During the 2002 Super Bowl, football fans were rootin’ for touchdowns in the end zone, while Pizza Hut was getting TV audiences into the P’Zone. Today, Trevor and I will attempt to recreate the legendary Pizza Hut P’Zone, a toasted Parmesan pizza crust filled with pizza toppings and melted cheese, baked calzone style and served with marinara dipping sauce. Back in the day, they served up pepperoni, classic, and meaty versions, but despite the P’Zone being a beloved item, it’s been on and off the menu ever since, making it’s final ill fated appearance during March Madness 2019. Unfortunately, the P’Zone was tragically phased out again, so we’re here to bring it back. It’s time for Past Past Food! My knees hurt too bad to turn. Past Past Rotate. Food! Food! There it is, okay. All right. Wait, that wasn’t the take? Past Past Turn. Food! Food! I said turn. I’m not supposed to say turn. Hit the jazz hands. Hit the jazz hands. I said turn. I feel bad about that. Now, Trevor, the P’Zone- Hey, that’s what I call my bathtub. The Pee Zone. You pee in your bathtub while you’re taking a bath, or you just use it as an alternate toilet? You don’t need to know my life, okay? Listen, if Bear Grylls can drink his pee and become a millionaire on the Discovery Channel, Trevor can soak in his own pee in the privacy of his own home. Trevor, the P’Zone. Yes. It’s a story of hope turned to desperation. 2002, right? You know, the Gen Xers, you were almost born then. The Gen Xers, they’re startin’ to have kids. America’s transitioning a little bit away from nuclear family to a more individualistic society. And we go, “Hey, we can’t be affording to have all these big pizzas. We need to give people the freedom to express themselves individually.” A lot of the marketing campaigns, right? One was featuring Tommy Davidson, great in the movie “Juwanna Mann”. Don’t think that movie holds up. Don’t think that movie holds up through a lens of today. But back then, I’m telling you, “Juwanna Mann” was funny. Just make your own judgments about that movie. Back then, Pizza Hut was dominating the fast food pizza world. Yeah. Then fast forward, Trevor. 2008 financial crash. Okay. Pizza Hut gets hit harder than any fast food restaurant in America. Places that serve individual meals for cheap, Taco Bell, Subway, they start exploding. Pizza Hut realizes these handhelds, right, those are the future of our company. Meanwhile, Domino’s, Domino’s 2010, right in the wake, people losing their houses, they launch their 5.99 value menu. They’re sellin’ sandwiches, they’re sellin’ pasta bowls, they’re sellin’ weird chicken with jalapenos and cheese and sauce baked on top. Suddenly, Pizza Hut, they decide the P’Zone’s not enough. Well, ’cause those big red Pizza Hut hats on top of the building gotta be expensive. No, actually, Pizza Hut was one of the most expensive fast food franchises to run around that time. The biggest Pizza Hut franchise collective filed for bankruptcy. They had a billion dollars in debt because Pizza Hut’s whole thing was like, people are gonna come in and eat inside of a fast food restaurant. We’re gonna have buffets. We’re gonna have the red cups, all that. And Domino’s was like, “We’re just an eight-foot-by-eight-foot square box on any major street, and we’re gonna deliver a pizza to you in 30 minutes with a touch of a button.” And so Domino’s really started overtaking Pizza Hut. Pizza Hut panics. They go, “P’Zone’s not good enough. We gotta come out with a P’Zolo.” The P’Zolo, Trevor. It is a P’Zone that they sort of like nip and tuck and then made it into the shape of a sandwich. