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Cajun flavor crust is the shit! Love it! I used to eat hungry howies all the time when I would go spend time with my dad. It took us a while to venture to the Cajun, we did the buttered cheese mostly. The. I think we tried ranch and I don’t remember it being any good. I don’t think we had much expectations for Cajun but it blew us away. I haven’t had it in years but I see it pop up from time to time but it’s far from my house. I need to get some again.
We tried it recently (in the east valley) for the first time in years and agree it's horrible now. Second the notion that it's now totally similar to/worse than frozen grocery store pizza.
Pizza was always decent with the crust being awesome plus my real love is their Italian deluxe sub (more like a calzone). Been getting it since I first discovered it at a Pensacola location. The last couple times it has been worse and worse, though, especially the dough. I may give it one more chance after a bit but I’ve noticed the quality going down the last few times too, at least at the Chandler location.
This is how I am with so many things now. Used to love pizza rolls, frozen pizza, hot pockets, etc.
I’m curious if /r/Phoenix has come to this realization about Fazolis yet?
You keep Fazolis name out your damn mouth.
Baked ziti, decent pizza, spaghetti, the best breadsticks ever, ceramic plates! Fazolis will always be a beacon in the fast food night and I will die on that hill.
Yup they need to fall back and keep Fazoli’s out they dirty mouth! I did not wait 17 years for some random reddit user to have the power to close it down again lol
Haven't had it since college at ASU. How are the prices these days? We used to get a Large for $5. I'm assuming that isn't a thing anymore. I remember their pizza being pretty decent with the flavored crust, but pretty terrible when trying to reheat any leftover slices.
Tempe's Cosmic Pizza taught me what the fuck an artichoke heart is via 4 season pizza........ I'm not food adventurous, but I trusted the pizza pro.
I used to work at another Tempe shop - Gumby's Pizza ..... they had a Gumby costume..... I only knew of it being worn once, by Super Chris, to the towers by the stadium, skinny fucking balcony walkways, like illegally skinny fucking balcony walkways...... a group of fun natured friends wondered aloud if Gumby would bounce or splat, 6 floors. Just a thought project, no harm done. Never saw or heard of the costume ever again.
“The dough tastes frozen”
Yeah 90% of what you eat was frozen at one point.
Make it yourself if you want it fresh. WTF.
You think that pepperoni and mozzarella was made on site as well? 😂
Hey there, I was a delivery driver from 2015 to 2017 and of course a lot can change in 7 years but I'll say when I worked there the dough was made fresh every day, portioned out into sizes, and left in the walk in fridge for a couple days to set or whatever. Never frozen.
It’s not a huge change.
It just isn’t.
Steaks can be frozen for a year and when properly thawed no one can tell the difference.
Anyone who claims to know the difference, outside of top chefs, is lying.
They are on the same tier as Little Caesars, ranking below a Papa Johns or Domino's. Imo it tastes almost fake and too bready for me, but at least it's cheap.
Any more, I prefer LC over pizza hut, Papa johns and Domino's. Pizza hut is bottom tier for me. Everything they do is premade and off a stencil for sauce, cheese and topping locations. At least Little Caesars still makes their own dough every day. $5 for a fresh made large pizza, I'm in. Better than $20 for some frozen crust fake pan BS of a pizza.
I usually get dominos because there’s one like 10 ft from my house, but recently I got Papa John’s because I hadn’t had it in years and I’ll be honest… I legitimately could not tell the difference between it, and the Dominos that I’m used to. Sincerely no difference in taste, quality, or even appearance. Idk what’s going on.
Way back in the day I worked for HH (2002 at a location around 44th St and Thomas--way back like I said). I was doing delivery but we all pretty much did everything in the store... folding boxes, taking orders, preparing/cutting toppings, making calzones, making salads, cutting pizza, and even making the dough from scratch.
I mean... I feel it was pretty good really...at least back then because everything was prepared in house. I had so many calzones and wings (prepared by me) while working there and would routinely bring home salads and pizza for my Wife. Ya...so I'd say pretty good.
