Evil pizza

we tried the worst pizza topping combination known to man

Namaste, clowns!

This week’s edition of the newsletter is inspired by social media, though not via the usual avenues. Normally I like to rip on shit I see on TikTok, or take a dump on stuff I see on Instagram, but today’s foray into hell comes to you by way of Reddit.

I follow a subreddit called /r/shittyfoodporn, whose name should be pretty self-explanatory. But as I was scrolling through it one night, I ran across a post that had me fascinated, horrified, and eventually laughing until I almost cried. That post was titled, “They butter-boarded my pizza. The box is literally dripping,” and it featured a photo that was somewhat incomprehensible to look at.

Behold, exhibit A:

I took this screenshot in case the post gets taken down for some reason.

All the post says is, “Why they do that :(” with no further explanation of what we are being shown. Aside from a pizza with a slice missing, it’s extremely difficult to decipher what’s in the photo. I saw a dark disk, sopping in grease, with what appears to be parmesan cheese along the crust. But the toppings are extremely hard to figure out unless you zoom in, like, way in. Is that pineapple? Jalapeño? Also, why is the whole thing kinda gray?

Based off the pepperoncini in the corner and the cup of what appears to be Special Garlic dipping sauce (the nectar of the gods), I presumed this was a Papa Johns pizza. I didn’t need to scroll far before someone posed the obvious question.

One user asked, “No judgments, but wtf are those toppings?”

Then the answer was revealed, which shook me to my very core. The original poster replied, “Pineapple jalapeño with mushroom and extra anchovies, double baked with no cheese. I usually get it with tomato but this time I got it with bbq sauce.”

I am pretty sure I glitched out while reading those words, over and over, neatly placed in a row. Pineapple. Jalapeño. Mushroom. Extra anchovies. Double-baked. No cheese. Barbecue sauce.

Pineapple. Jalapeño. Mushroom. Extra anchovies. Double-baked. No cheese. Barbecue sauce. Pineapple. Jalapeño. Mushroom. Extra anchovies. Double-baked. No cheese. Barbecue sauce. Pineapple. Jalapeño. Mushroom. Extra anchovies. Double-baked. No cheese. Barbecue sauce. Pineapple. Jalapeño. Mushroom. Extra anchovies. Double-baked. No cheese. Barbecue sauce.

I read that comment yet again. Another fragment haunted me. It was the part that said, “I usually get it with tomato but…”

The world “usually” implied that this pizza was on regular rotation for this person. I looked through some of the other user replies, and they were about as puzzled as you’d imagine (my favorite was the last one):

• “How does one discover they enjoy eating something like this?”

• “I think I’ve developed a new phobia called… Whatever the fuck that is-ia”

• “When did you buy that? 1983?”

• “how’d you get fresh old pizza???” and…

• “Do you solve mysteries with your dog?”

Somewhere in the thread, the original poster mentioned that they call this topping combination an “Evil Pizza.” Evil is an understatement. I am pretty sure this person conducted a survey, found the world’s least favorite pizza toppings, then put the combination together in real life. Damn. I think I have to hand this entire newsletter over to someone I haven’t even met.

I called Davida over to look at the Reddit post on my laptop and she said, “You know you’re going to have to try this, right?”

I ordered using the Papa John’s phone app and tried to press the buttons as emotionlessly as possible, but things changed when I hit the “anchovies” button and then selected “extra.”

It’s like my whole worldview shifted. And not in a good way.

Fortunately, our local store has been running a deal where you can get practically any of their pizzas for $10.

At least there’s that. Ordinarily, this thing would have cost $28.94, but it only ran me $11.50 (since that extra $1.50 was due to the double anchovies, bleargh). Boy, if I revealed this to be a subversive ad for Papa Johns at the end, I bet you guys would get so fucking pissed at me. I went through with the purchase and headed over to pick up the pizza.

Our Papa Johns is located in a shopping plaza next to a Marines and Air Force Reserve recruiting office, which I found entertaining for some reason.

I wondered if military mess hall slop was better than the pizza I’d just ordered. I briefly considered giving it to the recruiters without saying anything, but I didn’t want to give these people a “dishonorable discharge,” and I’m not talking in military terms.

So I walked into the Papa Johns storefront, mentioned my carryout order, and the guy handed it over. I noticed he didn’t make much eye contact with me.

As soon as I got back in my sick 2009 Camry, I could tell I was in for a rough time, because something about the smell of this pizza was… off.

Like, there was a distinct burnt smell emanating from the box. I mean, part of the order was that it was supposed to be well-done, so perhaps a bit of it got extra-toasty or something. I didn’t want to give myself a jump scare in the car, so I made sure not to open the box until I got home. But by the time I got back, the interior of the car smelled kind of like an ashtray.

