Review: Little Caesars Detroit Style Pizza

The purpose of this blog, since its inception ten years ago, is to find the exceptional pizza. "Destination pizza" that is worth the trip because it stands out above the ordinary. Ten years ago, finding such pizza was often a challenge, but we were in the early stages of the ongoing Pizza Renaissance.

Before the Pizza Renaissance, mass produced pizza was crowding out the best local shops and competing hard on price. The surviving mom and pop shops often had to cut corners on quality to compete with giants like Domino's and Pizza Hut. They bought cheap ingredients from Sysco and it seemed like every storefront pizzeria was churning out a similar product. Soft, floppy, greasy, tasty, but nothing like the artisanal pizzas from an earlier time.

In a way that parallels the craft beer movement, the new artisans came to the world of pizza. Pizza geeks may argue where it began, but it was driven in large part by a return to Neapolitan pizza. At the head of that movement was Chris Bianco, who was celebrated as making not only the best pizza in Phoenix, but the best in America. While Neapolitan was and remains the biggest wave in the Pizza Renaissance, the renewed interest in pizza as more than cheap commodity fare opened up interest in other regional styles, like Roman, New Haven, and Detroit.

One side effect of the artisanal pizza makers was the attempt to franchise and mass produce these great pies. It has succeeded far more than I might have thought, with places like Anthony's Coal-Fired Pizza, Mod, and Blaze. One more and totally surprising side effect is that the behemoths have upped their game. Not long ago, we tried and liked (almost loved!) the Detroit style pizza from Pizza Hut.

8 slices for $8.99

All of this takes me full circle to Little Caesars. I haven't had it for a long time, decades before this blog. I remember excitement when one opened in my neighborhood, and general disappointment at the crust, which seemed like Wonder Bread with some thin sauce and cheese on it. I don't think I had it a second time.

For all the intervening years, there was never a Little Caesars in my neighborhood and no chance to give it another try. I've been intrigued lately by Little Caesars ads, especially knowing that their "DEEP! DEEP!" square pie is essentially a Detroit style pizza. Once I had tried and approved the Pizza Hut version, I decided that Little Caesars deserved a fresh evaluation, even though I still don't live near a location.

It was Covid19 that gave me the opportunity, because I needed to drive from my suburban location to a downtown Austin CVS for my vaccine. Nearby was the wonderful El Pollo Rico min-chain chicken restaurant, which was a no-brainer for my post-vaccination lunch. Across the street was Little Caesars, where I ordered the pizza for dinner later that day.

I tempered my expectations because, well, it's a big chain, and this is really cheap pizza. Naturally, I order the DEEP! DEEP! pie with pepperoni, and it was $8.99. Just to compare prices (not quality), a similar sized Detroit pizza from Austin's acclaimed Via 313 costs $22 and that's a great price for such ethereal pie.

I couldn't resist ordering another pizza, especially because the very appealing Pretzel Crust pizza was just $6.00. Who doesn't want a salty cornicione? (The Pretzel Crust pizza can be found in a separate review here.) So, for a little over $16.00 including the tax, I was taking home two substantial pizzas.

Little Caesar's Pretzel Crust Pizza

I will jump ahead here to my reaction after eating a slice: this pizza was astonishing. No, nothing nearly as perfect as the Detroit pies at Via 313 or the magical version that Norma Knepp used to make at her rural PA farmer’s market stand. 

The crust was shockingly good. It sported a light golden crispy bottom, with evidence of some oil that helped crisp it. It was thick but relatively light, and not in a white-bread kind of way that has traditionally plagued mass-market chain pizzas. And it tasted like real pizza crust, too.

The cheese was pretty ordinary, but it was applied generously enough except at the critical edges, where it needed more to get maximum caramelization over the sides. The sauce was thick, rich, and more salty than sweet. Given the thickness of the crust and the generous amount of cheese, it would have been better with more sauce. It's important to note that a more authentic Detroit pizza has two racing stripes of red sauce added after the bake; here the scant red sauce was mostly underneath the cheese.

Underside of the crust

The pepperoni was big circles of thinly sliced standard grade stuff, but can you really expect spicy cup pepperoni on a $9 pizza? Four circles of pepperoni on each of the eight slices was enough, but it didn't quite match the obscene pepperoni overload on the Pizza Hut version we tried not long ago.

For comparison, the Pizza Hut version

It's almost embarrassing to confess how much I enjoyed both the Pizza Hut and the Little Caesars version of a Detroit pizza. Given a choice, would I prefer to spend $9 on the LC version, $12 for the Hut, or $22 for Via 313? Hands down, the Via 313 version wins despite its higher cost, and it's not a close comparison. And as surprised as I was by how much I enjoyed this LC Detroiter, I'd recommend the extra $3 to get the Pizza Hut version over LC due to the more & better pepperoni and the generous post-bake application of deep red sauce.

Good airy structure

This comes back around again to the point that the big chains are responding to the artisanal Pizza Renaissance by making better quality pizzas. I had been thinking that the future of chain pizza was in newer places like Mod and Blaze, and they have certainly carved out an important niche for fast casual Neapolitan. But after decades of peddling lousy soft floppy pizza that was little more than a bready vehicle for show-off toppings and stuffed crusts, the big chains seem to have found a way to make good imitations of Detroit pizza and still be a price leader.

*If you really found this review helpful, please drop the phrase "too much fluff" in the comments.