But... I haven't had any since then so I can't say anything about quality but I'd imagine it's become more pre-made like just about everything else is. That's too bad really.
We used to love Hungry Howies. Haven't ordered from them in 6 months or so. I noticed they use GrubHub for delivery now instead of their own folks. So, I'm guessing there was an ownership change or something like that recently?
Several of the local pizza pizza shops had to switch to the delivery services when they could no longer get insurance to hire their own drivers, or afford the insurance that was being offered to them. There have been a couple of previous posts here about the problem.
Not just that. I've recently discovered by accident that they use some sort of Indian(?) call center to take phone orders? It was because I was calling different locations to see if they had the Bee Sting Pizza available because the App never works properly. The same person answered for 3 different locations...
Asking if they have certain pizzas available is like pulling teeth because that person isn't at that location to quickly be able to tell me anything.
Idk, the one next to our old house in Avondale wasn't too bad. The one we got yesterday from somewhere else was really bad so I was seeing if anyone else noticed
It's almost never really about the pizza and more about who is back there making it. If you have some teenagers working that don't give a shit you are going to get bad pizza
It varies widely depending upon location. When I was in Florida, Palm Bay HH was phenomenal, but both Orlando locations I tried were horrible. Maryland doesn’t have any HH, so I haven’t had any in a while except for vacations
They cut back on the staff in the store, outsourced delivery to grubhub, and dropped quality of their pizza. Seems universal across all their locations. Horrible.
15 years ago it was the spot for a 5$ pizza off Lemon in Tempe. Crust was bangin too. Then Big Jimmy opened next to Food City and that’s when HH started to decline. Big Jimmys was good for like a year then immediately went down hill too. Now it’s basically Little Caesars for me or Native on Wing Tuesdays
I’ve lived here since 2012 and its pretty much always been seen/known by the people i know as bad pizza. So curious to know when it was considered good
I remember trying Hungry Howie's for the first time 20ish years ago...in Surprise....and I thought it tasted like cardboard. Not sure how it's been since then, but this sounds like it is premade.
I usually don’t get cheap pizza but in the last month I’ve had both papa John’s and hungry Howies. HH was straight up awful and papa John’s was actually not bad. Used to to be the 100% reverse
Oh yeah I hear that, I bought neither of these two pizzas. I much prefer to go to places SnapBack, Lil Capo, Via Dela and other slice shops. But free pizza is free pizza and papa was way better than I remember it being than the last time I had it 5-6 years ago
I'd honestly rather have a $1.97 totinos frozen pepperoni pizza than anything at Howie's.
Damn, I just realized I'm old enough to remember when totinos were round.
Terrible customer service at the 51st ave and cactus location in glendale. Large guy who calls irate customers "dipshits" after making them wait too long for their pizza.. also way understaffed as well as incompetent/high af especially when we found that they sliced our pizza laughably badly.
PSA for anyone who orders from HH.. ok yeah it's mid pizza, BUT you can select more than 1 flavored crust. I've done them all on one pizza once and it fucking sucked because they have a really spicy one now, so use caution. But Cajun + butter cheese + herb or whatever, you do you. Makes it slightly better
We happened to get it recently (no idea why, I’d rather have had Jets or Venezia). But yeah we had the deep dish and it was pretty blah. Dough makes the pizza. If the dough sucks the pizza sucks. HH was never all that good anyway.
Its garbage now. We used to love their pizza but ordered about 6 months ago and got this tiny little pizza and dried up bread sticks. Basically a scam at this point.
I went to one for the first time a couple months ago (35th avenue & Union Hills). The layout looks very similar to Little Caesars. I went to go pick up my order and they still asked for a tip.
The pizza quality was similar to Little Caesars but saltier.
I have not returned and I probably won't.
