Pizza Hut: The Rebuttal

Hello everyone. Since I was called out, I figured I'd say my piece.

The Trip to Pizza Hut

While I'm okay with admitting that I did want to go to Pizza Hut, let's set the story straight: I told Colin I would agree to not ask him to go to McDonald's if we could at some point go to the Pizza Hut we'd seen the sign for on the way to the grocery store. He agree, heartily (as he likes to avoid McDonald's as a whole). I, myself, was very curious to see how pizza would be done. Most of the pizzas that we find around here are a little tomato sauce with indistinguishable toppings and sometimes a little cheese on top of regular sandwich bread (think Bagel bites minus the bagel with less cheese and goodness knows what for toppings - scary). Plus, I have found that creating food here that isn't boring to be a challenge, though that is a topic for another post. So when I mentioned to Colin as we approached on our way to the grocery store that he had not yet taken me as promised, he offered and so we went.

Before we continue with our Pizza Hut experience, you should know that restaurants around here (and I do mean the nice, but cheap enough to eat at ones) tend to, at best, look like an old run down Waffle house at night on the inside. Hard seating, dim lighting, tables crammed together with mostly seating for 2. You can never tell what you're going to be charged extra for. The food is often greasy and any meat that you order will come with what seems like more than a normal helping of gristle attached to all sides of the actual meat, which is small. Of course, this is a reality that is hard to avoid even when purchasing meat. I purchased some inexpensive chicken leg steak, thinking it would be easy to skin and prepare, rather than buying the prepared and mostly tendonless,fatless breast meat. How very wrong I was. The leg steaks were almost entirely dark meat (not usually bad, but really tough and having poor taste even when marinated in this case), full of fat between each muscle, but luckily boneless. They even took the cartilage out, but trying to clean it was like being back in anatomy dissection, though by the end it just felt as if I had stuck my hands in lanolin. Really. That is the quality of meat that is most often served in restaurants here.

At any rate:

The Good

We walked through the mall to find ourselves at the entrance of a nicely designed modern looking restaurant and were seated by a hostess and a waitress in nice, clean-lined black wear. The menu touted that it was gourmet and the waitstaff was dressed to leave that impression. The seats were padded, cloth-covered booths (rather than plastic covered chip board); the table had a nice table cloth and with silverware and napkins awaiting us with a plate. It was almost like eating in a sit-down style restaurant at home. This was really nice in and of itself.

The menu touted such "gourmet" choices as finely crafted salads, the aforementioned lobster bisque in puff pastry, "ocean and land" (aka surf and turf) options, a full line of pasta meals,none of which came served in a large lasagna style tin pan (these weren't the pasta options that Pizza Hut is serving in the US - they were beautifully presented dishes that looked to be served in decently healthy portion sizes); and even a crab and lobster pizza. Very interesting. They also had the usual pizza supreme, stuffed crust options. The dessert menu tempted Colin quite a bit. He even requested that if we go back we get the "European sampler". (So he didn't seem so upset that going back wasn't a possibility.)

The pizza - yum. So very nice. Soft golden crust, decent and not overly spiced tomato sauce, warm gooey cheese and peperoni (which is hard to find poorly done). It was the best quality cheese that we've encountered here. It is so hard to find good cheese here and once you do, you realize that you're going to be paying ~12USD for a product that you'd pay 4USD for in the US. It has been explained to me that Asians on a whole tend to be lactose intolerant, so I guess this is the result. It was delicious.

The salad - pretty good. The salad was a romaine and cabbage mix with peppers, zucchini slices and chicken served with a balsamic vinaigrette. The romaine and cabbage were wonderful, especially after not having lettuce for more than a month. I thoroughly enjoyed the zucchini, but left the peppers to Colin.

The Bad

The chicken on the salad. Yes, folks, this was as bad as Colin made it sound. Truly. I took a slice of chicken that looked to be normal sized, but when I put it in my mouth, I realized it was fatty. So with the next one, I trimmed the fat off both sides of the meat, but then half of the portion was gone. Needless to say, I left the rest of the meat to Colin and just enjoyed the crunchy goodness of the veggies.

The service - about a D+. We were promptly seated and served water, but did have to wait a little longer than usual to order. Once we did the food came promptly, but then waiting for the check took quite a while. Colin (kindly) says it was 15 minutes, but we waited a bit longer than that from the finishing our meal to getting our check. The bus-boy and -girl came by and picked up our plates in a timely fashion and after we'd sat there for another 10 minutes we were again served water (which was kinda confusing). We never saw our waitress after our food was served and when I asked one of the passing management staff if we needed to wait for our check or just pay at the front, she huffed and then brought us a check grudgingly. She was fairly rude, grabbing receipts and money. If we return, we'll go to the front desk when finished rather than suffer the poor treatment of the management.

Overall, I'd give this restaurant a B+, when compared with the other restaurants here that I've experienced. Quality of the food (other than the chicken) was pretty good and the atmosphere was pleasant. The service, other than the strange thing with the check, wasn't too bad.

I'm, perhaps a less harsh critic when it comes to things like that. Colin would eat worse tasting food if it was less fatty and complain less. For me, it was a pretty good trip. Perhaps we'll go back for the creme brulee that Colin is so tempted by. :)