hello everyone this is running on empty food review well hello ladies gentlemen
and everyone watching welcome one and all to this newest edition of the running on empty
food review series i'm your host to the report of the week thanks for checking in so you ever
wake up one of those days it's early morning your alarm just goes off you're just opening your eyes
and the first thing that you think the very first thought of the day that enters your mind
god i hate pizza crusts i wish we could live in a world where pizza crusts never existed
oh i know i know there's a lot of us out there that think that and papa john's knows that too
all right honestly i'm not one of those people but i would i would just have to assume that there are
people like that out there and if you are one of those people then this is right up your alley
because papa john's they understand so they have you in mind when they released
their new papa bowls okay they describe this as crustless pizza so those crusts forget about them
they're never going to be in your life again provided you only eat the papa bowls
from papa john's from now on they describe these as pizza toppings in a bowl and there's three
different types and the one that's gotten the most interest is the italian meat trio so here's what
it is you've got a plastic bowl and inside of the bowl is pepperoni sausage meatballs green peppers
onions tomato and pizza and alfredo sauce along with cheese and italian seasoning
and they say all right you've got it now in a bowl so this is the revolution this
is this is what pizza is gonna be now no more of that pesky crust to ever worry about
price for this is eight dollars for one papa bowl they say and it should note that one of
these papa bowls has 880 calories in it so when i was researching these i noticed immediately that
there has been an extraordinary amount of division uh directed toward these items online and so far
just to tell it like it is the reactions toward these items have been overwhelmingly negative
now i'm going to go into this with an open mind and we're going to see but that just needs to
be said right off the bat i'll tell you one thing that confuses me a little bit about this and then
we're just going to get right into it i'll show you the product try it out and we're just going
to honestly assess this and see if it's any good or not the thing that confuses me is they
describe this again as crustless pizza in a bowl so obviously there's going to be no pizza crust
but the thing that i have difficulty discerning is there any sort of base
to the pizza right so is there still going to be dough at the bottom or is it just the sauce and
the toppings with no pizza dough involved whatsoever no sort of bread none of that
and it's just the toppings in a plastic feeding dish and i have no idea i've looked it seems like
i don't know some people get certain things so that's one thing that i'm personally curious about
so anyway i think i mentioned price for this eight dollars and it's got again 880 calories and i
mentioned that because some people are looking at this and they think oh maybe this is like a
health conscious item and it doesn't seem to me like that's how it's being marketed
but again we'll find out and i want to find out is there any dough or base or any of that
involved at all so we're going to find out all right they put it in this box right here
and inside the box they give you cutlery because you have to eat it with cutlery so they give
you a little plastic knife and fork which is good it's convenient and then inside the box
is another box i guess what i'll do i'm just trying to think the best way to eat this
i guess i'll just eat it like this so i'll put this off to the side i have
a plate and everything right here but i think i'll just eat it out of the dish
and it's it's still really hot this thing stays warm quite a bit
so it comes in that and then you slide it out and let's take a look
the palpable
um
it is what it is it's a plastic dish with from what i can discern i don't think there's any base
but you can see the pepperoni all the oil there kind of pooled in that corner
you know i don't know look i don't want to judge a book by its cover here all right but
i'll preface this by saying that um it might be delicious it might be quite good based on what
i see right in front of me and based on what i smell because it's very potent in terms of
in terms of the scent it doesn't smell good at all i i'll say that it smells um
it just smells bad i'll tell you that right now it's just not an appetizing
i would describe it more as an odor as opposed to a scent and looking at it
all right fine you know i'm just going to get it out of my system and i'm just going to say it
just based on what i see i imagine this being like slop that's poured into a feeding trough
and you have like a bunch of hogs lined up and they're all just eating it that's just the imagery
when i when i when i look down and i see this and the scent that that this emanates as well which
like i said is not good not pleasant certainly not something that you really um that would really get
your appetite worked up i can't help but have that imagery either way sure it doesn't look that good
and it doesn't smell that good but maybe it tastes good so we will find out we're just gonna
try it out i'll let you know what it tastes like definitely need a knife and fork to consume it
so have it right here lately i've been editing out the eating segments but i think it's important to
discern how how easy it is to consume this so i'm just going to keep this all in
and let's try it out can't judge a book by its cover right so let's try it out the
what is what is this one the italian meat trio papa bull from papa john's going in
pretending to feed you also while just giving a close up
so here's what i can discern from it all right here's what i can tell so far there is definitely
not any sort of base so at least what i got there is no um dough or any of that involved whatsoever