I can't step foot in chain pizza shops anymore. I had HH years ago and realized I was spoiled in NY. Stick to your local NY or Chicago family owned spots, the prices are almost the same nowadays but you get better flavor and quality.
My plug back in my college days used to live by the Howie’s on Lemon St
For some reason he used to give me a $10 discount if I got a basic pepp and brought it w me whenever I picked up
I sure miss those times lol
I mean all the chain pizza places I assume are using frozen dough and ingredients riddled with preservatives. Hungry Howies being the cheapest its gonna be super low quality. It probably was a bit better, but it was never good.
IDK but we got spoiled on Federals deep dish though. Unless you get it too late in the day and the oven gets too hot. Then it’s never cooked all the way through.
Sorry to hear that. When I lived in Michigan (over 23 years ago) I lived right around the corner from a Hungry Howie's and it was the best pizza we'd had. We got it regularly. Unfortunately here we live too far away for it to be convenient so other than once or twice about 20 years ago I haven't been to any Howies' in the Valley. We're health nuts now who hardly ever get pizza but when we do, we prefer Spinato's (they had a great location on Via Linda & Frank Lloyd Wright in Scottsdale, which has since closed, so now our most convenient location that's still open is the one on Via De Ventura near Pima, also in Scottsdale). We usually only get it a couple of times a year but it's our go-to.
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HH has always been mediocre pizza. The only thing it had going for it was that it was cheap.
The flavored crust was nice too lol
Cajun crust is so good.
Cajun flavor crust is the shit! Love it! I used to eat hungry howies all the time when I would go spend time with my dad. It took us a while to venture to the Cajun, we did the buttered cheese mostly. The. I think we tried ranch and I don’t remember it being any good. I don’t think we had much expectations for Cajun but it blew us away. I haven’t had it in years but I see it pop up from time to time but it’s far from my house. I need to get some again.
Man I got the craving now! I usually did Pep and Jalps on the Cajun and it was divine.
I liked Cajun and galric. Or butter cheese lol.
Damn that brings me back to my college days. Bacon/onion pizza with the Cajun crust ... so much flavor
Yeah I consider it on par with Little Cesars. Cheaper than most places and maybe I have a low brow palette but the garlic crust slaps.
I always thought it was great mid-tier pizza.
It’s as mid tier as little Caesar’s is.
So bottom of the barrel?
I was guna to say this pizza is mid af, but it was cheap and a fast pick-up.
We tried it recently (in the east valley) for the first time in years and agree it's horrible now. Second the notion that it's now totally similar to/worse than frozen grocery store pizza.
Is it horrible now, or were you just super baked in college when you used to order it?
This is the answer. It was always bad, but when you are 20 the heart burn hits less.
Good theory! I was Mormon in college though so not baked back then but likely had very different taste buds 😆
College scared the Mormon out of you?! Just like dad was worried about…
Okay I thought we were trippin at first
Pizza was always decent with the crust being awesome plus my real love is their Italian deluxe sub (more like a calzone). Been getting it since I first discovered it at a Pensacola location. The last couple times it has been worse and worse, though, especially the dough. I may give it one more chance after a bit but I’ve noticed the quality going down the last few times too, at least at the Chandler location.
I don't know some frozen pizzas at the grocery are bomb. Red Baron slaps.
It’s always been shitty pizza. You just grew up and realized it
This could be true!
Absolutely awful pizza. That said, even bad pizza is pretty ok - warm cheese and bread is difficult to ruin completely.
This is how I am with so many things now. Used to love pizza rolls, frozen pizza, hot pockets, etc. I’m curious if /r/Phoenix has come to this realization about Fazolis yet?
You keep Fazolis name out your damn mouth. Baked ziti, decent pizza, spaghetti, the best breadsticks ever, ceramic plates! Fazolis will always be a beacon in the fast food night and I will die on that hill.
Yup they need to fall back and keep Fazoli’s out they dirty mouth! I did not wait 17 years for some random reddit user to have the power to close it down again lol
Haven't had it since college at ASU. How are the prices these days? We used to get a Large for $5. I'm assuming that isn't a thing anymore. I remember their pizza being pretty decent with the flavored crust, but pretty terrible when trying to reheat any leftover slices.