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s genius. It’s genius, absolutely genius, but nobody thought that, and nobody bought the P’Zolo, and people kept buying $5 foot longs from Subway, even though they had their own PR disaster around that time. But anyways, anyways, fast forward 2019, they bring the P’Zone back. It’s yet another failure, and that gets replaced by the Pizza Hut Melts. Pizza Hut, for 20 years, has been trying to figure out how to sell a small folded proto pizza-like product. And today, Trevor, we’re not just gonna make the P’Zone, we’re gonna make the P’Zolo. What’s the P’Zolo in your house? The P’Zolo, that’s my other bathtub. That you also pee in? Yeah. Don’t use the shower in Trevor’s apartment. Trevor, we’re gonna try and get deep into this, figure out the psychology behind Pizza Hut, and we’re gonna figure out how they can overtake Domino’s to be kings of the fast food pizza world once again. Stop fingering the… What are you doing? You said we’re gettin’ deep. I’m deep in. I guess we’re doing it. Let’s get cookin’. Hey, Trevor, what are you doin’ there? I’m lookin’ at what pizza I am based on my zodiac sign on sporked.com. Do you wanna know what it is? Yeah, what, you’re a Cancer? You’re a Leo sun, blue eyes, white dragon? Exactly, exactly. And I’m a Signature Select spicy Italian sausage pizza. Do you feel that’s accurate with what your personality gives off? I do. I love a spicy Italian sausage pizza. What am I? I’m a Taurus. Josh, you are where the Taurus is. Stouffer’s extra cheese French bread pizza. French bread pizza’s not pizza. I’m starting to think that maybe astrology’s not rooted in hard science. If you wanna know what frozen pizza you are based on your zodiac sign, go check out sporked.com, and they also have a bunch of other stuff there. So check it out. I’m Jewish, we don’t do that. All right, I mean, check out Sporked. Sporked does great work. Right now we got a giant hunk of beef. You might be asking, “I thought he was making a P’Zone. Why do you have a giant hunk of beef there?” Well, the P’Zolo. So like I said, the P’Zolo was a direct response to Domino’s oven baked sandwiches. Domino’s had a Philly cheese steak oven baked sandwich. Pizza Hut’s response was to come out with the Italian beef P’Zolo, which is basically a stromboli. But they had a fantastic shaved processed beef with peppers and onions and cheese in there, and it tasted really good. You dipped that in some marinara, it was like a fancy Hot Pocket. So we’re gonna try and make this beef taste as processed and tender as possible. Can I start by doing somethin’? Yeah. I brought this from my home, from my P Zone. Am I right? Don’t put that in your P Zone. We’re dumping a bunch of baking soda on it. It’s a process called velveting where you use sodium bicarbonate to artificially tenderize the meat. If you ever go get like beef and broccoli from a Chinese restaurant, the reason the beef is so tender is from baking soda. It’s really delicious, and it’s gonna make this taste processed. And the next step, Trevor, soak it in a bunch of salt. Well, I gotta inject it too, dude. We’re gonna soak it in salt. We’re gonna inject it in salt. We’re gonna throw a bunch of garlic in there. We’re just gonna see what happens. We’re vibin’. I’m gonna take some of this water. And I know this is your water. What are you doin’, Josh? We’re makin’ the marinara dipping sauce. Marinara comes from the Italian of or relating to the sea or relating to fishermen. And so, that is where we get marinara sauce from. Yeah? Yeah. Makes no sense whatsoever. You might be lookin’ at this bowl and goin’, “Wow, Josh, that’s not a marinara. That’s the crappiest marinara I’ve ever seen.” Yeah, marinara’s supposed to have, like, squid, and octopus, and mussels in it, ’cause it literally means of fishermen. Josh, literally, did this one time though. Just for funsies he was like, “Hmm, I want a marinara to dip in.” And we didn’t have anything, and he took tomato paste and water, and he just put it in a cup, and he just kinda swirled it around and shook it and put a bunch of spices in it. And it was a really good marinara. It was great, right? Yeah, it was awesome. So we’re just gonna thin that out with water, and this is gonna be the base for our P’Zone in there. Yeah, I’m pokin’ holes in this beef. I’m really gonna get in there and inject it. So we’re adding some various herbs to this. We need green specs in it ’cause you look at a pizza… Oh God! Oh, we’re just injecting straight jarlic water in there? This literally looks like the water from my P Zone. Hit me up, hit me up. Ugh, God! I thought it was…. That’s just garlic and salt water. I don’t feel good. I’ve never felt that sensation before. Do you wanna do it? Do you wanna try it? It’ll make you feel alive. