David: FINAL THOUGHT: ORDER THIS PIZZA PEOPLE, YOU HAVE NOTHING TO LOSE!
Mary: Other than so much.

Mary HK Choi is The Awl’s first-string dining critic. David Cho is the publisher of The Awl.

This cat is freaking me out!

Even though the Internet is nice now, there are still some mean people on it. Will this anti-cyberbullying PSA change show them the error of their ways? Probably not, but it’s still pretty cool. Stick with it. [Via]

This seems to be the March cover of Wired. That coverline is: “MONEY wants to be FREE”! So listen. No, it doesn’t. That’s the last thing money wants. In fact, as money moves closer towards free, it loses value. Money hates to lose value. Money’s life goals include: 1. Not losing value and 2. Gaining value. Anyway, maybe this is a joke mock-up cover they made for some free Wired party, where all the food was free, and no one had a salary, because their work was free. But if it does arrive in people’s mailboxes (for free), they’re gonna have some serious explaining to do, which they will do, to me, at no cost.

by Katie Baker

I don’t want to put a damper on anyone’s weekend, but I feel like I should give you unsuspecting folks a warning that an aggregate span of 22 minutes this Sunday is going to have a potentially painful and fairly unavoidable influence on your lives for the following two weeks-which is the length of time that the media has to drunk-drive you down the Road to the Super Bowl.

“Mainly, I cannot fathom what two weeks of Super Bowl lead-up will be like if it’s Favre vs. Manning,” fretted Dan Shanoff yesterday as he imagined a world in which the Vikings and Colts defeat the Saints and Jets this weekend. “I’m totally OK with Saints lead-up. And, while New York media annoys me to no end, I’m OK with Jets lead-up, mainly because it would be so unpredictable.”

You don’t have to understand football to get how he feels. I mean, do you really know anything about Scott Brown? No, but I bet you were dreading the outcome on Tuesday regardless just anticipating the cover of the Post. And you aren’t sure when Vampire Weekend is going to be releasing their next album (called Gstaadpo, it will be positioned as a modern chiaroscuro that ponders the dark side of European history over fireside hot toddys at a ski chalet), but you’ve gone ahead and canceled your Internet connection for the entirety of 2012 just to be safe.

It’s okay to feel that way. You’re preemptively irritated, and so am I.

Preemptive irritation, a pal of mine pointed out, sounds like something that might be listed in the sotto-voce string of embarrassing side effects in an over-lawyered pharmaceutical ad. This is fitting, because there is a blurry line between symptom and cure. Am I being all fancy and media-crit when I see a link to a review of Committed and feel instantly annoyed at the rote condescension sure to be contained within? Or am I just a tedious contrarian who puts the jerk in kneejerk and makes this all worse?

New York Magazine’s most well-known contribution to the charticle genre is the Approval Matrix, but I’m partial to another.

“Welcome to the undulating curve of shifting expectations-the Heisenbergian principle [Don’t tell Jim Holt!]

by which hype determines how much you enjoy a given pop-culture phenomenon,” explained Adam Sternbergh in 2005, when the graphic debuted.

The first-wave audience is pleasantly surprised, but the second-wavers feel let down; then the third wave finds it’s not as bad as they’ve heard-and they’re all watching the exact same show.

We all have our Tumblrs; we know how this goes. (Thank god for no Twitter in 2005-just imagining a month of #idontknowhowtoquityou makes my muscles go tense.) For years I assumed that my jaded exhaustion with new products or “slants” was just me kicking up my feet in that hammock of backlash. It’s so nice to be lazy and so lazy to hate.

But I think this is different. Preemptive irritation is not a point on the curve, it is a point about the curve. The point being: the curve makes us crazy.

In the editor’s intro to that cherished Winter 2008 n+1, the issue heard ‘round the world wide web, the unbylined writer dismissed the Undulating Curve. He called it a “bullying charticle” that “disfigure[d] even such a once-proud publication” as New York (and while I do genuinely assume that the placement of an n+1 founding editor’s book, Indecision, on the inaugural sinewave has nothing to do with his later assessment, I can’t resist pointing it out.)

Nor was the writer a fan of the “Hype Cycle” underlying the graphic:

Hype-and-backlash overwhelm the artifacts that supposedly occasion them. At this point a basic inversion takes place. Never mind the moon; look at the finger pointing at the moon. Is it pointing too high, or too low? It makes you want to turn away from that overhyped satellite altogether.

Yeah! It’s not that I hate the moon. (Well, unless the moon is the movie Love Actually or the CNBC talking head Julie Roginsky.) What I hate is that I can’t even see the damn thing on account of all the fat fingers in my face telling me where to look, or why to stop looking, or when to buy a set of lunar map placemats from the checkout line of Urban Outfitters.

God, just think about what’s going to happen when Apple finally releases the iSmoov69! I can’t even imagine how many grubby fingerprints are going to be clouding that liquid-diamond screen.

