It wasn't exactly Pizza by Alfredo, but...
I had a truly awful pizza experience on Wednesday. I mean, it wasn't like I was molested by a pizza or anything. But it was still awful and I'd appreciate it if you didn't to minimize my traumatic experience. You weren't even there. For reference, I'm a fairly cost-conscience pizza buyer, but I also consider overall taste and proximity. I'm a cost-conscience shampoo buyer too, but I don't care how it tastes. I'm told many people don't have a pizza-buying algorithm and I'm thinking of trademarking mine and making it available by internet download for a small fee. Normally, I'm a Little Caesar's guy. I'd love to see them go back to the old school, square, two-pizza format, but that's a whole other conversation. Problem is, there's not a LC close to my house. So, although Little Caesar's scores well for cost (C) and medium for taste (T), it lacks in proximity (P).

If I want decent pizza for moderate cost and I want it relatively fast, I go with Domino's. There's a Domino's less than two minutes from my house. The Domino's by my house could set there oven to 200 and cook my pizza for 28 minutes and still have my pizza here in half an hour. (As a side note, I understand slow-cooked pizza is a popular in parts of the world without electricity. Sort of like sun tea.) So, for Domino's, high P, medium C and T.

Wednesday night felt like a Papa John's night. PJ scores high T and, though still a little gimmicky, I like the garlic butter sauce (Gb). The reason I rarely go with Papa John's is that the high T comes with only medium P and a very, very low score on the C. Papa John's is crazy expensive. For sheer pizza-gouging ability, Papa John's takes a back seat to only California Pizza Kitchen, where a small pizza costs $14, apparently because CPK fuels its pizza ovens with premium gasoline they have trucked in daily from California. The "deal" I decided on was a three topping pan pizza with bread sticks for the mortgage payment of $18. Papa John's has been advertising it's new pan pizza. Now, at this point, maybe you're saying, "Hey, if you want pan, dude, you should've called Pizza Hut." And to that I say, "Yeah, no kidding, Jack." But, back to the pizza. My wife picked it up and brought it home and it's fair to say the expectation in the air was palpable. So, she brings it in -- two boxes, one large and one small -- and I barely say 'hello' or 'thanks' just take the pizza and crack 'em open. The breadsticks were cold, but that's an easy fix. The pizza still looked warm, it had good cheese coverage, all the toppings were correct. Nothing appeared amiss. I now know how Tone Loc must've felt when he discovered Sheena was a man.

If I may detour for a moment to make an analogy to The Office and the episode where Michael kidnaps the pizza delivery guy from Pizza by Alfredo. You know the one I mean. Michael orders pizza for the office and, to his colleagues' dismay, he gets it from Pizza by Alfredo rather than Alfredo's Pizza Cafe. In his interview a few minutes later, Kevin calls eating Pizza by Alfredo pizza "like eating a hot circle of garbage." This, folks, was like eating a hot square of garbage.

Allow me to describe each of the components.

• The crust: To describe the crust as tasting like cardboard is a disservice to the taste of cardboard, I'm sure. In fact, maybe Papa John's next marketing gimmick should be to just do away with the box altogether. If you'd like to replicate the dryness and flavor of this pizza crust, set your oven to "broil" and throw in a shoe box for eight minutes. For extra flavor, feel free to throw in some cut up hot dogs.
  
• The sauce: The sauce had actual tomato chunks in it. Maybe they were going for "authentic." This pizza was about as authentic as Totino's (at just 12 times the cost). Ahhh, Totino's. Now that's pizza exactly as the Sicilians intended it.
  
• The toppings: I had no qualms with the toppings. I ordered pepperoni, ham and bacon. (My doctors think my diet is dangerously pork-deficient.)
• The cheese: The cheese was also ok. If it was on a ticket with the toppings, I'd vote for it, especially if it ran against the Crust and the Sauce. That's Mondale/Ferraro right there.

So, needless to say, the pizza sucked. I would recommend steering clear of Papa John's pan pizza the way I would recommend steering clear of dysentery unless you just really enjoy diarrhea. As for me, I ended the night $18 poorer and vowing never to order from Papa John's again, which means I need to revise my algorithm. Come to think of it, maybe I'll work Totino's into the mix.