Hey there folks. Would you trust a chef with a tomato for a hat?

Apparently, I would. Up for review are these frozen mini Tony’s Deep Dish Pizzas which feature a chubby mustachioed dude wearing a chef’s hat that’s actually an enormous tomato. Uhrg. I’m trying to think of some more tomato chef hat jokes but nothing’s forthcoming, so I’ll skip to the review. (10 Magic Bonus Points if you can make up an interesting joke with tomatoes and chef hats. And please, keep it clean…)

I’ll be the first to admit I’m no expert in pizza. In fact, I’ve almost always followed the Cheap Eats path and avoided the pre-made frozen stuff in lieu of alternatives like the popular Ghetto Pizza. As for authentic restaurant pizza - ah, c’mon… Los Angelenos like me are more apt to put BBQ chicken, goat cheese and arugula on our pies. (I’m sure I’ll get tons of pizza peeps hotly writing in about the tons of places you can get authentic, non-gourmet pizza around L.A.)

But I have to admit that I’ve eyed these small frozen pies everytime I’ve been to Albertson’s in the past several months. They almost always have their own special display outside the frozen aisle, often near the Banquet Frozen Dinners. At a buck each, I really had to use some will power to avoid them. But I caved the other day, after not eating lunch before going to the supermarket (I believe that’s Cheap Eats Manifesto Rule No. 23, NEVER go food shopping on an empty stomach).

So, lucky readers you’re going to get more pics of junk food instead of fiber cereal or boiled vegetables. Hooray!

I actually didn’t even check if they have larger version’s of Tony’s pizza, nor did I check and see what other comparable other brands there are. (I’m sure someone will let me know). There are several different varieties of these smaller Deep Dish Pizzas, including plain cheese, pepperoni and supreme - all the same price. I never understood this Quirk of Frozen Pizza - plain cheese is just as expensive as a combo or supreme. I think it’s like that for many varieties… you just seemed to be getting jacked if you get the plain cheese. I got the Supreme.

Tony’s is made by a company called Schwan Food Company which I know nothing about (and, I’m sure someone will let me know about that too. Boy, am I lazy!). The individually packaged pizzas are about 5 inches in diameter and about an inch deep. Helpfully, they say “Cook Before Serving” like 3 different places on the package. I can’t imagine why you’d try to eat it raw…

I guess I was actually really surprised when I took my first look at the frozen pizza - I had purposely kept my expectations very low, because at a buck, what do you expect? The pizza was actually packed pretty nicely with different ingredients including cheese, sausage, green/red peppers, pepperoni and onions. I don’t want to read you the ingredients list because it would take Til Tuesday (hello, Aimee Mann reference) to do that. Plus, “Gluco-Delta-Lactone” is better left to exist in small print on a wrapper than on a food blog…

When I was checking out at the market, the doofus cashier was literally TOSSING my packages a foot or so in the air down the checkout belt. I winced as these unprotected (no box) frozen pizzas hit the hard bagging area… I totally expected the pizzas to be either broken or with the toppings all over the place. I don’t know how they manage to keep everything on it, but it must have something to do with the fact that they’re going for deep dish so the pizza dough shell is sort of scooped out and the toppings are compressed inside.

They have instructions for microwave and oven. I actually made this in the toaster following the oven instructions of 357 deg F for 25 minutes. I’m wondering how the microwave method would work on this - certainly I’d think the crust would suffer a bit.

You know - I have to say that for a dollar, I was very impressed. It looks very similar to what the pic on the wrapper shows - that’s better than I can say for any number of frozen Banquet meals. The crust was crispy on the bottom, nicely crunchy when I bit into it with the inner being more bready. I haven’t had much experience with deep dish pizza, but this is what I expected a mini deep dish to taste like - lots of gooey cheese and toppings packed into a thick pie. The pizza was blazingly hot - I burned the roof of my mouth on it before I could douse it with some water.

One of my only complaints was that the sauce was a bit too bland - needed a bit more herb flavoring or something. Since their logo is a guy with a tomato for a hat, I thought they might have made the tomato sauce taste better. I would have given the pizza an even higher score if they fixed that. This definitely beats my ghetto pizza aspirations hands down on taste, texture and convenience. I might even hazard to guess that it’d come out pretty close on price too when you consider that you’d have to have some sausage, pepperoni and bell peppers on hand to make something like this. I’d definitely think of stocking up on a few for midnight snacks.

Ok, now start the flood of pizza experts writing in…

Price: $1.00
Found At: Albertson’s
Cheap Eats Score: 8/10