What Papa John's Doesn't Want You To Know About Their Food

Yahoo.com ^ | August 13, 2013 | Melanie Warner

[SamAdams76]

Food companies understand that Americans are increasingly interested in buying food that actually seems worth eating. We want food that's some degree of fresh, healthy, natural or otherwise of higher quality. It's for this reason that you see images of plump fruit decorating packages of cereal bars and the greenest broccoli you've ever laid eyes upon appearing on boxes of frozen dinners. At Burger King, you don't order a mere salad - it's a Chicken Caesar Garden Fresh Salad. Those chips aren't just cheese-flavored - they're Harvest Cheddar Sun Chips, with "harvest cheddar" an entirely meaningless term. Few companies have applied this appeal more literally than Papa John's, which for years has boasted "Better pizza. Better ingredients." Printed on every Papa John's pizza box is a little story: "When I founded Papa John's in 1984, my mission was to build a better pizza," says "Papa" John Schnatter. "I went the extra mile to ensure we used the highest quality ingredients available - like fresh, never frozen original dough, all-natural sauce, veggies sliced fresh daily and 100 percent real beef and pork. We think you'll taste the difference." After all, who wouldn't want fresher, better ingredients in their pizza? A great deal of the food we currently eat, both from the supermarket and at chain restaurants, is comprised of ingredients created as cheaply as possible (tomatoes chosen for their shipability, not flavor; chicken as bland as a pizza box because the bird only lived for 10 weeks and ate a monotonous diet) and highly processed additives, many of them not even technically edible...

[Steve_Seattle]

"Any person with even a modicum amount of intelligence knows that going to any fast food joint isn’t a “healthy” choice no matter how plump the tomatoes or knowing how wilted the lettuce really is. Conservatives are not idiots. We may enjoy fast food now and again but we also know what we are eating."

True.

[count-your-change]

I’ll go with the one, after all I’m no gluten.

[1rudeboy]

Are you talking about Lafayette Coney? Thank God that place didn’t breathalyze customers when they walked in. I’d have been finished.

[frithguild]

Brooklyn and Manhattan does pizza, which comes from Naples, pretty well. As an art form, however, pizza reached and maintains a state of perfection at the Jersey Shore. I shudder when I think about Germans or other northern Europeans west of NJ call pizza. The chain stores make product that barely passes as food.

[angcat]

No kidding LOL my sister lives in Clinton. The best pizza is from Yonkers NY.

[Caipirabob]

The stuffed pizza is a feminist pizza, inverting the natural order with the sauce on top of the cheese, and separated by an extra layer of crust.

LOL..

I'll eat one of each as soon as they are available.

Honestly, lived on the East coast near the tri-state area, ate NYC many, many times. Lived near Chicago a short while. Ate loads of stuffed pizza.

When I moved South finally, I missed the stuffed pizza.

[mountn man]

Press on brave Journalist in Boulder Colorado. Keep fighting, O holy knight of truth/

I hope she doesn't say anything bad about Beau Jo's.

[rockrr]

Once upon a time there was a hippy pizza joint in the U-District called the Great Green Society. The very best pizza I ever ate. I always wondered if they added a little er, oregano ;’)

[daler]

"This article isn’t about pizza in the same sense that the Affordable Care Act wasn’t about supplying affordable care. It was a hit piece on a conservative business which has dared to throw in with conservative causes."

We have a BINGO, ladies and gentlement!

[When do we get liberated?]

Say what you want, he built a better mousetrap. It’s not a handmade pizza using the finest ingredients possible, but he does have three thousand two hundred stores......Old boy can’t be that wrong lol.

[DesertRhino]

Had it. Pizza simply gets no better than that place, New York and it’s inflated self opinion be damned. And yes I’ve had both.

[cripplecreek]

I never had one of the Lafayette Coneys. The Flint style uses ground beefheart.

[Dr. Sivana]

You need to come to Chicago and try a real pizza ;)

I have not only had most of the popular Chicago pizzas: stuffed, pan and thin crust, I was also paid to make them. A third tier Brooklyn pizza joint blows the doors off of the best Chicago style pizza Chi-town has to offer. You will notice that most of the great pizza joints in the historical pizza cities do not have becoming a chain as their highest aspiration (Pepe's being a notable exception as the family decided to cash-out). Chicago is proud of their cookie-cutter chains: Uno, Gino's East, Giordano's, Edwardos, Connie's, etc.

The best pizza place in Chicago is Piece Pizza on North Ave., which provides a solid New Haven style apizza, and manages to pull it off without a coal oven that has been on for 70 years.

Chicagoans need to get out more.

Oh, and really great hot dogs don't need to be buried under a salad and celery salt. A great New England hot dog needs nothing more than a lightly toasted New England roll (with butter), a split broiled (NEVER boiled or steamed) high-quality hot dog (Hummels is a good bet), and a light application of some combination of grilled onions, mustard, relish and/or ketchup to taste, but never so much that the frank itself is hidden.

[DemforBush]

“Pizza capital of the US: Chicago.”

You know it!

[Smokin' Joe]

I guess “different stokes for different folks”.

Pizza is like chilli.

No two people have exactly the same flavor, contents, or texture in mind when you mention it, and what one considers great, another will not eat.

Like you said...

[Still Thinking]

Two things make a great pizza...a ton of toppings with lots of cheese and it’s ready when promised. Washed down with a quart of beer...Well, what more could you want?

Naked waitress? (Must be Not Guilty)

[GeronL]

best smelling singlewide in the world

lol

[DemforBush]

Papa John’s is decent, for chain pizza. It’s got nothing on a good local pizza shop, to say nothing of the offerings you’ll find on just about every corner in NYC, Chicago, and so on. But it’s not bad.

Hate that fake garlic sauce, though.

[1rudeboy]

There was a dude at Lafayette that played a trick while pouring milk (yes, milk) into a glass. We’d pay just to watch. Never drank the milk, though . . . it didn’t mix well with beer and whiskey.

[dragnet2]

They use anti bloating agents in their pizzas!!