Pizza Review: Dominos vs Papa John’s

Pizza Review: Dominos vs Papa John’s – Summary

Who had the best cheese pizza?

Dominos had the best cheese pizza in this review.  7 in favor of Dominos.  5 in favor of Papa John’s.

Taste test

Participants: 12
Date of tasting: 2/15/2023

Average Ratings for Specialty Pizzas:

• Dominos – Memphis BBQ Chicken: 7.6
• Papa John’s – Ultimate Pepperoni: 5.5
• Papa John’s – Meatball: 7.3

Cheese Pizzas: Comparing the two

Dominos Cheese Pizza

Today’s cheese pizza winner with 7 votes to 5.

The Domino’s buttery garlic crust and robust signature sauce took the day by a narrow margin.

Those were the two distinguishing factors.

The cheeses were very similar between the two pies but the crusts and sauce were very different.

Reviewers who liked Domino’s cheese pizza were all about the crust and sauce.

Papa John’s Cheese Pizza

If they’d only used the garlic butter dipping sauce…

The folks who liked Papa John’s better were super focused on the sweeter sauce.

I feel like if the garlic butter sauce was used earlier on in the taste testing, the voting might have gone differently.

The Specialty Pizzas

Dominos Memphis BBQ Pizza: 7.6

A great combination of bbq and garlic

For our highest-rated specialty pie today it was how the flavors blended that gave it such top marks.

There were a few comments bringing up the love for the garlicky crust (like with the cheese pizza).

It didn’t get a 10, but it did earn a 9 and a bunch of 8’s.

This is another of the BBQ pizzas that didn’t use red onions but most of us didn’t mind.

Papa John’s Meatball Pizza: 7.3

If only it were the pizza I wanted… 🙁

If you’ve read any of these reviews, you know this is the section where we have specialty pizzas to review — but this wasn’t a specialty pizza.

It was supposed to be.

It was supposed to be the meatball pepperoni specialty pizza.  Sounds good, doesn’t it?

Instead, we just got the regular meatball.

No one trying this pizza knew it was supposed to have pepperoni so there weren’t any complaints.  Because the meatballs were so good on their own the pizza actually got a really great average score of 7.3.

Papa John’s Ultimate Pepperoni Pizza: 5.5

It wasn’t all that.

Calling a pizza the ultimate pepperoni creates some big expectations.

This pizza didn’t meet those expectations.  It was a pepperoni pizza with some extra pepperoni.

Those who were more critical of the pizza said it had too much sauce.

(Personally, if the sauce is good at a pizza place I almost always get extra sauce on purpose — so maybe they’re just weird.  Or I’m weird.  I might be weird.  In either case, there was quite a bit of sauce on it.)

What we really wanted to try was the Shaq-a-Roni but it wasn’t available anymore.  They recently stopped serving it so we chose the ‘ultimate’ pepperoni as a replacement.

I feel like we could have done better with a different pie.

Ordering Experience

Ordering from Papa John’s was weird and a little annoying.

I’m pretty sure I get sent to India to order a pizza in my own city.

The language barrier wasn’t terrible, but it was definitely noticeable.

I think it added just enough confusion that when I asked for the “meatball specialty pizza” I just got a meatball pizza.

It was partly my fault, for sure, but I feel like if that had been a person answering the phone at the actual restaurant they would have clarified, “Oh, you mean the meatball and pepperoni one?”.

Didn’t happen though.  I got a “yes sir” and a regular 1-topping meatball pizza.

I declined the survey at the end of my pizza order call which was weird because it wasn’t like I was calling customer service or technical support…  I was ordering a pizza.

Oh.  First, I tried to order the Papa John’s stuff online.  That didn’t work well at all.  I had to reset my password and then I couldn’t log into the site at all after the successful reset, not even in an incognito window.

(Papa John’s infrastructure needs some attention in multiple areas it seems.)

They took my card over the phone.  I ordered at 12:32 and the pizzas arrived at 1:02 pm.  Pretty great for the delivery time.

Dominos was an easy order

I used the website to order at 12:27 pm.  It arrived at 12:54.  Even better timing than Papa John’s.

It was a good day for delivery timing.  Ordering from multiple places has a bit more stress to it than just ordering from one place.

Tipped both drivers $5.

Sizes and Pricing

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