Today, we are reviewing Little Caesars Round Cheese Pie. This is the second of a six-part series called the Cheese Pizza Challenge. The concept is simple: I visit six chain pizza shops and review six similar cheese pies. The goal is to rank how the cheese pies stack up.
Little Caesars was founded in 1959 by Mike and Marian Illitch. The first location was in a strip mall in Garden City, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit. There are more than 4,000 Little Caesars restaurants in the United States, and Little Caesars is the third-largest pizza restaurant chain behind Pizza Hut and Domino’s.
The Construction
The Cheese Pizza Challenge involves trying similar round cheese large pizza options from various pizza chains. Little Caesars offers several Crusts, but its standard Round option falls closest to the other pizzas in the Challenge. A large style was selected. The standard baking option (as opposed to well done) was used. Normal amounts of sauce and cheese were used. Since this is a cheese pizza challenge, no other toppings were used. This pizza was made to order.
- Crust: Standard Round
- Size: Large
- Cheese: Mozzarella w/ Muenster (Normal Amount)
- Sauce: Pizza Sauce (Normal Amount)
- Diameter: 13 1/2″
- Weight: 1.90 lbs (including box)
- Bake: Standard
- Location Purchased: Indian Trail, NC
- Price: $9.50
- Pies Purchased: 1
The Experience
Crust
According to Little Caesars, the dough is made in-house daily. When it came to Little Caesars Round Cheese pie, the crust simply was not good. This crust was too soft and too doughy. There wasn’t much crispness on the bottom or the edges. The bottom of this pizza was too floppy as well. Overall, flavor-wise, the crust was lacking.
This pizza was ordered with a standard bake option. There was a well-done option, but I’m not sure it would have helped here.
Score: 0.5 out of 2.5 points
Sauce
The best part of this Little Caesars pizza was the sauce. It had a nice tomato base with enough seasonings to satisfy. There was an option for extra sauce (which I probably still would go for), but in this case, I didn’t find the normal amount of sauce to fall short.
Score: 1.5 out of 2.5 points
Cheese
The ingredients listed both part skim-mozzarella and muenster cheese as making up the cheese blend. The mozzarella is the dominant cheese in the blend. I am a fan of Muenster cheese, but I don’t think it works here. The cheese would have better been served as 100% mozzarella here.
I prefer the “burnt bubble” effect for the cheese, giving it a slight crisping layer on the surface. This pie had it for the majority of the pie, but there was still some unevenness across the pie. As you can see in the picture above, a few spots did not have that.
Score: 1.0 out of 2.5 points
Intangibles
There are three intangibles I look for in a pie:
- “Orange Glow”: This is created when the cheese melts into the sauce. It’s enhanced when the cheese is crisp. The Little Caesars Round Cheese Pie didn’t have much of an orange glow, and there wasn’t much crispness.
- Well-defined Edge: This is when the crust is slightly thicker and doesn’t have sauce and cheese over it. In this case, there was a well-defined edge on this crust, but perhaps it was too big.
- Firm Bottom Crust: The bottom pizza should not be floppy, nor should it taste doughy. As mentioned above, this pizza was floppy and doughy.
The crust definitely took this pizza down, and to a lesser extent, the cheese did. You really cannot have a solid pizza on the sauce alone.
Score: 0.75 out of 2.5 points
OVERALL ASSESSMENT
You pay for what you get. Yes, you can get a whole pizza for under $10.00, but other than the sauce, there was not much to write home about. As mentioned, the crust was the big miss here. Little Caesars might do better with some of its other options, such as the Detroit pizza, but you can do better elsewhere, even with the $9.50 price point for the Round Cheese Pizza.
Summary
| Crust | 0.50 |
| Sauce | 1.50 |
| Cheese | 1.00 |
| Intangibles | 0.75 |
| Total | 3.75 |
Score: 3.75 (out of 10 points)
Value: Below Average
Cheese Pizza Challenge Standings (Thru 2 Pies)
Each category is worth 2.5 points, with a maximum of 10 points per pizza.
| Pizza | Crust | Sauce | Cheese | Intangibles | Score | |
| 1 | Domino’s Hand Tossed | 1.00 | 1.50 | 1.25 | 1.25 | 5.00 |
| 2 | Little Caesars Round Cheese Pie | 0.50 | 1.50 | 1.00 | 0.75 | 3.75 |
Acknowledgment
Special thanks to Charlie Minato at Halfwheel, who suggested including the measurements and weight of the food products and the store location. We will use this information in our food product assessments going forward.
Photo Credits: Cigar Coop
