930 Portage StreetLike everything else, pizza seems to have gotten ridiculously expensive. Back in my (college) days, pizza was the cheap thing to order to the dorms. Less than $10 delivered. Granted this was late 1990’s/early 2000’s but still. It was cheap.
A couple of weeks ago, I ordered two 10-inch pizzas from my favorite pizza place near my house….I’m not going to name it because I don’t mean for this to be a slam on them…but it cost me $50 delivered.
That sucks. I love good pizza.
But sometimes you just gotta settle for cheap pizza.
J and the kids were not home when I left work last Friday night so I texted to see if they had dinner plans. She said no so I put in a pizza order.
I chose the Little Caesars in the Edison neighborhood. I don’t really like Little Caesars but I could get way more food for way less dollars than if I was ordering our typical Friday night pizza.
The Little Caesars I chose was the one on Portage Street just to the south of Jackson Street. The shop is kind of a cookie cutter stand alone shop on a stretch of Portage Street that is pretty commercial. It’s very similar in design to the Little Caesars on Park Street in the Northside Neighborhood.
This shouldn’t come as a surprise anyone and I’m just going to get it out of the way now, the regular pizza from Little Caesars sucks. It shouldn’t even be called pizza it’s so bad. The one you get for (or used to get anyway) as a Hot ‘n Ready is terrible and reason enough to never consider ordering from Little Caesars.
Fortunately, they do have other options that are much, much better.
I put my order in online before I left work for a Deep Dish pepperoni pizza, a thin crust half cheese, half pepperoni, and an order of Crazy Bread plus a 2 liter of Pepsi. I found a coupon online as well so all of that food cost me $24 out the door. That’s less than the price of one pizza at a lot of places.
Like almost all Little Caesars, this one on Portage Street is a carry-out only. There’s a counter and a couple of chairs to wait in but that’s pretty much it in the public space. Get your pizza and get out.
The thing I will say I really like about Little Caesars is the pizza portal. When you order online, you get an email when the pizza is ready with a code. There’s a touch screen in the middle of the pizza portal to enter the code or scan a QR code that also came in the email.
The door to the Pizza Portal opens up and all of the hot food is on a shelf. I always Crazy Bread with sauce and 100% of the time, they don’t put it in the portal. There were two other orders in the portal that had sauce with their Crazy Bread but not mine. I even checked to make sure it was on the ticket and it was. I was going to ask for it, but someone was being kind of a dick and complaining to the cashier about something so I just said screw it. I’m the only one that likes the sauce anyway.
I beat everyone home and since I’m the only one who really likes the Detroit Deep Dish, I popped that box open and started eating.
This is by far my favorite thing from Little Caesars. The pizza has a really good crispy edge going all the way around the pizza but the middle is so soft and airy. There could be a little more sauce and a little more cheese but it’s not so bad I would get upset by it. I could go for the pepperoni’s being a little crispier too but again, this is a way cheaper pizza than getting it somewhere else and it’s pretty delicious…especially when you consider the price.
The thin crust pizza was for everyone else. B still won’t eat pepperoni so I always have to get half cheese for him. He eats like three or four pieces then I end up with the rest for a later meal that always involve either a lot of Hot Honey or Hot Sauce.
This pizza is waaaaaaaaayyyy better than the regular crust. It’s actually a pretty thin and crispy pizza. Like the deep dish, the sauce is a little light but this one has more cheese and there was a golden brown crust to that cheese. My family always prefers thin crust and I’m so glad I realized Little Caesars has thin crust quite a while ago. It’s what actually made us stop with the Hot ‘n Ready (do they still do that) and go to ordering online.
The thing that has always been worth stopping at Little Caesars for is the Crazy Bread. The butter and Parmesan pieces of covered dough are the best….without or without sauce. We order two a lot of times because they go fast but I only got one this time. I ate one before everyone got home and when I came back, there was only one left.
Little Caesars was always such a treat growing up. The Pizza! Pizza! thing was always so dang cool. I’m sure it’s the nostalgia but I just remember the pizza tasting so much different.
As long as you don’t get the regular pizza, Little Caesars has some good offerings. I don’t hate it not matter how much grief I give them. I don’t love Little Caesars either but I do really like that you can still get decent pizza and not spend half your paycheck.