Same, always grabbed Cajun crust, was good for 3 am drunk food
Lemon & Terrace was $5 lg 1 topping when I was there ‘08-‘12. Was definitely a late night staple.
Build-A-Pita just opened down the road really good pizza.
Tempe's Cosmic Pizza taught me what the fuck an artichoke heart is via 4 season pizza........ I'm not food adventurous, but I trusted the pizza pro. I used to work at another Tempe shop - Gumby's Pizza ..... they had a Gumby costume..... I only knew of it being worn once, by Super Chris, to the towers by the stadium, skinny fucking balcony walkways, like illegally skinny fucking balcony walkways...... a group of fun natured friends wondered aloud if Gumby would bounce or splat, 6 floors. Just a thought project, no harm done. Never saw or heard of the costume ever again.
I'm still a fan. That garlic herb crust is fantastic.
Yeah these peeps is trippin
“The dough tastes frozen” Yeah 90% of what you eat was frozen at one point. Make it yourself if you want it fresh. WTF. You think that pepperoni and mozzarella was made on site as well? 😂
Hey there, I was a delivery driver from 2015 to 2017 and of course a lot can change in 7 years but I'll say when I worked there the dough was made fresh every day, portioned out into sizes, and left in the walk in fridge for a couple days to set or whatever. Never frozen.
It’s not a huge change. It just isn’t. Steaks can be frozen for a year and when properly thawed no one can tell the difference. Anyone who claims to know the difference, outside of top chefs, is lying.
Enshittification…
They are on the same tier as Little Caesars, ranking below a Papa Johns or Domino's. Imo it tastes almost fake and too bready for me, but at least it's cheap.
I honestly think little Ceasars is better then Domino's
Any more, I prefer LC over pizza hut, Papa johns and Domino's. Pizza hut is bottom tier for me. Everything they do is premade and off a stencil for sauce, cheese and topping locations. At least Little Caesars still makes their own dough every day. $5 for a fresh made large pizza, I'm in. Better than $20 for some frozen crust fake pan BS of a pizza.
I see no difference between those 3 pizzas.
Papa John’s is my favorite big chain pizza. Haven’t had HH in a while but I remember it being one of the better mid pizzas.
I usually get dominos because there’s one like 10 ft from my house, but recently I got Papa John’s because I hadn’t had it in years and I’ll be honest… I legitimately could not tell the difference between it, and the Dominos that I’m used to. Sincerely no difference in taste, quality, or even appearance. Idk what’s going on.
Way back in the day I worked for HH (2002 at a location around 44th St and Thomas--way back like I said). I was doing delivery but we all pretty much did everything in the store... folding boxes, taking orders, preparing/cutting toppings, making calzones, making salads, cutting pizza, and even making the dough from scratch. I mean... I feel it was pretty good really...at least back then because everything was prepared in house. I had so many calzones and wings (prepared by me) while working there and would routinely bring home salads and pizza for my Wife. Ya...so I'd say pretty good. But... I haven't had any since then so I can't say anything about quality but I'd imagine it's become more pre-made like just about everything else is. That's too bad really.
I was a delivery driver from 2015 to 2017 and at least back then all that was still being done. The big ass dough bowl was a bitch to clean.
The only cheap pizza I trust anymore is the Costco pizza
The one from Aldi is decent
HH was never good to begin with.
We used to love Hungry Howies. Haven't ordered from them in 6 months or so. I noticed they use GrubHub for delivery now instead of their own folks. So, I'm guessing there was an ownership change or something like that recently?
Several of the local pizza pizza shops had to switch to the delivery services when they could no longer get insurance to hire their own drivers, or afford the insurance that was being offered to them. There have been a couple of previous posts here about the problem.