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. It’ll make you feel alive, dude, trust me. Papa John’s, 1984. Papa John Schnatter, he had his own PR disaster. It was bad, but then Shaq. Shaq replaced Papa John Schnatter for Papa John’s, and now they’re good. So anyways, Papa John Schnatter, first person to ever serve a garlic buttery dipping sauce. 1984, the inception of Papa John’s changed. Oh, I got jarlic juice on my leg now! That’s gonna be awesome. I don’t know what to tell you, man. Did you taste the marinara? Dude, you wanna taste it? Yeah, man. I don’t even think I stirred it. Just give me some right in the palm. Yeah, this is where we’re at now. Yeah, make it extra sloppy for ya. That was great, right? Yeah, it’s so sugary. So awesome, oh my God. It’s so sugary. It taste like a smoothie. That was good. All right. Well, we’re gonna let that marinate for a while, and then we’re just gonna, like, throw it in an oven to cook until it’s done. I’m feelin’ good about this. This is a great start. Oh God. Probably would regret the Diet Cokes. Here’s the thing, the jarlic water to the back of the throat, that was pretty incapacitory. We don’t feel very good. We figured Diet Cokes, it’s got nutrients in it, it’s got acid, it’s got a little bit of sodium, wash it down. It’s making us both feel worse because it’s kind of foaming with the garlic. That’s here, that’s staying because we got a job to do. I’m gonna prep the vegetables for the P’Zolo. Yeah. Now, normally we would try and get the toppings directly from Pizza Hut, but this time, we went to Pizza Hut and they said, “Well, these toppings are raw. We cannot just give these to you on account of they may be contaminated. They need to be cooked for food safety reasons.” To which I say, government overreach is at an all-time high. Just let me grab a handful of red onions from your little pizza buffet and be on my way. And so I’m climbing over the counter, right? Somebody pulls out their phone. They yell, “World star.” You know, I don’t know what’s goin’ on. But the point is, I gotta cut my own red onions like a freakin’ peasant right now. I’m making the dough. And we got a classic Past Food dough going here. So what we got here is yeast, and we got flour, and then we have milk powder because real milk is so dang expensive. Yeah, it’s heavy. It’s heavy, that’s why you take the water out of it. Yeah, you take the water out of it. You just add it to water later. And then we got dough conditioner, which again, I still don’t understand. And this is like, you know- Yeah, it’s got your riboflavins, it’s got your other stuff in it. Dough conditioner is, anytime you’ve tried to make bread at home, no, no, no. You know the people that go to Europe and they’re like, “Everything hurts my stomach in America, but I go to Europe and I eat bread and I’m fine.” And then you taste bread in Europe and you’re like, “Yeah, it tastes like bread.” You come to America, you eat a slice of Wonder Bread and you’re like, “This is a cake that stays fresh for months on end. This is a modern miracle of science.” And it’s awesome. It’s dough conditioner. And it’s also actually a thing that makes Vietnamese baguettes a lot lighter and crispier than a French baguette, making banh mi sandwiches Oh. different from a jambon-beurre, so to speak. So dough conditioners are really delightful. I don’t know if it’s good for you, bad for you. It’s not my place to say, but all I know is it makes Pizza Hut’s pizza weirdly soft in a way that most pizzas aren’t. So that’s what’s going in the dough. I’m gonna chop some onion. Yeah, I’m gonna grab, I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I forgot the salt, everyone. Hey, here’s the thing about me is that, you know, I’m imperfect. I’m flawed, and I mess up sometimes. Yeah. But honestly, it’s very rarely, and it actually doesn’t really happen. I’m kind of perfect, so. I don’t know. I don’t know, I think leaning into that, that’s kind of what makes our cooking show unique, right? Like, you get a lot of other chefs who are like, “We only use natural ingredients and we’re trying…” And we’re kind of the opposite. We’re