Domino's Pizza doesn't call its strange new creation "Fried Chicken Crust Pizza", but that's pretty much what it is — breaded and fried chicken bites covered with sauce, cheese and toppings. They're rather odd.
With two children and the person that kept those two children inside her for nearly nine months to account for these days, my rare pizza delivery orders are a pricey affair. The children can eat a large cheese by themselves (though they mainly just pick off the cheese), the wife-creature and I split a large ourselves, and I always pick up some chicken bites, because little bits of fried chicken are what hold the entire universe together.
What if I didn't have to order both pizza and chicken bites? What if some enterprising pizza chain combined the two? What if Domino's was that pizza chain? This whole question layering thing is getting away from me. Domino's makes these. You probably guessed that from the previous paragraphs anyway.
They call it Specialty Chicken, the most generic name for a new chain restaurant product ever. I like that the boxes question our table manners and give us the recipe for making our own Specialty Chicken. You just need some chicken breast and some stuff. Easy.
But why make something yourself when you can pay someone $5.99 plus delivery fees and tip to deliver it to your door? This is America, where leaving your home is incredibly dangerous, unless you're a pizza delivery person. We're not lazy, we're just Snow Crash. Look it up.
Domino's Pizza makes four different varieties of these cheesy chicken dealios, so I ordered one of each. As I am back on my meal plan after steroid treatment for spine issues made me eat all the things, I ate only a half serving of each — that's two chicken bits, for those of you playing alone at home.
For those of you allergic to video, I'll provide a quick summary of each.
Crispy Bacon & Tomato
What, no lettuce? Maybe adding your own to this strange combination of crispy bacon (because otherwise we'd expect raw, uncooked bacon), tomatoes, garlic Parmesan sauce and pizza and cheddar cheeses would make it stand out more. Despite the lovely sweetness of the tomatoes, this one is the blandest of the bunch. I don't see how it earned the title "Specialty". I suppose "Okay Chicken" wouldn't sell as well. Besides, I am pretty sure it's the name of a Radiohead album.
Sweet BBQ Bacon
That's much better. Lovely dark BBQ sauce, bacon (whichever), pizza cheese and shredded cheddar cheese make for the sort of fried chicken product I wouldn't mind slipping between two buns at a non-pizza-style fast food joint. The cheddar cheese — which I guess they use on all of these — should throw off the taste, but its flavor is completely lost to the chicken and BBQ combo. Lovely.
Spicy Jalapeno Pineapple
I am on record as not caring much for jalapeno peppers. That might be because I've never had them paired with pineapple before. The heatness and the sweetness work together incredibly well here, married nicely with a sweet mango habanero sauce. This one also contains pizza cheese and cheddar, the latter of which I am losing respect for with every bite.
Classic Hot Buffalo
Oh, there's the cheddar cheese, swimming beneath a river of molten hot buffalo sauce. Or it would be hot, if the Classic Hot Buffalo didn't also layer on ranch dressing and three types of cheeses — pizza, cheddar and feta. Here's your fire. It comes with free water. Let me just throw that on there. Enjoy.
In general, the Specialty Pizza has a problem — toppings don't like to stick to them. In each variety, sauce and cheese valiantly attempt to bind everything together, but it's no use — things fall off. Governments crumble. Entropy reigns.
Look at it. It's all so disconnected. One can pull the chicken bits out from under that fatty canopy and be left with sauced chicken bits and a pile of stuff. It's a comb-over, meant to make little pieces of fried chicken breast sexier. A comb-over never works. Confident baldness is sexy baldness, and there's nothing sexier than a bald piece of fried chicken.
I'm not sure what that means either.
Snacktaku is Kotaku's take on the wild and wonderful world of eating things, but not eating meals. Eating meals is for those with too much time on their hands. Past critiques can be found at the Snacktaku review archive.