Donatos

Last week I need to squeeze in a stop at the grocery store, making a dessert (for the brother-in-laws 30th birthday celebrations on Saturday...of course we tried it just to make sure it was worthy of gift giving), and cleaning the apartment before picking up pizza for pizza night. That led me to choose something close by. We've exhausted to pizza options near our place that aren't chains, so Donatos it was. Donatos is known for their thin crust pizza, but I wanted to keep the playing field as even as possible, so I got a hand-tossed Pepperoni pizza (they also do a thick crust, not sure what the difference is) and a thin crust Margherita pizza. The hand-tossed pizzas are supposed to come with a dipping sauce while the thin and thick crust pizzas do not. The Margherita pizza is one of their fresh mozzarella pizzas while the Pepperoni has their standard aged provolone. I thought I took a picture of the Pepperoni pizza with flash, but apparently I didn't, so I apologize for the poor quality of the picture.

How did they score?

(1-5 scale, 1=worst, 5=best)

Appearance (overall): 3.33
Aroma (overall): 3.63
Taste (overall): 3.42
Crust - 3.67
Cheese - 3.25
Toppings - 3.42
Sauce - 3.17
Pepperoni Pizza (overall): 3.50
Specialty Pizza & Menu Options: 3.67
X-factor: 3.17

As you can see, the scores are a bit low. Why? Well, for one, you should definitely take their word on the thin crust - it's far better than the hand tossed. The thin crust reminded Kevin of the St. Louis style crust from Cosmic Pizza, like a buttery cracker. The hand tossed pizza didn't even look hand tossed, it was too perfectly round. The cheese seemed at least partially imitation (at least on the Pepperoni pizza) since it didn't completely melt. Nik thought that the sauce was too sweet and I thought that the sauce needed more flavor. The Pepperoni pizza as a whole tasted like a mid-range frozen pizza to me, which would've been helped by the buttery garlic dipping sauce we were supposed to get with it, but, unfortunately, did not (and didn't realize it until I got home). Overall, I thought that Donatos was too expensive for the (lack of) quality of the pizza.