Tag Archives: pizza

Food, Main

Part Mexican, Part Italian — The Return of Taco Bell’s Mexican Pizza

1 Comment

If you were to take the hottest, most delicious slice of pizza you’ve ever had and combine it with the most tantalizing Mexican dish you ever tasted, the results would be… well, pretty far from Taco Bell’s Mexican Pizza, which returns to restaurants next month after a two-year hiatus.

What is it about the disappearance of fast food items that makes us crave them? Back when the McRib was a regular item on the McDonald’s menu, the restaurant could barely give them away. In 1985 the pork(ish) sandwich vanished, not to be seen for another ten years, when it was brought back as a seasonal item. Today, people line up around the block each December to buy them. Absence truly does make the arteries grow fonder.

The rising cost of ingredients, followed by a decrease in sales, are the two most common reasons our favorite items fade away. McDonald’s cited the rising price of pork shortly for the McRib’s first long vacation. In 2020, Taco Bell removed all items containing potatoes from their menu for the same reason. For the record, Susan and I were once offered 400 pounds of potatoes for $20 while living in Washington state, minutes from the Idaho border.

As for the Mexican Pizza, Taco Bell claimed to have pulled the item from menus in 2020 due to the cost of its packaging. According to the company, the Mexican Pizza’s packaging “accounts for over 7 million pounds of paperboard material per year in the U.S.” (Somehow, Taco Bell remains unconcerned about the amount of napkins and toilet paper their customers use each year.) Remember those Styrofoam clamshells McDonald’s used to serve all their burgers in? Someone complained that they weren’t biodegradable, and now half of McDonald’s burgers come in cardboard containers and the other half come wrapped in paper. It’s not that hard. You know what else comes served in cardboard? Real pizzas. Figure it out, Bell.

Taco Bell’s Mexican Pizza consists of two crispy flour shells with beans, beef, tomatoes, cheese, and pizza sauce. Except for pizza sauce, Taco Bell still serves all those things. Have you ever looked down Taco Bell’s make table while sitting at the drive-thru window waiting for your order? There’s like eight ingredients there. It would be like if they kept selling tacos but quit selling tostadas, which I just remembered they also did in 2020. Tostadas are quite literally flat tacos with red burrito sauce. Leave a Taco Bell taco out long enough and it will eventually become a tostada.

According to the company, Taco Bell decided to bring back the Mexican Pizza after receiving nearly 200,000 signatures in a Change.org petition. So, remember that. Taco Bell removed Mexican Pizzas from their menu to save the planet, and brought them back because 1/570th of Justin Bieber’s follows on Twitter signed an online petition.

Look, I get it — Taco Bell’s Mexican Pizzas are as authentic as Chinese Fortune Cookies. But have you ever tried eating a hot slice of pizza while driving? It’s not that easy. Starting next month for only $4.99, Mexican Pizzas are back.

Viva la Pizza, and Yo quiero Taco Bell!

Main

Humble Pie

On Sunday, Dad treated the family to some pizza at Humble Pie in Edmond. None of us had been there before, but with a slogan that read “Humble Pie: Authentic Chicago-Style Pizza,” we hoped it would be good.

When you’re in Oklahoma, “Chicago-Style” doesn’t mean much. Take pizza, for example. It could mean a flat, sausage pizza like Frank’s Pizza, a more traditional pie like Aurelio’s, or something else entirely. We get that a lot around here. It’s like half the time, people call their food “Chicago-style” because they went to Chicago once and “sorta kinda” remember what the food looked like. It’s just like when someone advertises Chicago-style Hot Dogs. People manage to screw that up all the time. It ain’t a Chicago dog unless I have to pick off the tomatoes.

Humble Pie serves three sizes/styles of pizza: the deep-six (6″), Chicago-style (16″), and New York-style (22″). I stole the following two pictures from Humble Pie’s website:

As you can see, the Chicago-style is a (very) deep dish pizza, while the New York-style is a flatter, more traditional pizza. You know, come to think of it, I had pizza twice in New York this year and both times it was a giant, flat pizza with big floppy pieces that you had to fold in half to pick up.

We got to the restaurant around 11:40 and discovered that they didn’t open until noon, so we killed half an hour and came back. By the time we got back, the restaurant was packed! We were lucky to get a table for five. The people arriving after us found themselves waiting 20-30 minutes for a table. We decided that was a good sign!

Humble Pie’s has about a dozen specialty pizzas with names like the Bermuda Triangle, The Samoan, Buffalo Chicken, the Greek Goddess, The Garden of Eden and Mushroom Madness, but in the end we went with a traditional Chicago-style Meat Lovers, with two deep-six pizzas for the kids. We were told that it would take 25-30 minutes for the pizzas to arrive, which was about right. For an appetizer we had an order of HP’s “Bottomless Pretzel Basket”, which according to the menu is “Seasoned With An Addictive Secret Blend Of Tang And Spice.” We weren’t sure what the secret blend of flavors were. Susan guessed spicy mustard and maybe lime.

The restaurant was busy enough that there wasn’t room to get up and walk around while we waited. If we had been able to get up and walk around, we could have looked at the pictures. One wall is decorated with pictures from Chicago; the other, New York.

When the pizza arrived I was initially a little disappointed in its size. At most pizza chains, a large pizza is 15″, and even though this one was supposed to be 16″, it seemed a lot smaller than a traditional large pizza. Anyway, here comes the part of the review you are probably waiting for: it was delicious! Absolutely great! We all loved it. The pizza was definitely Chicago-style, with toppings on the bottom and sauce on top, covered with Parmesan cheese. Although my initial reaction was the pizza was too small, probably due to the thick crust, Dad and I only ate two pieces each. For what it’s worth, the crust was cooked to perfection — thick enough to support the heavy toppings, but not overcooked or crisp. Just really, really good.

Other than a map and the menu (sans prices), Humble Pie’s website doesn’t offer much information about the business. You’ll learn more by going there, which if you enjoy delicious pizza and are looking for something a little different, I highly recommend you do. Friendly services, decent prices, and delicious pizza.

Humble Pie
1319 S. Broadway
Edmond, OK