The gang didn’t look too impressed by my meal choice when I set it down in front of them.

But I am sure “Papa” John Schnatter would be proud of me.

He still wants you to eat the pizza with his name on it. All of you. I could have sworn he had nothing to do with the business after he dropped the no-no word during a conference call in 2018, but he still appears to be online making videos about Papa Johns. Some of them come off as mildly unhinged, but most of them come off as kinda wistful for his glory days. I guess that happens when you have diarrhea in your own bed and you’re forced to sleep in it.

Once I opened the box, I was pleasantly disturbed to see that the pizza actually looked kind of nice.

I could tell that the pizzamaker who put this thing together actually put some care into it, unlike the unfortunate one that Reddit user received. Theirs just got absolutely bukkaked (don’t laugh, perverts, this means “splash” in Japanese) with that garlic parmesan-flavored partially hydrogenated soybean oil, while the one I received wasn’t greasy in the least.

I did discover the source of that burnt smell, however. It wasn’t that anything was actually burned on the pizza — it was the damn barbecue sauce. You know how some barbecue sauces have fake smoke in them? There was so much barbecue sauce on this thing that the smoky smell was just steaming right out of it. I can’t recall the last time I had a barbecue chicken pizza, so maybe that’s why this odor felt so alien to me.

I took a slice and made sure to reposition an anchovy right at the tip to ensure I’d get maximum flavor right away.

I lifted up the slice and took a bite, and oh fuck. This thing was a tidal wave of flavor, and in the worst way imaginable. At first you’re hit with the corn syrup-sweetness from the barbecue sauce, along with that tangy smoke, then the bracing heat from the jalapeños starts to kick in. You can taste the sugar from the pineapple and then the acid from the peppers lingers while the spice builds up. Then the mega-hit of salt from the anchovy takes every single taste you’re experiencing and magnifies it by about 200 times. And it doesn’t stop. It doesn’t fucking stop.

And something further about the anchovies. I love snacking on fancy anchovies with things like olives, like in Spanish tapas. Good ones just taste like salt and natural glutamates with a clean aftertaste. The ones that Papa Johns has, however, are bottom tier, bony, tinny, fishy, and metallic, like they were scraped off the bottom of a fermented fish sauce barrel. Anyway, I took another bite.

I have never had that much flavor all at once, and to experience that from a Papa Johns’ slice was actually pretty traumatic. After seeing my facial expression (Davida said she’d never seen my eyebrows move like that), Davida reluctantly came over to take a bite. She puts up with so much.

She started making frantic sounds with her closed mouth and spit out what she’d attempted to take in, right into the garbage can. “This is the kind of thing I imagine rats eat,” she said, shaking her head and walking away.

The cats, sensing a disturbance in the house, prowled around the kitchen, trying to figure out why their two large lumbering roommates were shouting.

So I presented them with a slice of pizza to see how they would respond. Neither of them were impressed, including Sub-Zero (the girly tuxedo cat), who’s extremely food obsessed. At least they didn’t hiss at it.

In the end, I found the pizza a new home, which was the dumpster.

Davida ended up being right. The rats were literally going to feast on this for dinner. They could drag a piece back to the rat hole, find one of those half-drank cans of beer that show up mysteriously on any given city block, and sit down to play Fortnite with their buddies (maybe Papa John would join them), screaming into their tiny little headsets. Because I can’t for the life of me understand why a human would willfully subject themselves to this kind of culinary experience.

In the meantime, I’ve given up on food writing altogether. Whoever you are, stranger, you beat me at my own newsletter. After dumping the pizza, I went back to the shopping plaza where that Papa Johns is and signed up for the Marines at the recruitment office next door.

Oorah, dickholes!!!

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Okay, so it turns out if you can’t do a pull-up, you’re automatically disqualified from joining the Marines. Also, it turns out you need vision in both eyes (sigh) to hit a target, so they sent me home.

Anyway, if you guys enjoyed the newsletter, don’t forget to hit the like button and share it. Maybe one of you enterprising clowns can share it on the r/shittyfoodporn subreddit. When I first saw the post it only had a few hundred upvotes; now it has over 12k.

And don’t forget to upgrade your subscriptions. That Papa Johns cash for “research” only comes from readers like you, who make the newsletter possible:

Every other edition’s behind the paywall, plus you get 6+ years of archives to sort through. That’s so much toilet reading you’ll have your Papa Johns delivered straight to the bathroom stall.

All right clowns, that’s it for this week. As always, I love you all, and I’ll hop into your inboxes the week after Thanksgiving — have a great holiday.