“I don’t know what it is I’m preemptively bristling at,” confessed Leon Neyfakh last year, after reading a blog post declaring a bar the new down-home, just-folks spot. “Maybe just the idea of someone walking into this place and deciding happily that it’s exactly the kind of authentic, no-bullshit joint our ‘nabe’ needs. Because, who the fuck made that person boss?”

Or consider the upcoming Valentine’s Day, a film which, in the grand tradition of He’s Just Not That Into You, stars Everyone Ever in the role of Unlikeable Characters #1–19. I’m sick of this movie and it’s not even out. I’m already anti your every review! Even yours, David Edelstein. Even yours, Mary HK Choi. It’s not the content of cultural arbitration that makes me so weary but rather the predictability of its flow.

This is why Shanoff can tolerate a Jets victory despite his contempt for the New York media circus: setting aside the number of times the word “poise” will be ascribed to The Sanchize (a tally which has itself become a tiresome meme) there’s less clarity (less centricity?) around the insta-takes and counter-takes that would form in its wake.

Conversely, Brett Favre has long been a walking talking Undulating Curve of Shifting Expectations in and of himself, and boy does he look like a kid out there. (A kid who threw two interceptions the last time he appeared in the NFC championships, but I suppose I should wait till we’re all backlashing in lockstep two-ish weeks from today to bring that one up.)

“I’m nostalgic for conversations I had yesterday,” mopes Max in Kicking and Screaming (at the 1:30ish mark.) “I’ve begun reminiscing events before they even occur. I’m reminiscing this right now. I can’t go to the bar because I’ve already looked back on it in my memory… and I didn’t have a good time.”

Max is a cautionary tale for people like me. Avoiding annoyance is a slippery slope: too much measured (slash cynical) foresight and one runs the risk of passing right through the space-time continuum and into the glum realm of proactive retrospect, a far more dangerous place and one littered with neuroses and doubt.

Me, I’d rather revel in being preemptively irked, like a long-distance runner who chases the pain.

But some rise above. Last night I IM’d Leon about that irksome neighborhood bar and he told me it’s now one of his go-to faves. I expressed my surprise, and he Internet-shrugged.

“I couldn’t really hold against it its customer’s ideology,” he typed back.

He’s a better man than I.

Katie Baker writes mostly about sports and weddings and the Winter Olympics.

Can you zap away fat with lasers? Apparently so! Still, there is one troubling question: “[W]hat happens to the fat once it has leaked out of the cell?”

“The body can’t excrete fat: it doesn’t come out through the urine or the stool. We need to find out where it’s going before we know whether these treatments will be truly safe and effective,” says Molly Wanner, a dermatologist from Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, who uses lasers for other medical procedures.

Um, I think I’d like them to figure that part out before I go under the lens. Also, ewww.

I’ve been extremely skeptical about the supposed “whites-only basketball league” being “launched” by former pro wrestling promoter Don “Moose” Lewis because of, you know, everything, but watching this interview with the man it occurrs to me that even publicity stunts (and I’m still leaning toward the idea that this is what we’re dealing with) now exist as promotions designed to will themselves into existence. It’s all very meta and head-hurty, and it probably doesn’t even matter. OR IS THAT WHAT THEY WANT US TO THINK?

An “analyst” is already projecting that the “Apple tablet” will make $3 billion in its “first year.” At this point, I basically hope that the damned Apple announcement on Wednesday is a flatscreen ham radio or something. Or like, a portable “AM/FM” “Walkman.” Remember when you used to have devices that would let you get “radio transmissions”? I miss the radio.

“We are ending this story with these characters, and that’s all we have planned. We’re not setting up a sequel. We’re not planting elements for future shows. We certainly understand and absolutely respect that ABC and Disney have an incredibly valuable franchise and they want to do more things with ‘Lost,’ but the story we’re telling ends in May.”
-”Lost” executive producer Carlton Cuse discusses the show’s final season. There are no spoilers for how the series will end, but the producers “praise the ambiguity” of “The Sopranos” finale, which may indicate that things will be left unresolved. Also, “Hurley dies.”

Sometimes the natives of Knifecrime Island like to mix it up a bit and eschew the bladework for which they have gained worldwide renown. Take the case of 19-year-old Chantelle Amies, accused of poisoning a neighbor’s three goldfish with bleach. In a staggering miscarriage of justice, Amies’ trial was dismissed on the grounds that there was no evidence.

Susanna Chowdhury, prosecuting, said Amies’ fingerprints had been found on a bottle of bleach in the house and on the fish tank.

But the court was told that although water in the fish tank had been taken by police they had not sent it away for analysis because it would cost too much money.

Philip Farr, defending, said they could not prove there had been bleach in the tank or whether the fish had been killed by bleach.

The prosecution called three witnesses to say they had smelled bleach in the fish tank.

But as no-one had seen what happened, the case collapsed.

Hahaha, you don’t say. Anyway, it’s nice to have a frivolous little “crime” story coming out of Britain; the more serious ones can be pretty tough to take.