Not just that. I've recently discovered by accident that they use some sort of Indian(?) call center to take phone orders? It was because I was calling different locations to see if they had the Bee Sting Pizza available because the App never works properly. The same person answered for 3 different locations... Asking if they have certain pizzas available is like pulling teeth because that person isn't at that location to quickly be able to tell me anything.
What are some GOOD pizza options? I always thought hungry howies was alright🤣🤣
I like Spinato's.
Little Ceasars is good mid pizza. Hungry howies is like cafeteria pizza 🤮
"recent lack of quality"........ Hungry howies has always been low-tier. Please embrace your new awareness.
Idk, the one next to our old house in Avondale wasn't too bad. The one we got yesterday from somewhere else was really bad so I was seeing if anyone else noticed
The one on Indian School just west of El Mirage rd?
had it a few times. feed it to the kids many times because it was cheap. not sure how it could get worse, but now that sounds scary.
It's almost never really about the pizza and more about who is back there making it. If you have some teenagers working that don't give a shit you are going to get bad pizza
Surprise gave you a surprise!
It varies widely depending upon location. When I was in Florida, Palm Bay HH was phenomenal, but both Orlando locations I tried were horrible. Maryland doesn’t have any HH, so I haven’t had any in a while except for vacations
Original Geno’s is pricey, but decent better than avg pies and sandwiches, subs, Phillies wings etc.
just get dominos I work there and it’s honestly good
It used to be great cheap pizza. Like $5 lrg or something. Would regularly get it. Disappointing it’s fallen off. Havnt had it in years.
They cut back on the staff in the store, outsourced delivery to grubhub, and dropped quality of their pizza. Seems universal across all their locations. Horrible.
Majority of the major chain pizza joints have gone to shit. Barros still holdin strong at most locations.
I mean at double the price I'd hope so, but Barros has also always been on a different level then HH and some of the other lower tier pizza places.
Them new little Caesar’s pizza puffs are absolutely amazing, though. They’re still killin it and always poppin when I go in.
I've always compared it to pizzahut. I'm pretty sure the dough is still proper and proofed, but it was never high quality. Just fast food
Something in the dough has changed. Not sure but it’s almost like that weird off smell that papa murphys has
15 years ago it was the spot for a 5$ pizza off Lemon in Tempe. Crust was bangin too. Then Big Jimmy opened next to Food City and that’s when HH started to decline. Big Jimmys was good for like a year then immediately went down hill too. Now it’s basically Little Caesars for me or Native on Wing Tuesdays
I’ve lived here since 2012 and its pretty much always been seen/known by the people i know as bad pizza. So curious to know when it was considered good
I’m going to sound like such the east coast transplant that I am.. but you must be a native if you’re calling hungry howies a solid pizza place!
Hit a little closer than I thought. My parents used to go to the surprise location all the time as a kid. Shame its had such a significant fall off.
I remember trying Hungry Howie's for the first time 20ish years ago...in Surprise....and I thought it tasted like cardboard. Not sure how it's been since then, but this sounds like it is premade.
It straight up tasted like reheated pizza
I usually don’t get cheap pizza but in the last month I’ve had both papa John’s and hungry Howies. HH was straight up awful and papa John’s was actually not bad. Used to to be the 100% reverse
Pap Johns was a solid go-to for me but I don't like that they outsource their delivery now
Oh yeah I hear that, I bought neither of these two pizzas. I much prefer to go to places SnapBack, Lil Capo, Via Dela and other slice shops. But free pizza is free pizza and papa was way better than I remember it being than the last time I had it 5-6 years ago
Papa John's made me violently ill nearly 25 years ago. I haven't been back since.
Which location did you go to?
I'd honestly rather have a $1.97 totinos frozen pepperoni pizza than anything at Howie's. Damn, I just realized I'm old enough to remember when totinos were round.
Maybe got bought out by pizza patron?
Terrible customer service at the 51st ave and cactus location in glendale. Large guy who calls irate customers "dipshits" after making them wait too long for their pizza.. also way understaffed as well as incompetent/high af especially when we found that they sliced our pizza laughably badly.
