Yesterday, Pizza Hut submitted its new Cheeseburger Crust creation to the Lifehacker office for the official taste-test treatment. This is a singularly American concept that involves grafting eight “cheeseburgers” onto the ends of a regular large pizza. Depending on your eating habits, it’s about as horrifying — or glorious — as it sounds.
The Cheeseburger Crust is a new deluxe crust option from Pizza Hut that can be added to any pizza for a premium of $3. It’s basically a dome of puffy pastry filled with a beef patty and cheddar cheese. Pizza Hut is marketing it as “a cheeseburger in every slice” that combines two of Australia’s favourite foods into one.
Here’s the official blurb from Pizza Hut:
Made with eight Australian beef patties with tasty cheddar cheese on top, nestled into the golden crust of Pizza Hut’s mouthwatering large pizzas, the Cheeseburger Crust Pizza is available with any of your favourite toppings for an additional $3.
It doesn’t sound particularly healthy, does it? We spoke to a Pizza Hut representative who said the Cheeseburger Crust adds approximately 700 kilojoules to the large pizza of your choosing. That’s actually not too bad all things considered. The energy increase is about the same as adding crunchy noodles to a McDonald’s chicken salad.
With three pizzas to plough through, we decided to enlist the taste buds of some of our colleagues. To make things interesting, we didn’t tell them what the crust was supposed to be. Would they be able to figure it out on their own?
The Cheeseburger Crust doesn’t really deliver on its marketing promise: it neither looks like a cheeseburger nor tastes like one. When we asked our co-workers what the crust reminded them of, their answers ranged from a cheese scroll to a globular end-of-level boss from the video game Metroid. Nobody came close to guessing the crust’s true inspiration.
I thought there was something disturbingly Cthulhuian about the crust pizza’s appearance: especially when viewed from above. Brrr…
Our co-workers were similarly perplexed by the flavour — most people thought it tasted like a beef dim sim, pig-in-blanket or sausage roll. We think the confusion stems from the fact that there’s no sauce inside the crust which is a staple ingredient of any self-respecting cheeseburger. Some pickle flavouring probably wouldn’t go astray either. As it stands, the burger crust has very little in common with its namesake.
We’ve established that Pizza Hut’s new crust fails as a cheeseburger substitute but how does it fare when judged on its own merits? Opinion in the office was mixed. Some thought the addition of cheese and mince made things interesting, while others were decidedly less enamored.
Personally, I found the mince to be a little bland for my tastes, but the pastry surrounding it was delicious. It’s strongly reminiscent of Domino’s Puff Pastry crust which was recently pulled from the menu. If you liked Puff Pastry pizza, this is the closest you’re going to get.
In terms of pricing, the Cheeseburger Crust looks like pretty good value on the surface. The $3 premium works out at around 35 cents per “cheeseburger”. However, it’s worth noting that the crust takes up a lot more of the pizza’s footprint — while the amount of toppings might well be the same, you’re definitely getting less pizza per slice when you discount the burger section.
If you keen to give it a try, the Pizza Hut Cheeseburger Crust is available now except in Western Australia which is set to follow on 18 March.
Score: 6/10
Comments
28 responses to “Taste Test: Pizza Hut’s ‘Cheeseburger Crust’ Is A Tasty Abomination”
…… Hell yeah.
*Vomits
OUTSTANDING!!!
I saw a TV add for this last night, i’m not convinced it will taste great, but i’m still going to have to try it 😛
Dear God. I didn’t think it could get any better (worse?) after Hot Dog crust.
This seems so overkill, Looks like it could be executed better if it was more a part of the crust (Similar to the hotdog crust) and not literally like 8 – 1/2 hamburgers slapped onto the side of a pizza like some kind of Frankenstein fatman project.
Surely thats an extra 700kj per slice, right?
I’m pretty sure it’s 700kJ for the whole pizza. Otherwise, you’d be adding 5600kJ in total, which is insane,
Sanity played no part in the creation of this.
I’m skeptical. One meatball is on average about 120kj, so eight of them adds at least 960kj to the pizza. Potentially more because the ‘burger patties’ look a little bigger than a standard meatball. And that’s not counting the cheese and extra pizza dough.
Unless the size of the toppings area is reduced to make room for the ‘cheeseburgers’? (I use that term very loosely here).
The UK one was over 12,000kj so that adds up.
There’s been reports of the Aus one being over 10,000kj but Pizza Hut are refusing to say anything about it.
Imgur postings coming up of the pizza and…
“ITS OVER 9000!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
Over 12,000 calories?!? So I could die while eating this? Omg that is the coolest pizza I have ever seen..
Such naïveté. 🙂
From the looks of it they’re not increasing the actual size of the pizza too much, the cheeseburger is intruding into the area usually covered by toppings. That would account for the relatively small increase.
It’s not available in ACT either. Not sure why this wasn’t mentioned.
Because no one cares?
Disgusting. I don’t understand why people would eat this.
This Yank says “fucking gross”
I usually love this sort of stuff, so I was so excited to order it last night…. and I thought it was terrible. I definitely agree with the “beef dim sim” comment. Nothing like a cheeseburger, and certainly not something I’d order again. Shame.
Iit looks just like Satan’s butthole.
But it taste’s like God’s.
Looks disgusting, and probably tastes disgusting as well, Pizza Huts meats arent as nice as dominos
Are we gona get an article on the new KFC nachos box soon?
The KFC nachos is getting Takeaway Truthed this coming Thursday.
Argh the Pizza Hut down the road from me is changing hands and has been closed for about a month now 🙁
The cheeseburger part wouldn’t be too bad if you put some tomato sauce and mayo on top I suppose.
Pass me a bucket! This is feral.
Mayo? On a cheeseburger?
Gross.
Just looking at it makes me feel ill… and that’s saying something.
Oh God, Chris! You’re spot on with that Lovecraftian comment – it looks like the eating of it would erode your sanity.
I must never, ever partake of this.
… but i know i will …
Fails as a cheeseburger, fails compared to things like Hot Dog Pizza or even classic cheesy stuffed crust pizza.
I was really disappointed with this, to be honest. At least the pizza part of the pizza was still amazing!