I’m nothing if not a sucker for advertising, especially advertising that’s a tie-in between food and movies, among two of my favorite things!
Enter … The Batman, specifically, The Batman Calzony from Little Caesars.
Now, I know what you may be thinking: Little Caesars pizza? Yes! As I’ve always stated, there is no such thing as bad pizza, only better pizza. So, obviously, there is better pizza out there than Little Caesars, but for their price point and if you’re looking to be particularly raccoon-like on a Saturday night while watching Saved by the Bell (yes), then Little Caesars it is.
Plus, again, I’m a sucker for advertising and once I get something in my head, I gotta go for it. I couldn’t resist that Batman-symbol shaped pizza calzony-looking thing.
I started to say, I’ve actually never had one of Little Caesars’ calzones before and then in my research (yes), I realized, Little Caesars doesn’t do calzones. Instead, their menu offers crazy bread, stuffed crazy bread, pizzas (Detroit-style deep dish and thin crust with various topping offerings), a slices-n-stix combo pizza, wings, and their cookie dough brownies.
This is Little Caesars’ first foray into the calzone and it’s in conjunction with The Batman, the latest Batman film starring Robert Pattinson as Batman, out on March 4. Which yes, I already have my tickets for the upcoming Thursday screening and in fact, I bought them weeks ago. I mean, it’s the first solo Batman film since The Dark Knight Rises in 2012 and each Batman film in the Christopher Nolan trilogy was an event film at the theater for my friends and I. A decade later and nothing has changed (except uh, friends are in other places now).
Anyhow, FOOD. The Batman Calzony comes in pepperoni and cheese, and of course, I got the pepperoni one. I should note, Little Caesars is known for their pizzas basically being “hot and ready” as soon as you order it, but with this being a little … extra, as the kids say, I did have to wait about eight or nine minutes for it. That’s still a good 10 minutes less than a traditional franchise pizza place, and considerably less than a fancier place.
I have to say. The first thing one notices with food is its smell of course, and when I usually get Little Caesars (I typically get a large pepperoni pizza), I can’t say the smell is exactly appetizing. It reminds you more of a school pizza than anything. If cheapness had a smell …
Yet. With this Batman Calzony, it smelled phenomenal. Seriously. Once I got that bad boy Batman in my vehicle, I kept saying to myself on the way home, dang, that smells good.
The next thing with food is the visual. Now, visually, it obviously doesn’t look anything like the nice press release photo from Little Caesars, with all due respect to the gentleman at my local Little Caesars who prepared it:
But hey, when I prepare food, I usually toss aesthetics by the wayside if it tastes good and this tasted GOOD. I was legitimately shocked by how much I liked this because again, I know what to expect with Little Caesars: Raccoon-level satisfaction for the price. This rose above raccoon-level, okay! That doesn’t sound like a great compliment, but this was genuinely good.
First and foremost, the Calzony part of it — that you see with the folded over flaps north and south — was the best part and what’s making me say this was genuinely good. It was gooey cheesy yumminess with that delicious garlic white sauce. Put that inside the Parmesan and buttery calzone-like crust and I wolfed it down, I’m not ashamed to say. I can’t review the actual pizza part of it with the pepperoni because I’m not that much of a raccoon (okay, I am) and saved it for later today.
The Batman Calzony also comes with Little Caesars trademark crazy sauce (what’s up with them calling everything crazy? I don’t get the tie-in), which of course I dipped that gooey calzonyness in and that added even more deliciousness to the overall proceedings.
In other words, yes, this is 100 percent a marketing gimmick that worked on me to go pay $7.99 (plus the $2 or whatever for a 20-ounce Pepsi — yeah, I was very decadent last night!), but the best of the marketing gimmicks when it comes to food are the ones that rise above their gimmick and are good on their on accord. Like with a lot of the gimmick cereals I taste test on the blog, some make it seem like taste is secondary to the gimmick and it shows. This one actually tasted good and was worth the extra $3 compared to the traditional $5 pizza.
If you’re not a snob about your pizza and don’t mind Little Caesars, then I recommend getting this ahead of The Batman! Now, I can confidently go into the first Batman flick in a decade knowing I was properly decadent.
Plus, it must be said, eating a sort of Bat-shaped Calzony is better than eating an actual bat-shaped bat (yes, I will be a snob about not eating bats).
Milam's Musings 