Review: Pizza Hut Detroit Style Pizza

What is Detroit style pizza? Begin with a rectangular thick crust, baked in a pan, much like a Sicilian style pizza. But then apply the cheese all the way to the edge, even to the point where some of the cheese gets caramelized on the sides where the crust meets the pan. Bake it with toppings (any of the usual candidates, but especially with two kinds of pepperoni), but without any red sauce. After the pizza is baked, ladle two broad racing stripes of tomato sauce over the top.

Once a rarity outside of the Detroit region, this style of pizza is finally getting the national recognition it deserves. The iconic Detroit pizza comes from Buddy's Pizza, which now has 19 Michigan locations. 

I've never been to Detroit, but I got a feel for this kind of pizza in rural Mannheim Pennsylvania, where Norma Knepp baked superlative Jersey Boardwalk style and Detroit style pizzas (only on Tuesdays) before her 2020 retirement. 

Norma's Detroit style

Norma's Detroit style pizza was a revelation. Beautiful crunch underneath, an impossibly airy body to the crust, with all the good stuff riding on top. The point of adding the sauce after baking is to keep it from making the crust soggy at any point. Bonus, you won't burn the roof of your mouth as easily when you can't wait for the pie to cool a bit.

Via 313 pizza

I also happen to live about 25 minutes from the best-known Detroit-style pizza purveyor outside of Michigan -- Via 313 in Austin, Texas. Another unlikely location for Detroit pizza, but this stuff is fully authentic even down to the name, chosen from the Detroit metro area code.

In our review of Via 313, we said this: "The crust was properly thick, but somehow puffy and light without being insubstantial or white-bready. Golden crisp on the bottom, tender and chew in the middle. The sauce and cheese were wonderful role players, and there was a magical mix of textures from the crispy bottom, soft middle, and chewy layer of browned cheese on top. Add in the crispy brown edges of cheese for one more dimension of flavor and texture."

All this is table-setting for the biggest-yet national platform for Detroit style pizza, because here in January of 2021, Pizza Hut (headquartered in Plano, TX) has launched its own version of Detroit pizza. I was instantly intrigued.

I have mixed feelings about the big national pizzamakers, explored in detail in my post about chain pizzas. Among the giants, the only thing worse than Papa John's lousy pizza is its founder, John Schnatter; Domino's is better than no pizza at all; and Pizza Hut is generally better than you'd expect. None are as good as some of the excellent regional chains, like Grotto Pizza, Anthony's Coal-Fired Pizza, Monical's, or Bertucci's.

Pizza Hut Detroit style

What the big chains have done is introduce pizza to a wider audience, and bring down the price point to make it a viable commodity purchase for ravenous college kids and anybody on a budget. Let's see how Pizza Hut did in its attempt to introduce Detroit style pizza to all of America.

Unsliced, before re-heat

It's about 20 minutes from my home to the closest Pizza Hut in Dripping Springs, Texas.  Too far for delivery, so I made the trip to place a carryout order for the new Detroit pizza configured in the most iconic way with two types of pepperoni ($11.99). I added an order of "spicy garlic" chicken wings (6 wings for $8.99). I rarely order food from a smartphone, but I was impressed with the Pizza Hut app and the ease of use.

Did you ever experience a food product where the actual dish looked better than the product portrayed in ads? This pizza appeared more appetizing than the picture that I had seen in the mail flyer. A promising sign, even though the two red stripes of sauce were applied a bit off center.

I ordered this pizza (and asked that it not be cut) about two hours before we consumed it; it sat in its cardboard box at room temperature until I reheated it on a perforated pan at 375 for 12 minutes. After I did that, which was the ideal time and temperature, I saw reheating instructions on the box calling for 5-10 minutes at 350 degrees. Minor point, my technique was clearly better for getting not just warm pizza but crisp pizza.

At Via 313, the double pepperoni pizza includes flat pepperoni buried under the cheese, and spicy cup pepperoni riding on top. This pizza, which claims to have 80 pieces of pepperoni, had both on top, with the cups placed atop the the flat rounds.

My impression on the first bite was "yup, chain pizza, tastes fine but clearly inferior to artisan pizza." My focus was on the crust, which was airy enough with a good golden crunch on the bottom, but seem to be lacking texturally. It's hard to articulate, but there was little detectable chew to the crust.

Nice golden color underneath

The cheese was perfectly cooked, with nice brown spotting all over, and the use of spicy cup pepperoni was a high-end touch. The shocker of this pizza was the red sauce. Deep red, thick, surprisingly zesty. The ingredients all worked together to make this very satisfying despite my vague qualms about the texture of the crust.

I had cut the pizza into 8 slices, and two or three of these rectangles should satisfy most appetites. I often add salt to pizza, but not here. This was intensely salty, especially that thick red sauce. After we had finished, I thought about the nature of that crust and found the perfect analogy.

Imagine an order of cheesy breadsticks, but they are all fused into one large rectangle. Add more cheese and a lot of pepperoni, bake it some more, then add red sauce stripes. Boom, Pizza Hut Detroit style! As someone who would rarely waste calories on puffy white "breadsticks" from Pizza Hut or Domino's or Olive Garden, I'm surprised that breadstick dough makes a workable base for a Detroit style pizza.

This pizza won't make you forget Buddy's in Detroit, Via 313 in Austin, or the remarkable pizza at Norma's, but I agree with some reviews that say it's the best thing from Pizza Hut in many years. I'd probably eat it again, and gladly, but on the other hand I need to travel only 5 minutes further to get Via 313 pizza.

By any account, this is a genuine winner and a nice surprise. Kudos to the Hut. If you're stuck at a kid's birthday party and the hosts are ready to call in the pizza order to Domino's, step up and pitch a switch to Pizza Hut and an order that includes at least one of these Detroit pizzas. 

Side note -- just as with the pizza, I had modest expectations for the wings. I ate one when I got home, after it had spent just 20 minutes in the takeout container. It was warm, but most of the sauce was swimming at the bottom of the container. When I reheated the pizza, I put the remaining wings on a small tray and poured the sauce over them. They got the same 12 minutes at 375 as the pizza did, and it was transformative. They were hot, of course, but the sticky sauce developed a nice crispy coating too. Much like the pizza, these wings were better than I would have expected.