Pizza Hut brings back old-school restaurant features
Posted by Leather-Highlight150@reddit | GenX | View on Reddit | 56 comments
Are we all heading back to pizza parlors? (Favorite birthday parties of my youth in Olympia, WA - Dirty Dave's Pizza Parlor - opened in 1972 and is still there!)
BaconToTheBaconPower@reddit
I expect a Gorf stand-up and Pac-Man cocktail table arcade machines in the waiting area. No discussuon allowed...
K_Linkmaster@reddit
I haven't seen a comfortable place to sit down and eat pizza. Old school meaning a place to sit? Yeah, I have to drive 5 hours for a classic. They pushed people out of 3rd spaces and are mad it cost them money.
CawlinAlcarz@reddit
While pizza hut was cool enough back in the day, but I'd rather have back all (or even half) the mom & pop shop pizza/sandwich places that Domino's, Pizza Slut, Papa John's, etc. chains put out of business.
Who doesn't love being able to order a great NY Style pizza, with any of a dozen toppings, and/or a sub (hot or cold), and/or fries, and/or breaded, fried mushrooms,, and/or wings, and/or a pasta dinner?
I really do think that in so many ways, American culture peaked in the 1990s, and has been slowly dying since the Telecommunications Act of 1996.
fprintf@reddit
What kind of food desert do you live in?
Where I live in CT in a small suburban town I have 4 Italian restaurants that serve either amazing New Haven style pizza or Greek style, plus another 4 or 5 others.
My town has 15k residents and this is typical for the surrounding towns also.
CawlinAlcarz@reddit
I live south of the Manson-Nixon line in north Georgia.
I grew up in Southeastern PA, and spent a lot of my life in the Philly area and all over NJ.
I call the northeastern US "sandwich land" because south of the Manson-Nixon line, the people here do not seem to understand either bread or sandwiches or pizza.
It really is a food desert here in North GA because whatever you think of as "authentic" southern cuisine is readily copied and available in the Northeast, yet somehow, making pizza or subs here outside of shitty chains is a fuckin' mystery.
The best "deli" around is the one in Publix grocery stores, and while it's pretty decent for the area, it sure as hell is nothing like any deli from back home.
FYI, even though New Haven style pizza is not my favorite, I'd be happy to have a decent place that sold it here.
fprintf@reddit
Here in New England I've never stopped to consider how different the rest of the country could be with food choices. But yet it should be apparent when I watch how people actually eat at gas stations like Sheetz and Bucees. This is something I'd rarely do up here, mostly because there are so many other better choices within a mile or two.
Well at least you'll have something to look forward to if you come back North for a visit. The food!
FunScore3387@reddit
Means nothing if their pizza still tastes like rotten garbage and tomato sauce
Dangerous_Patient621@reddit
Does that mean the pizza will be good again, or are they just trying to hook us into eating the usual, greasy slop with nostalgia?
Ghostlizard74@reddit
Unless there's a table style Centipede or Pac Mac coin-op arcade game, I'm not interested.
Katerinaxoxo@reddit
The video I saw showed they had pac man in there too!
adelec123@reddit
Bring back the old recipe and ingredients.
PresidentOfAlphaBeta@reddit
You mean the frozen crusts that get thawed out don’t tempt you?
adelec123@reddit
🙅🏻♀️
CrusherWillis@reddit
Bring back jukeboxes (CD or digital) and it would be perfect.
Gold_Dig2200@reddit
The jukeboxes were the best. Their pizza was so good back then.
bemenaker@reddit
And the video games.
JPPT1974@reddit
Nice as love old school stuff.
livingadailyhell@reddit
They won’t have to do anything to one in our town. It never changed.
fwambo42@reddit
I mean I detest Pizza Hut pizza but I'd spend some money on other restaurants who did something similar
ndGall@reddit
I’d argue that back in the 90s it was significantly better. …or maybe I just hadn’t had actually good pizza yet at that point in my life.
fwambo42@reddit
I was of pizza eating age back in the 90s and it wasn't good then
Hefty_Debt_638@reddit
Fuck yes!!!!! 🎉🤸🏼♀️ Pizza Hut was my first job! Prepping the salad bar, washing those red cups in the 3-brush thingy🤣 And I never, ever got tired of eating pizza!
Unable_Gap_504@reddit
I remember having to count out 80 freaking pepperoni pieces for a large pie.
M0BBER@reddit
Bring back original deep dish pizza crust...
nirrinirra@reddit
Something awesome about those pan pizzas at the table and the red cup of coke.
MaximumJones@reddit
They need to focus on making their pizza not suck first and foremost.
bailout911@reddit
This. The last time we got Pizza Hut, the pizza was absolutely terrible.