these are just they took the sauce and the toppings and dumped it into a plastic
bowl and that's what it is so you can see close up that's what it kind of looks like
as you're kind of eating it that's the cross section and uh i understand if if you have
some serious let's say health concerns and you just can't eat any of the pizza whatsoever
and you can't have any any sort of bread or dough or any of that that's the one circumstance where
i can understand that this might be one of those cases where if you look at it that way all right
something is perhaps better than nothing so that but that is the only circumstance that i could
understand someone really uh willingly eating this in any other circumstance
i cannot find any justifiable reason for getting this and i am very thankful
that along with this i also ordered a pizza because this thing is
is going right in the trash after the camera goes off it's gross that's the only way i could
really describe it you have certain things that let's say we break it down by component
it might taste all right component by component but when you blend it all together certain things
just don't really turn out the way you had hoped and i think that's common sense stuff
it's like a lot of the ingredients in and of themselves might be all right but then when
it all just comes together it just doesn't really work and this is one of those cases
now like i said the thing is still really fresh really hot um but it's got this uh this is gross
sorry that i needed a sip it's got this gross
sliminess to it and it's like i eat it and like i said everything is just really
slimy you've got all this stuff at the bottom that just seems really undercooked in my opinion
you've got the the tomato sauce that's just kind of there um you've got all right the pepperoni
the pepperoni and the meatballs i would say on this are the most flavorful things and both of
them pack a little bit of a spicy punch but aside from that all right i eat this
it's really slimy it's really soggy it's got this horribly unpleasant odor to it um you've
got these undercooked vegetables essentially at the bottom that just texturally taste wise it just
it's just wrong that's the only way i could really describe it it's extremely extremely salty i would
have to imagine that the sodium level in this is absolutely off the charts which is something that
should be mentioned obviously if you're trying to get this as a very health conscious choice that's
something to be aware of and visually speaking it's certainly not the most pleasant thing to
look at in some ways but what's most important is taste wise
again if this is trying to present itself as an alternative for pizza
they they missed the mark on this so so widely it's it's amazing actually if they try and that's
how they that's how they're advertising it that this is supposed to be a crustless alternative to
pizza and this kind of just instead it's actually reminded me of every reason why i like pizza
that's the thing now some people can try to say oh isn't this just like chicago deep dish pizza no
it's completely different you can't you can't even make that comparison no this this is like maybe
it's like chicago deep dish pizza with all the joy and fun and anything good about it that's removed
and then you have this so maybe i could understand what they were trying to go for maybe they were
trying to make this like some sort of like lasagna type of thing but even that you can't even compare
it to that because that's ten times better than this this is just like i said it's just gross
it doesn't work you have concepts and you have ideas that when someone's in the board room and
they're kind of looking they're thinking all right yeah this might work this sounds good but you have
the things that they might look good they might sound good on paper but in reality uh when you
look at the execution of things it just doesn't it doesn't play out the way that they hoped
so i would only have to assume that this is one of those things in the end as you're eating this
some ingredients get totally lost in this and um the sauce is really watery too it's like you get
the moisture from everything you've also got this layer of water at the bottom from all of it that
makes everything really soggy and really watery it's so salty it's insane um it smells bad half
the vegetables in it are undercooked and i could just go on and on it's like you could take each
ingredient from this and um in and of themselves they might be all right but when put into this
it it i feel bad for them it takes a good a good thing and ruins it so i'm not a fan of this
i think it's one of those ideas that sounds good on paper but in reality in practice it just
doesn't work they missed the mark big time on this if you would prefer something like this just go
someplace else and get a deep dish pizza or just go to a local italian restaurant get some quality
lasagna and if you want to get something from papa john's just get a regular pizza if you can
because this just is not worth the time it's not worth the effort it's not worth the money
so i would say this is a hard pass i like papa john's generally speaking they've got
some good pizza but this this just ain't it it's just not it's just not there
so therefore factoring in the price factoring in the experience factoring in everything
the ingredients themselves might be all right but they did a bad thing to maybe good ingredients so
out of 10 i'm going to be giving the papa john's italian meat trio a bowl i'm just
gonna give this a uh it's just gonna get a three out of ten it would be lower but the ingredients
are somewhat quality so i'll factor that in but hard pass just get a pizza or some something else
forget about this it's not worth it thank you and that's all that i have for you until next time i'm
your host the report of the week sick of these bad items but it is what it is on to the next we go