Hamza’s pizza tour: Sampling a selection of slices

By Hamza Saeed     4/4/23 10:19pm

Rice campus boasts a diverse student body, and along with this diversity comes various opinions on the best pizza in the world. Arguments over the superiority of New York thin crust, the Chicago Deep Dish or the classic Neapolitan have run rampant across this fine campus, and as the only valid opinion on the subject, the Thresher aims to squash these debates once and for all in the hunt for the superior slice.

Red Baron’s Deep Dish Pizza

Frozen pizzas were not inherently disadvantaged in this official review. This pizza, however, was so astoundingly garbage that we just can’t advocate for deep dish at all. Sophia Govea, Brown College sophomore, put it best when prompted with a question regarding the “Adonis” of pizzas.

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“Sorry deep-dish pizza lovers, I don’t think that counts as a pizza,” Govea said.

This sauce casserole was so objectively bad that Georgia Jensen, a Brown freshman who generously offered her time, tastebuds and opinions after a tasting of this pizza, was compensated with Papa John’s pizza from the Hoot for her troubles. Georgia is from Crosby, TX, a booming metropolitan powerhouse boasting an incredible population of Georgia and four whole other people, so she knows good pizza when she sees it. Georgia is a long-time pizza fan, but despite her extensive history with the pizza arts, she claims to not have a favorite style. Although she prefers fresh pizza from a restaurant, she has no qualms with ripping into a DiGornios or a Tortino’s pizza. Still, we agreed that the lack of consistent heating, relative ease of burning and inelasticity of the crust put frozen pizza in C tier. Papa Johns’s belongs in B tier.

Home Slice Pizza

The Thresher has reviewed Home Slice before and returned with a rave review. We tried the margherita slice, and once again, Home Slice did not disappoint. This was a New-York style pizza with thin crust and sparse cheese, but the homemade sauce and entire dining experience was quite pleasant. In comparison to other pizzas, the structural integrity of the crust is somewhat inconsistent. Droop, the scientific term, is present in certain sections of the slice, and the thinness of the crust does tend to lead to overcooked spots. Overall though, this was a spectacular pizza that deserves its place in the top tier. 

Pizza Hut

In the interest of reviewing a variety of pies, we included Pizza Hut as a representation of a typical chain pizza. Its red sauce is responsible for tarnishing the reputation of this fine establishment. To be clear, Pizza Hut is trashy, late night, American pizza. But, in many respects, that is what makes it appeal to trashy, late-night Americans like ourselves. A white sauce, pineapple, mushroom and black olive pizza was served to some of our peers to gauge reception to a decent Pizza Hut pie.

Emily McAmis made a poignant statement regarding the crust-cheese ratio of her slice.

“[I] like that it’s pretty thick ... but [I feel] like the crust to cheese ratio is a little high,” McAmis, a Brown senior, said.

We here at the Thresher like them thick too, but Pizza Hut’s performance was a bit disappointing. 

Little Caesars Pizza

Little Caesars sucks. Shame on you if you enjoy it. Pizza Pizza, my butt.

Unfortunately, we were not able to come to a consensus on the objectively best pizza style. Brown sophomore Sara Davidson thinks that we should rethink how we classify pizza in the first place.

“I think that pizza is an art, and I don’t think that it should be limited to a box. I think that it should be whatever it wants to be,” Davidson said.

Maybe it isn’t the pizza itself that we hold in such high regard, but rather, the sentiment and love that we have towards our respective hometowns that make us such staunch defenders of the pizza style that we hail from. After all, maybe the real pizza was the friends we made along the way.

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