like, no, we are… I wanna show them the chemical drawer. I don’t think the camera can reach here. We just have a whole drawer I’m perfect. filled with chemicals, right? We got just a big old thing of cream of tartar. No, malic acid in there. We got more chemicals down. Check this out. Do you know what calcium chloride is? I don’t. We’re like a team of dumb scientists with a bunch of dangerous chemicals just sitting in here, and I think that’s fun. Sodium citrate. We got the God chemical. This makes nacho cheese taste like nacho cheese. Yeah. And so that’s what we’re doin’. Buttermilk powder. Check this out. N-Zorbit. Hey, I love that movie. What is… “Norbit”! Great movie. Wanna get this nice and thin. That’s perfect. How’re you doin’ with that dough? Oh, it’s awesome. That’s great. There’s weird bubbles in there. I don’t know what’s up with that. Yeah, well no, the bubbles are what makes it nice, light and airy. Yeah, dude. You’re the expert. You got a degree in this, man. I might’ve pulled a little pranky prank on you. What’s the pranky prank? I don’t know, I put Diet Coke in the dough. Damn it. It might as well be. Listen, there’s probably caramel coloring in there to help browning. I don’t know why I did that. I think I’m going through a rebellious phase. This is the problem with hiring young people, is they haven’t gone through their rebellious phase yet. And then suddenly there’s Diet Coke in your dough. Trevor, you will learn once you hit, like, 27, that conformity is actually the way to go. You’ll see people buying houses and starting families and you’re like, “Oh God, maybe that stuff is more important than all the quote unquote beliefs I used to have.” I found dusty Legos. Oh God. I’m gonna make a Lego penis. Well, I got some nice, look at my nice little vegetable juliennes, man. It’s pretty good. Yep. That is what a penis looks like. Welcome back to our cooking show. We have our beautiful julienned vegetables. We’re cookin’ our jarlic-injected steak. We’re trying to wash the jarlic out of our own throats with Diet Coke. Yeah. Diet Coke has somehow ended up in the dough, and we’re gonna let this knead for about five minutes. Then we’re gonna roll it out and start stuffin’ our P’Zolos and our P’Zones. Woo, up top! You guys got an order. We got one P’Zolo Italian beef, one P’Zone meaty. It’s 2011. This is for a divorced mom who can’t afford a large pizza anymore because her house got foreclosed on, and he lost all her money in the Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme. P’Zone, P’Zolo, and Ponzi, the three Ps. All right. All right, let’s do it, Trevor. Come on, we got an order up. I’m gonna take this beef, and I’m gonna try and slice it as thin as possible. Dude, that beef looks awesome. You wanna try it? Yeah, kind of. I’m gonna hack it up. I don’t know. This looks dense and congealed. I know it’s a rush order. I don’t care anymore, KG, I’m sorry. We’re gonna get fired. I’ve been dippin’ my raw hands into those. That tastes like something you’d eat at a Pizza Hut. Yeah, it sure does. I’m gonna just continue to slice this razor thin. They ain’t doing this in the Pizza Hut. I am making the P’Zone, the calzone, which I believe is just the 12-inch pizza that is folded over on itself. So I’m goin’ for a little Yeah, basically. foot long here. We got all of our ingredients for the Italian beef P’Zolo. I’m stoked on this, man. I think it’s gonna be good. The P’Zolo, you take the 12-inch pizza, you fold it in half, that becomes a P’Zone. But then you do the old drag queen tuck, and you take that edge in the skirt, and you fold it right under. And then that becomes a P’Zolo. Also, you cut little holes in it to let it breathe. Yeah. And that’s it. But it was, I mean, very strombolesque. You know? I was lookin’ at the picture of the P’Zone, and there’s no discernible seam on it. A normal calzone- It’s crimped at a factory. Yeah, it’s just like a big half-moon Hot Pocket. No, it’s like a slight scalloped edge on it, but yeah, it’s not like you go to a mom-and-pop and get a calzone. That’s real different. Yeah. It’s like a good thickness. I’m gonna trim it to be a little bit shorter ’cause they were about, like, eight