Never go shopping when you're hungry - I don't know how many people have told me that over the years but I don't listen. Off I trotted to Sainsbury's this week and spent about £20 more than I should have done. Top of the list was this family sized pizza, out of the chilled section, for £4.50.
I've not done this before but when I got home I looked at the online reviews for this product (you can see them here) and they give an average of 2 out of 5 stars. Now I'm thinking to myself - why have I bought myself a huge pizza and why have I bought a crap one?
Anyway, it says it goes in the oven for 10-12 mins at 220°C so I set my timer for 11 minutes and waited to see what I'd let myself in for. When it came out of the oven I wasn't sure why it had received such a low mark from the Sainsbury's faithful as it looked good and smelled good.
Looks good doesn't it? Hand pulled dough, plenty of varied toppings, well cooked (if I do say so myself) - I'd forgotten the reviews and was pretty happy. Started cutting into a nice crispy crust, the toppings stayed where they were supposed to be, this was going to be epic.
First bite was a sweet (not so smoky) BBQ sauce with a bit of sweet onion and the chicken that was almost like pulled chicken in more of the sauce. It was all a bit too sweet to be fair. More importantly, where was the cheese? Cheese is supposed to be 13% of this pizza with a mix of Mozzarella and Cheddar but there wasn't a hint of it in the eating - disappointing.
After a while I had to put it down. Not only was it far too big for me at 1420 calories but the overall sweetness was just too much. There was no distinct chicken or cheese flavour. The little bits of bacon came through quite nicely and the (sweet) onion flavour was there too. In all, it was a hearty, over sweet, where's the cheese type of experience and, although I rate it higher than the online Sainsbury's reviews (probably 3 stars), it won't be at the top of my league.
