Greetings, fellow food lovers! My name is Jeremy and I am honored and humbled to be joining the Epic Portions team. I have known John for several years; we used to work together and share/critique many a meal. (On a side note, if you ever need a projector malfunction fixed, John is your man.) I am a father of two (six year old and one year old) and currently a stay at home Dad, thanks to my lovely and talented wife who wishes she could wax poetic about food in her spare time. My duties include acting as primary cook for the family, and yes, that means many adventures in food. I will do my best to live up to the high standard set by John and Todd.

Now, on to the good stuff.

Now that I’m no longer working for the man, I have found that fast food has quickly disappeared from my diet. No more trips out of necessity for a quick meal, it’s just me and my daughter at home for lunch most days, and the opportunity to cook dinner for my family (almost) every night. It has been wonderful, lots of work and lots of dishes to clean but a quality meal is worth the cleanup. Being rid of the oppressive grip of fast food has been liberating to say the least. No more painful indigestion, no more annoyance with someone messing up my order, no more feeling guilty after the meal. I won’t say I’m forever through with fast food, but it had dwindled to a very rare event.

There is one chance that it could change. If a Chick-fil-a opens somewhere in Metro Detroit, I will be there faster than you can say buck-buck-buguckk!! Chick-fil-a is primarily a southern phenomenon, although it has reached its beak as far north as Indiana. It is a quirky operation, the owner is a devout Christian who has this odd habit of actually following the no work on Sundays commandment. In effect, all Chick-fil-a restaurants, be they franchise or corporate, are required to be closed on Sundays. Below is a photo of the founder:

I grew up in Atlanta and St. Louis, so this prodigious producer of prominent poultry won my heart at an early age. Since my life brought me to Michigan I have been denied this culinary delight. I’ve tried to fill the void. Wendy’s Spicy Chicken Sandwich? Please, you just lied to me three times. McDonald’s tried to bastardize a version (most likely by sending an intern to Chick-fil-a and reverse engineering) called the Southern Chicken Sandwich. This is a vile piece of food that made me weep real tears (that smelled of pickle juice or whatever the hell they used).

A couple years ago my previous job led me to Lafayette, Indiana for a day of coma inducing meetings. Imagine my surprise as I drove to the meetings when I saw… a Chick-fil-a!  My drive back to Ypsi was a true Epic Portions moment. I stocked up on more food than a Glenn Beck listener waiting for the apocalypse. Two Chick-fil-a sandwiches, 20 of their oh-so-delicious nuggets, and a trough of their waffle fries. That’s right, I said waffle fries. Plus they had Diet Dr. Pepper!!! I was in hypertension heaven.

If all you know of Chick-fil-a is the idiotic “Eat Mor Chikin” cows they use to peddle their food, please do not judge. Yes, the ad campaign sucks. Aside from being insulting to cows (unless George Orwell lied to me cows can not only spell, they can also be enslaved by totalitarian regimes) it is a far cry from the greatest fast food marketing campaign in history:

As the nearest Chick-fil-a is about three hours away, I now feel honor bound to take a road trip and see if it still holds the power it once did. My gluttonous Indiana trip aside (road trips make most food taste better) I hope I find it to be less enthralling than I once did. It is amazing how when you have children you actually begin to care about what you put into your body. Odd thing, to be setting an example for impressionable young minds by merely shoveling food down your gullet. I’m not that keen on poisoning my kids with fast food, so the sooner I let it go the better. Besides, where is the adventure in a uniform, below average, saturated fat laden meal? Goodbye to all that, I’ll save my dining out dollars for places that earn and deserve them. .

After reading about Dominos’ new pizza recipe in pretty much every food blog on the internet, I thought I would take advantage of my location, and actually try it out.  Currently, Ann Arbor, MI is the only Domino’s market serving the recipe.  The reason?  It all started here!  This is until December 27th, when it will be launched nation wide.

I’ve never been much of a fan of Domino’s pizza.  In fact, I’m not much of a fan of any pizza chains.  None of them have anything that comes close to any local pizza joint.  Domino’s seems to be among the worst, serving bland pizzas that lack flavored crust or variety.  Thankfully, Pizza Hut will always be around to claim the title of “Worst Pizza of all Time.”  Recently though, Domino’s has attempted to add new items to their menu such as the American Legends menu, baked subs, and pasta bowls, but their regular pizza remains as bland as ever.  I guess this is the reason they decided to revamp their recipe.

According to Domino’s, the recipe wasn’t just altered, it was completely re-done:

“2010 will be our 50th year in the business, and we are kicking it off with the most aggressive promotion in the history of our company,” said Domino’s Chairman and CEO David A. Brandon. “This is the biggest product introduction we’ve done since…well, pizza.”

The primary changes include:

Crust – A garlic seasoned crust with parsley baked to a golden brown.

Sauce – Sweeter, bolder tomato sauce with a medley of herbs and a red pepper kick.

Cheese – Shredded cheese made with 100% real mozzarella and flavored with just a hint of provolone.

I figured this was a pretty big deal in the test market, but decided to call and ask just to make sure I wasn’t wasting my hard earned money on an old Domino’s pizza.  The guy who answered the phone had no idea what I was talking about, and had to ask a manager about “some new recipe”.  After receiving confirmation, he advised me that they were just using a brushed on garlic sauce for the crust, a new red sauce, and a different cheese blend.  So basically they just caught up to the concept of actually applying flavor to crust, added a couple new seasonings to their sauce, removed the “fake mozzarella”, and added a hint of provolone?  This wasn’t sounding good.

Upon my first glance, I couldn’t find much that was different.  It looked like the same Domino’s pizza I’ve been eating for the last 25 years.  The only difference I could see was that the cheese looked a little thicker.  Pretty sure that was from the pizza guy just using too much, though.

The crust looked exactly the same, except for a few green flakes and what looks like a combination of butter and Parmesan cheese.  I expected to see clear evidence of parsley and garlic, but I couldn’t even tell from appearance that this crust was any different than before.

The garlic and parsley flavor was actually pretty good, despite being nearly invisible.  The crust resembles garlic bread, and is little better than the old crust.  Of course, if you go to Hungry Howie’s this is a pretty standard thing.  Even DiGiorno’s has a garlic bread pizza.  Nice improvement, but not too impressive.

The “100% real mozzarella” cheese blend tastes exactly like the old cheese blend.  I did notice a little difference in texture, but that might have just been from the amount of cheese.  I couldn’t tell where this “hint of provolone” was.  Didn’t taste anything but mozzarella.  The whole time I was just trying to figure out what wasn’t 100% real about the mozzarella being used before.

The sauce was actually a pretty nice improvement.  I was a little worried about the advertised sweetness of the new sauce, because I hate sweet pizza sauce.  To my surprise, sauce tasted less sweet than before.  I’m not sure if it was because of the addition of the red pepper, but the sauce was nicely balanced between sweet and spicy.  This was the most impressive change of the new recipe, which is good because their old sauce wasn’t much to talk about.

Bottom line, Domino’s decided to switch up their pizza a little bit to get rid of the odd taste of cardboard and made a couple nice improvements.  It’s not much of a change, and I think it’s more of a marketing ploy to get people eating their pizzas for a couple weeks.  I wouldn’t reccomend running out to try it, but next time you try the pizza you might notice a couple changes.