After months perfecting the recipe, Pizza Hut in Australia have released the world’s first Doritos crust pizza.

What the hell is it? Is it good? Is it disgusting? Will it change the way pizza is consumed in this country?

The Guardian Australia newsroom dialled 131166 and put the Doritos crunchy crust pizza to the test.

Less intense than the Double Down: Nick Evershed

This Doritos-encrusted pizza falls firmly under the genre of extreme fast food, much like KFC’s infamous Double Down, or Pizza Hut’s previous foray into the world of inserting other foods into other foods – the hotdog stuffed crust.



I’ve tried the Double Down and I can say eating a slice of this pizza is a very similar experience, albeit a tad less intense. The Doritos are scattered around the edge and had mostly fallen off my slice, so I had to scatter them back over the pizza. Mostly burnt by the oven, the chips add a crunchy aspect to a normally un-crunchy foodstuff. The crust is stuffed with cheese, too, which sort of goes with the Doritos in a terrible festival nacho-ish way.



This would be better with, or after, a few beers, I reckon. You definitely need something to wash the layers of salt and fat out of your mouth post-pizza.

I want to apologise to an old Italian person: Michael Safi

Apart from inspiring the urge to find an elderly Italian person and apologise, the Doritos-encrusted pizza left me thinking how the boundaries of decency shift so quickly.

Charred around the edges.

It’s an idea my colleague Adam Brereton has articulated before. Simply by existing long enough, things that once seemed insane – say stuffing the cavity of a pizza with cheese – gradually become acceptable, allowing caloric pioneers such as Pizza Hut to push the limits even further. Clearly, that bit where the crust meets the topping is the next frontier.

Most of the corn-chip fragments were charred black. They were the lucky ones. The rest were soaked through with cheese grease and congealed into a soggy mush. Nor was there any attempt to balance the flavour of the Doritos with the topping. The chips are an afterthought and ,at $3 a pop, poor value for money. Why not buy your own Doritos, scatter some, and scoff the rest?

Still, the chips gave the pizza a satisfying crunch and contrasted nicely with the doughy base and the creamy cheese in the crust. The highlight was an interesting nuttiness that lingered on my palette. It was the carbon that formed on the blackened chips, like burnt toast.

An acquired taste: Jessica Reed

You like your nachos on the dry side: no cream, no guacamole, just cheese and tortillas. You like your pizzas like you like your pumpkin spice lattes: basic. You like pepperoni, especially if it tastes like supermarket sausage with a bit of tabasco on it. You like underbaked dough filled with mozzarella. You like said mozzarella to be chewy and lukewarm. You like your Doritos on the burnt side, crushed in little pieces. But most importantly you like your Doritos and your sub-par cheesy dough pizza to be served together. You will love the Pizza Hut Doritos pizza.

What happens when you need ‘dirty nachos’?: Nikki Marshall

You know when sometimes things that are so wrong turn out to be so very right? This isn’t one of those times. This is a fairly decent chain-store pepperoni pizza with a sprinkling of burnt corn chips. Yes, burnt. And they taste yucky.

It’s worth saying here that on the right night, when dirty nachos are what you need, there’s nothing better than hot, cheesy corn chips. Just think of those slightly scorched bits covered in browned, bubbling cheese you get on a gooey plate of nachos fresh from the grill. Sorry. You won’t find them here. These chips don’t touch the cheese.

There is plenty of molten cheese, though, so snaps for that. And the crouton-like crunch of the few non-overdone corn chips gives a bit of bite to a soggy-bottomed pizza. But no. Just no.

Potential to be misunderstood: Brigid Delaney

The Doritos crunchy crust pizza has potential to be misunderstood. From ads it appears to be just a pizza with a few Doritos chucked on it.

The reality is more complicated. Yes there are Doritos sprinkled on top – in a haphazard fashion, it seems (I could not detect a pattern to the spread of the chips). Also most of the Doritos were charred.

But on first bite, it’s clear this is a complex pizza. Under the Doritos is a crust made of dough, and under the dough is white, gooey cheese. Masticating is confusing. Just when your mouth thinks it has a handle on the texture – it all changes.

But do the Doritos add to the experience?

I think so. The crunch contrasted with the goo of the cheese and chew of the crust, plus the salty sweatiness of the pepperoni meant that chewing this thing is a weird, but pleasurable experience, rather like hugging a seal covered in barnacles.