Undoing whatever they've done with their recipes should be step #1, then they can worry about the decor and nostalgia.
drgojirax@reddit
Probably moving to frozen from fresh made dough is the main problem
arlenroy@reddit
I can guarantee it, as much as we want that, it would probably damn near bankrupt the franchisees to do that. The amount of money to switch back to the fresh hand tossed dough for even 80 restaurants would be costly.
Laszlo_Panaflex_80@reddit
Now if they will go back to focusing on the quality of ingredients. If they would get back to the taste they had in the 800s and early 90s, I think they would be in much better shape.
imalloutofclever@reddit
This. No to high fructose corn syrup. I had to stop eating PH when they switched to this.
Appropriate_Cow94@reddit
I understand your sentiment, but modern food is far better than the old days. They did not have access to the scope of what they did back then.
I am not talking processed food. I am saying that the salad bar had 1 type of cheese. They were not as fresh as we remember. Health department was lackluster at best. Pizza sauce was far more bitter.
I am all for a return to many aspects of our youth, but the depth and breadth of food is far deeper. (Also higher in salt, sugars and fats)
Some of this is better and some is worse.
MikeyRocks757@reddit
This. I stopped eating pizza but years ago but in a pinch my wife and I had ordered 2 personal pans and a side of breadsticks. I want to say it was over $25 which already turned me off but the quality of the food was disgusting and the personal pan was so small it seemed comical. It also was definitely not pan dough as I worked there for years and know a frozen dough disk when in taste one.
slothboy@reddit
Awesome. If they do one in my town I'll definitely check it out.
McDonald's.... take notes.
SbIrish574@reddit
They better bring back the table top arcade Super Mario Bros game
MulayamChaddi@reddit
Remember when Pizza Hut had Spegetti on the menu?
AZPeakBagger@reddit
My first management gig was being third key at a Pizza Hut like this when I was 19. Hated setting up the salad bar in the morning and pulling the closing shift at night. Only thing that made closing better was filling up one of the paper cups for soda with beer from the tap, putting a lid on it and drinking it through a straw so nobody knew what we were up to.
Coop_4149@reddit
Totally forgot they had beer back in the day.
AZPeakBagger@reddit
We had three beers on tap. Bud, Bud Light and Michelob.
TheLurkerSpeaks@reddit
Pitchers of beer and pitchers of Pepsi were staples of our Pizza Hut hangouts in the 90s. There was one time the stoners all decided they wanted a pitcher of Mtn Dew.
HighOnGoofballs@reddit
We have the buffet back!
But it’s only on Friday for two hours
kittyshakedown@reddit
I loved getting the personal pan pizza, salad and drink for like 5.00. There is a target PH around me that still makes the personal size but last time I looked on their menu I didn’t see them.
I’m obviously not a pizza connoisseur but they were so good.
thirtyone-charlie@reddit
I’m holding out for the smorgasbord.
Piddlefahrt@reddit
I agree with the article that unless they bring back the old recipes I don’t care what it looks like inside because I’ll never step foot in one again.
External-Dude779@reddit
Probably not. There's so much corn syrup in everything nowadays it'd cost a fortune just to eliminate it.
Just give me the old plastic Coke cups, a pizza buffet and a Galaga and I'm there
Laszlo_Panaflex_80@reddit
Pizza Hut didn’t have Coke, they had Pepsi.
sarcasticorange@reddit
There's no corn syrup in the standard pizza hut pizza.
Leather-Highlight150@reddit (OP)
Galaga, all. day. long. I'll put my quarter up on the screen. I've got next.
wisemonkey101@reddit
Will they pizza that is any better than Dominos?
Lalaloo_Too@reddit
My memory of Pizza Hut as a kid was my sister and I competing for how long we could keep a chili flake on our tongues while we waited for our order, because they used to always have a jar of flakes on the tables. That and loading my salad with bacon bits 😂😂
ApplicationUpper9229@reddit
“We” aren’t doing shit.
Stereo_Jungle_Child@reddit
I just had a Dirty Dave's Gay 90s Special a few weeks ago. Still the only pizza with cashews on it that I've ever seen. It was awesome!
(and the place still looks like it's 1972 in there) 🤣
LaStigmata@reddit
All you can drink pitchers?!?!
dragonboy@reddit
Ah, the CIS-Pizza Hut returns.
Impossible-Driver69@reddit
Companies have tried so hard to tell us what we want and deserve then get shocked Pikachu face when people abandon them. Nobody is paying good money for lifeless, bland generic experiences.
tampaforfun@reddit
I read so many Hardy Boys books back in the day to get that sweet personal pan pizza. I rode my bike there myself too.