Living in Chicago taught me a few important things. 1) Your eyelashes can (and will) freeze together much easier than you’d expect them to, 2) “dibs” on parking spots is a very divisive, very serious thing, and 3) the best pizza isn’t the Chicago deep dish (which, I know, I know, some don’t consider “pizza” at all) but is instead the thin, crunchy crusted, party-cut, tavern-style pie.
But what if you’re not in Chicago? Well, I’m sure you have at least one local place that tries their hand at it. Even still, if you’re like me, you like to have a frozen pizza or two on standby for an easy, cheap dinner. And if you’re even MORE like me, a general frozen pizza guideline is, “The less crust, the better.” With the exception of the best frozen pizza, period (Motor City Pizza Co.), most frozen pizza crust, to put it bluntly, sucks. That’s why I was excited when I spotted Tombstone’s new Tavern Style Thin Crust Pizza.
Tombstone tends to be one of my preferred options when it comes to the low-end of frozen pizza. The crust isn’t too thick, the sauce isn’t applied too heavily, and the pepperoni version uses round slices and the little cubed kind. When they’re on sale, and I notice it, I’ll pick one up. Would I buy the new Tavern Style again? Eh. Probably not for more than a couple of bucks.
It’s offered in two versions: The Primo, featuring pepperoni, sausage, red onions, and banana peppers, and the one I tried for this review, the Let’s Meat Up (a brief aside about products everywhere using puns for names these days: what’s the deal?) featuring pepperoni, pork belly crumbles, and, in addition to mozzarella, cheddar cheese (The Primo only has mozz). The website copy further suggests that the sauce is “zesty” and the crust is “buttery.”
While I wouldn’t necessarily call the sauce “zesty,” it was mildly noticeable. It tasted like generic frozen pizza sauce. The crust was in no way buttery. It was bland and inoffensive, but it held up fine under the weight of the… okay, there was no weight to the pizza. The pepperoni— which was your run-of-the-mill round Tombstone pepperoni— was sparse. So, too, was the application of “pork belly crumbles,” which were salty and crispy. They reminded me, for better or worse, of pre-cooked bacon crumbles you get in a bag to put on a salad. I enjoyed their presence, as they were the only thing keeping this from being a completely pedestrian and unmemorable frozen pizza. The cheese types were indistinguishable from one another; you could’ve paid me a thousand dollars, and I’d have never been able to tell you it had mozzarella AND cheddar.
I’m willing to bet these will be quickly gone, like your dibs in some neighborhoods, and not exactly missed, like the sensation of your eyes freezing together on the Montrose Brown line platform at 7 a.m. in the middle of January.
Purchased Price: $5.99 (on sale)
Size: 19.8 oz
Purchased at: Hy-Vee
Rating: 5 out of 10
Nutrition Facts: (1/4 pizza) 350 calories, 19 grams of fat, 9 grams of saturated fat, 35 milligrams of cholesterol, 870 milligrams of sodium, 31 grams of carbohydrates, 2 grams of fiber, 5 grams of sugar (including 5 grams of added sugar), and 15 grams of protein.