inches long. Okay. I’m just gonna trim- Do you know what eight inches looks like? I sure don’t. No, not even close, man. But, you know. This little smattering of our ultra-processed beef. Do you think they’re doing this at the Pizza Hut? Yeah, of course. A little ruler mark here. This is a big moment for me. Pizza Hut dough, it’s literally rolled out via, it’s just a giant machine that goes like, bleh, and it slaps the tumbler down on the dough and presses it. Yeah. Yeah, no, but I’ve overcome a lot of baking challenges in my life, and this might be the biggest one I’ve faced yet. Listen, I’m gonna put some garlic butter inside of it. Do I know if this is true to what they were doin’ at the Pizza Hut? No, but hey, listen, I get to eat this Italian P’Zolo. It’s gone, lost to the sands of time. This is beef topping. Unclear what that really means. No, I have a theory about beef topping. So any fast food beef, it’s most likely going to be a sausage. There’s gonna be spices and water, and it’s gonna be an emulsification. They had pork sausage. I think the beef topping was literally just for non pork eaters. A lot of Muslims, a lot of Jews out there don’t eat pork. Okay. But they didn’t wanna call it a sausage because then it still seems like it’d be pork. And the only thing they could decide was like, well, let’s just call it beef topping. Beef topping, yeah. Yeah. We got beef topping and mild Italian and regular. It’s like mild sausage and Italian sausage. Yeah, yeah, that’s great. Yeah, they’re using multiple types of sausage here. So we’re tuckin’ everything in. Dude, I love ham cubes so flipping much. You love ham cubes? Why do you love ham cubes? Dude, going to the Sizzler when I was a kid. Oh, yeah, I love ham cubes too. You’re right. Dude! That looks pretty good, man. Yeah, you think so? You think it’s filled enough? That is filled. I will tell you what, you got 120% more than the P’Zone would’ve been. Yeah, but it’s so puffy. I think we do it though. I think we run with it. I could take some off. I think you should take some off. I’m very proud of my P’Zolo here. Yeah, you did great. I’m sorry, I suck. No, no. You gotta put yourself in a Pizza Hut scarcity mindset. Yeah, I was gonna do that, but then I was getting so happy, you know? No, don’t be happy. You’re at Pizza Hut. Nobody’s happy to eat at Pizza Hut. Domino’s surpassed Pizza Hut officially in global revenue in 2017. You know what I mean? But the seeds were already sown before that. So right now you’re losin’ to Domino’s. Papa John’s is on the rise until, you know, the thing happened to Papa John’s. Little Caesars, you know, PR stories are gettin’ out about how the founder of Little Caesars paid for Rosa Parks’s rent for her entire life. That’s a real fun story. So they’re on the rise. They’re gettin’ wins. Pizza Hut, no, no wins. No wins, just P’Zones. My working theory is that, hold on. Do we have somethin’ wet? That seems like a trap. Okay, that’s good. I’m just gonna try and get wet ’cause there’s flour on the bottom of this. But what I’m thinkin’ here, man, what I’m thinkin’ here is I fold underneath, right? Oh, interesting! Because you can’t have a seam, so I’m thinkin’ I fold underneath. Can I eat this salad here? Yeah, man. I’m goin’ underneath here, okay? This is insane. Again, this is one of the biggest baking challenges that I’ve ever had to overcome. Some said it was impossible. Nobody believed in Trevor. What? Nobody? All right. Operation Dumbo Drop. One, two, go. Oh God, where are you going? No, no, flip it diagonal. Diagonal, diagonal, diagonal. Diagonal, diagonal. Okay, and then we reset. Now we gotta redo all the work. Okay, yeah. No, it’s fine ’cause they look like little buttholes. Annaliese just said, “Get this quick.” Yeah, get this quick, get this quick. Hold on, we’ll just pretend. They don’t need to see this. We’ll just pretend. Yeah, just pretend it. Okay. Wow. Wow, let’s get this baking. Let’s get this baking. Faster, faster, faster. Baking. Let’s get this baking. “Thomas Crown Affair”. I think we gotta take it out of the oven. Wowy zowie! You wanna know somethin’ funny? Our oven still says preheat. These have been in there