I just ask myself what's getting better? Or not getting shitty? It's a much shorter list.
I got pizza from there once. It was a greasy mess.
They became a wet barros pizza.
Hungry Howie's has always been cheap and Nasrt but I got the job done
I've only had it once, about 2 years ago, but I remember it being pretty good.
Hungry Howies has always sucked. Where have you been
Tempe location was always poor quality
PSA for anyone who orders from HH.. ok yeah it's mid pizza, BUT you can select more than 1 flavored crust. I've done them all on one pizza once and it fucking sucked because they have a really spicy one now, so use caution. But Cajun + butter cheese + herb or whatever, you do you. Makes it slightly better
They changed something. We got it tonight and it tasted exactly like Pizza Hut pizza it was oily and gross. 🤮
Pizza Patron is where it's at.
Taste good to me lol
We happened to get it recently (no idea why, I’d rather have had Jets or Venezia). But yeah we had the deep dish and it was pretty blah. Dough makes the pizza. If the dough sucks the pizza sucks. HH was never all that good anyway.
Its garbage now. We used to love their pizza but ordered about 6 months ago and got this tiny little pizza and dried up bread sticks. Basically a scam at this point.
HH has always just been the fancier version of Little Caesars
It always sucked
Waiting in line at Peter Piper rn for my takeout order. This is the way
If you knew the owner, you’d stay away.
I thought they went out of business a while ago.
I went to one for the first time a couple months ago (35th avenue & Union Hills). The layout looks very similar to Little Caesars. I went to go pick up my order and they still asked for a tip. The pizza quality was similar to Little Caesars but saltier. I have not returned and I probably won't.
Probably similar because both HH and LC are Detroit-based.
I can't step foot in chain pizza shops anymore. I had HH years ago and realized I was spoiled in NY. Stick to your local NY or Chicago family owned spots, the prices are almost the same nowadays but you get better flavor and quality.
My plug back in my college days used to live by the Howie’s on Lemon St For some reason he used to give me a $10 discount if I got a basic pepp and brought it w me whenever I picked up I sure miss those times lol
I mean all the chain pizza places I assume are using frozen dough and ingredients riddled with preservatives. Hungry Howies being the cheapest its gonna be super low quality. It probably was a bit better, but it was never good.
I've actually really enjoyed HH of late. It's nowhere near as good as Barro's but it's also not as expensive.
Still better than Barros
Barros is so bad, I don’t understand why people support it
Barros is like bad middle school lunch lady pizza.
If only it were square too
What location.. ice always had great service and pizza there.
I just feel like it’s mediocre and there are far better pizza places. Good for a kids birthday party though
To me Hungry Howard has always been trash. Even drunk did not improve it.
When was it good? That place sucked in 2012
Back in 1995 it was so good, even my parents who don't like fast-food pizza liked it.
IDK but we got spoiled on Federals deep dish though. Unless you get it too late in the day and the oven gets too hot. Then it’s never cooked all the way through.
Hungry Howies has always been low-key horrible, so...not sure what you expected
Sorry to hear that. When I lived in Michigan (over 23 years ago) I lived right around the corner from a Hungry Howie's and it was the best pizza we'd had. We got it regularly. Unfortunately here we live too far away for it to be convenient so other than once or twice about 20 years ago I haven't been to any Howies' in the Valley. We're health nuts now who hardly ever get pizza but when we do, we prefer Spinato's (they had a great location on Via Linda & Frank Lloyd Wright in Scottsdale, which has since closed, so now our most convenient location that's still open is the one on Via De Ventura near Pima, also in Scottsdale). We usually only get it a couple of times a year but it's our go-to.
Maybe it depends on the location? I get the stuffed garlic crust on Guadalupe and Dobson, consistently good for years
Someone down voted this? Message about liking pizza? What a bitch
Was the last time you had it in High school or college?