Wandering American

The other day my wife and I got a hankering for some good old fashioned American style pizza. There’s a Pizza Hut nearby but, despite masquerading as a legitimate Italian restaurant here, the franchise is just as crappy as in the US. So we decided to hit up the Papa John’s place over in Jiangnanxi. Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t PJ’s supposed to be better than Pizza Hut? That’s what people always tell me back in the states. The culinary abomination that I was forced to eat would have shamed Papa John himself and make him quit the pizza business. The following is a review of sorts of Papa John’s Pizza in Guangzhou.

We got to the restaurant and sat down. The waitress brought us some lemon water and menus. Everything looked great. I couldn’t wait to tear into my all-time favorite, Hawaiian pizza. We ordered a small pizza along with some potato wedges and bread sticks as appetizers. While we waited for our food we passed the time by fiddling with our cameras and phones and chatting away. This went on for about 30 minutes. The place wasn’t particularly crowded so what was the hold up? From where I was sitting I could see right into the kitchen and there were loads of people milling around, looking busy.

Just as I was about to ask the waiter what the problem was, they brought us our bread sticks. A 30 minute wait for bread? Word? We waited a little longer and then I impatiently tore into the appetizer. The bread was hard as a rock and was only edible after dunking it into the mysterious yellow sauce that accompanied it. I was just sitting there, wondering how it was even possible to screw up bread, when they brought out the pizza and potato wedges. I was horrified to discover that everything was cold. The cheese on the pizza had hardened and had a rubber-like consistency, pineapples were sparse, and the bread was tough. Also, it seemed as though someone had sat the potatoes in the fridge for a few minutes and had already turned flimsy. Really, I got the impression that the waiters had forgotten about the order and it had been sitting somewhere for about 15 minutes or so. I looked around and saw the Chinese patrons enjoying their equally terrible pizza. Didn’t they know what good pizza was? But, when I think about it, if all I had was this garbage as a reference point then I wouldn’t know what good pizza was either. =(

It’s sad that a restaurant whose slogan is “Better ingredients. Better pizza.” had absolutely none of either. We forced ourselves to finish the meal but by the end of it I was ready to murder someone. Once we got home we then proceeded to get hammered drunk in order to drown out the memory of the abominable pizza with sweet spicy rum and beer. The verdict? 0 out of 5 stars. Papa John needs to fly over here and get his retard crew in order.