Takeaway Truth: Domino’s All Day Breakfast Pizza

Takeaway Truth is an occasional Lifehacker feature where we compare marketing images against what you actually get served. Today — Domino’s Aussie All Day Breakfast Pizza. (Plus: taste test!)

Fast food restaurants have been known to fib when it comes to accurate depictions of their menu items. Far too often, the mouth-watering feast on the poster turns out to be a limp and oily morsel. In a bid to keep the fry-jockey overlords honest, we’ve decided to document the reality of fast food — it was either that, or go postal like Michael Douglas in Falling Down.

The Aussie All Day Breakfast Pizza is the latest addition to Domino’s pizza menu range. It comes with crispy rasher bacon, seasoned scrambled eggs, fresh tomato, red onion and a swirl of smoky BBQ sauce. Like KFC’s new breakfast chicken range, it appears to be an attempt to cash in on the lucrative fast food brekkie market. The fact that most Domino’s stores don’t open until 11am is apparently irrelevant.

Here’s the official YouTube video:

If you’re a pizza fan, you’ve probably gleaned that this is pretty much just a regular “Aussie” pizza with ‘breakfast’ slapped on top to make it sound interesting. With that said, most Aussie pizzas don’t come with tomato or red onion, so it’s not a complete rehash (just a partial one). Domino’s has also assured us that the scrambled eggs are new and improved. We’ll judge the validity of that claim in a moment.

In terms of kilojoule damage, the Aussie All Day Breakfast Pizza is pleasantly average for a Domino’s pizza; it packs in 987kJ per serving, or 5808kJ for the whole pie. There are plenty of worse pizzas on the menu, but you can find less indulgent options too — the Godfather comes in at 4976kJ, for instance.

So how does Domino’s marketing compare to the real thing? Here’s a side-by-side comparison. The left image comes from the promotional material, while the right image is what we got served from a Sydney outlet:

The most obvious difference between the two images is the crusts — the marketing image has toppings spilling right to the edge, whereas the real version has an expanse of empty real estate. While this could be due to a trick of perspective, it still gives a false impression of a much smaller crust.

The real pizza base also looks a bit sad and soggy compared to the advertisement and there appears to be fewer piece of egg. On the plus side, the actual toppings all look pretty similar — both come with thick rashers of bacon and the egg/tomato is roughly the same shape and colour.

All in all, the Aussie All Day Breakfast Pizza isn’t the worst Takeaway Truth offender. However, there are some peripheral details on the marketing image that need to be addressed — namely, the bowl of eggs.

Domino’s uses a pre-scrambled egg formula on its pizzas which is stored in air-tight bags. The official reason for this is that egg shells could prove “hazardous” in the kitchen. All well and good, but showing unbroken eggs in your advertisement strongly suggests that they are scrambled fresh in store. Tch, eh?

We’d normally come down a lot harder on this, but the image in question has been kept off Domino’s Facebook page, so it seems the company is aware of the misleading implication. In any event, we’re here to judge the actual product, not the surrounding images (if that were the case, we’d also have to dock points whenever an advertisement featured an implausibility beautiful cashier.)

We often get reader comments on Takeaway Truth articles inquiring about the actual taste. Well, today is your lucky day. Domino’s was nice enough to send us a few of the pizzas to try in the flesh, so to speak. Here’s what some of the Allure team thought:

Ben White (Technology Manager): I’m not sure I’d call it a ‘breakfast pizza’, because it tastes just like ‘pizza’. The ingredients work well together, but start picking at the egg and you’re going to have a bad time. I’d try it again minus bacon, adding salmon, mushroom and baby spinach!

Anthony Keogh (account manager): I wasn’t a huge fan of this one to be honest. I guess the “Aussie” pizza has never really been my thing. Egg on a pizza is a strange concept at the best of times, and the egg used on this pizza tasted “powdery” which certainly didn’t help. Overall it wasn’t great, but it wasn’t completely horrible either. I just couldn’t see myself ever ordering this over a more traditional pizza variety.

Jessica Chandra (POPSUGAR Celebrity and Entertainment Editor): After sampling this breakfast/brunch pizza, I’ve realised I’d rather heat up ordinary pizza and eat it in the morning. I wasn’t a huge fan. And the egg needs to go.

Rob Hussey (Developer): Pizza tasted fine, nothing special, nothing offensive. If you try the scrambled egg on its own, it’s a fluffy mushy substance without much flavour.

My personal take? If you like regular “Aussie” pizzas you’ll probably enjoy this one. The red onion and diced tomato are welcome additions, while the combination of a tomato base with a swirl of BBQ sauce keeps things on the right side of savory. The egg is a bit weird though; especially if you eat it on it’s own. I reckon it’s worth giving a shot, but there are better things on the menu.

Truth rating: 6/10

Which fast food franchise or menu item would you like us to tackle next? Let us know in the comments section below.


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