Pizza Hut (Park St. Location)

Short Summary:  Are you kidding?  It's Pizza Hut.

Location:  520 South Park Street, Madison, WI 53715

"Wait," we can hear you saying, "are these guys seriously reviewing Pizza Hut?  I mean...it's Pizza Hut."  And that's the truth.  But we want to cover the whole spectrum of Madison eateries, from the snootiest of glass-fronted dining rooms looking directly at the state capitol to the best place for undergrads to soak up their kegger with carbs. 

Enter Pizza Hut.  We picked the Park Street location because it's closest to two of us, allowing us to test their delivery skills as well (fun fact -- if you call a more distant location and ask for delivery their computer flags it automatically and instructs them to forward your call).  It also stacks up well against other Madison locations in the one area that really matters:  franchise-specific coupons.

Good Deals for the Regulars

People who never ordered delivery pizza on the regular (seriously?  who are you people?) may find this to be a little bit of inside baseball, but here's how it is:  big chains like Pizza Hut all have shared coupons that come out from the head office.  Those don't change.  You can use the same printed-off coupon here that you could in Massachusetts, or in Hawaii, or in Alabama as long as you can prove that you're an American citizen with a long-form birth certificate.

On top of that, local franchise owners occasionally mail out their own coupons.  Park Street leads the pack here.  Once you've placed a few orders you're on the list for regular mailings with free appetizers and similar bonuses -- just to remind you that they're still there and would like your money, please.  It works more often than not.

Cheese with a Side of Cheese

What?  Oh.  The food.  You'd like it if we talked about the food.  Fair enough.

It's Pizza Hut.  You're not getting innovative toppings on locally-sourced mozzarella all laid over a gluten-free crust here.  The crust and sauce are forgettable, the toppings are cheap, and the saving grace is that they smother it all in a truly excessive layer of thick, gooey cheese.  I shell out the extra buck for "stuffed crust," which just means that the boring crusty bit with no toppings is filled with melted cheese, because why the hell not? 

Stacked up against other fast-food delivery pizza joints, Pizza Hut is pretty gourmet.  The more-cheese-less-sauce balance might offend veterans of the Chicago deep dish scene, but when the sauce is cheap and tinny to begin with you're better off slathering it in cheese.  Pizza Hut is maybe a buck or two pricier than its immediate competitors (Dominos, Papa John's, etc.), but it's solidly ahead in the edibility race.

Our conclusion?  If you're set on ordering pizza tonight, you could do a lot worse.  On the other hand, you could just get your lazy self in a car, drive to a Madison eatery, and get a much better meal for the same price.  Some nights that trade's worth it, and some nights there's Pizza Hut.