Looks like the ATOT pizza snobs are checking in, right on schedule.
Sorry I'm late! I'm here now though.
I've had all sorts of pizza all over the world, and at least with respect to chain pizzas, I can't think of one that I couldn't eat and be relatively happy. Are there better pizzas? Sure, but I love pizza so much that just about any chain pizza will suffice in a pinch.
Seriously, these pizza threads (actually, any chain restaurant thread) make me laugh. It is cool to hate on the big restaurants/chains around here and that's all there is to it. I suppose I shouldn't laugh too much, because I AM a beer snob and cringe when I see people drinking any Coors product, for example.
Exactly - Coors will do in a pinch. But if you look at ratings of the top beers in the world, they're generally not made by the big conglomerates. As far as pizza goes, you can't mass produce a high quality product that tastes the same from location to location.
Another new englander talking about how only de best pizza pies made in New York.
When a region takes pride in a certain product, you'll find that the people work a little harder to make a higher quality product. They have to. Because they're going to be compared to the best pizza in the area on a regular basis by the locals. And, regionally, you'll find differing numbers of pizza restaurants. Pizza restaurants per capita: (sorry, the best I could find. None of the pizza industry trade publications seem to be online.)
When pizza is eaten less often, the people in that geographic area tend to not be quite as picky about it. Chain pizza is "good enough." And, no matter what, prominent advertising, coupons sent out, etc., are still going to attract pizza, no matter how crappy the chain pizza is. Domino's pretty much hammers this point with their own admission that their old pizza recipe sucked. (They even say so in a commercial) - thus, people will simply order delivery pizza out of convenience, not because of the quality. That's Domino's niche - pizza delivered to your door. And, in regions where convenience pizza dominates the market, people don't have much to compare it to, thus are largely ignorant of what a really good quality pizza is.
I occasionally work in a pizza restaurant in a nearby small city. 2009 population was just a hair over 14,000. But, that city has 3 chain pizza shops (Dominos, Pizza Hut, Little Caesars), on top of those, there are 8 restaurants that specialize in pizza, not to mention all the other places you can pick up a pizza ready to go (most (all?) of our grocery stores cook pizza in their deli departments.) I worked there yesterday. It was a pretty slow and boring day. The volume of pizza sold would serve about 700-800 people - 5 percent plus of the local population (not including all the other food sold such as subs and chicken wings.) On a busy day, that figure jumps to triple that amount.
I can't recall working a day where we didn't have at least one customer come in from out of town and say something to the effect of "I'm back in the area visiting <relative> - I'm from down in <state> now. I really wish there were places like this there. You can't get good pizza there." Every fucking day there are customers from out of town complaining about the shitty pizza from where they currently live. See the blue and yellow areas on that map above? Invariably, they're living in those areas. Rarely does someone complain who lives in the red area.
Ditto for another regional favorite - Buffalo style chicken wings. You can get chicken wings all over the country now. You can get chicken wings in just about any restaurant around here too. And, in at least half of the places, the quality of wings is nearly identical to the wings you'd get anywhere else in the country. But, ask a local "where can you get the best wings around here?" Try the wings at the 2 or 3 locations that are recommended - you won't find that quality of wings elsewhere in the country.
Roast beef sandwiches? Forget it. Outside of western NY, you cannot get a sandwich of the quality served by the best beef on weck restaurants in our region. Nothing compares.