for 80 minutes, and it still says preheat. Yeah. Listen, hey, you think all the ovens at all those Pizza Hut franchises that went bankrupt were workin’ all the time? No. No. Now, okay, so we got the lovely Parmesan crust. This is looking great. I wish I would’ve put more Parmesan in mine, but nobody’s perfect, and some people are bad. This is just brushing that crispy cheese Dude, it’s so- with wet, I believe, was margarine invented by one of the chef/scientists in Napoleon’s court for the Napoleonic Wars? Can somebody Google that? I feel like it was. Napoleonic Wars invented a lot of, like, cannery sort of the technology, and I think margarine was part of that. Who cares? Margarine! They figured out how to turn plants into butter. This is a modern marvel of science. We’ve eschewed so much science in the name of purity, and I’m sick of it. Here we have it. God, that’s wet with margarine. Dude, it looks so good. We got our Italian beef P’Zolo, and we got our meaty P’Zone. P Zone. We’re meaty in the P Zone right now, and no, we’re not talkin’ about Trevor’s bathtub. You know what we are talkin’ about, Trevor? Is we’re talkin’ about cutting to the packaging! Cutting to the packaging! Trevor, as they said, every time you order this at Pizza Hut, unleash the P’Zone and P’Zolo. Wowy zowie! Yowy wowy indeed. Trevor, you wanna cut that in half? Can we share it? Yeah, we can share it. ‘Cause this was meant for two harried parents to share while their children ate the pizza. Why this was an unfriendly item for children and more friendly for adults, I am unclear about. Which one do you want? Look at that cakey Pizza Hut dough. Yeah, that’s awesome. That is the cakiest. That is so cakey. Wow, that’s all that dough conditioner in there. Yeah, I mean, just look at that. Look at that cross section. Look at the cheese in there, the ingredients. I love how the cheese on top is just a sheet. It’s awesome. Yeah, you can peel it right off. You peel it right off, and then you’ve got wet garlic margarine underneath. You’re in a bed with, like, a heavy duvet and you’re, “Ooh, I don’t want this heavy duvet on,” and you just peel it right off. That’s beautiful. But I want it right on there. I’m gonna submerge it. Yeah, it’s goin’ right in. And then I’m gonna slurp it out of the dough. For the first time in Past Food history, we might’ve made something significantly worse than the original. That marinara is so sugary. I put a lot of sugar in the marinara, which, hey, I don’t regret. Hey, hold on. It can be fixed though. Maybe a little red flake? Yeah, we’ll get some green in there. Yeah, get some green. I’m gonna get some red. If it was better, it would’ve been around for a while. I wanna try this P’Zolo though, because this is the evolution. This is the Pikachu, and this is the Raichu, is that right? Yeah Yeah, that was really good, dude. But you don’t really want to evolve Pikachu into Raichu. What you wanna do, is you wanna get a light orb and then you wanna give that Who cares? to the Pikachu and then breed it because then the Pichu will learn Volt Tackle. Thank you. Did you just say breed it? Yeah. All right, cool. So we’re gonna… Oh, it’s so much better. Yeah, this is great. Hold on. It’s worse than a sandwich though, you’d agree? Yeah. With a sandwich, you got bread that’s already cooked. You get to slice it and then add as much of the filling as you want. But this is sort of a weird predetermined squidge in there and then you bake it, and then it just turns into whatever this is. Overall, I’m pretty disappointed in all this. I’m pretty mad that I could’ve just been eatin’ a Pizza Hut pizza. Check this out, check this out. Okay, you take the cheese crisps, okay? And then you go in into the marinar. Okay, the sugary marinar. Yeah, I’m here, I’m here. And then you hit the green. I’m here. Light on the green. And then a little red. And then you hit the red. Let me hit the green. Okay, but then this is the most important- Where’s the ranch? Where’s the ranch? This is the most important part. You gotta get a big swig of Diet Coke. Ah. You happy about that? Yeah. Trevor, do you think that this should be brought back from the past? Hell no! Hell no! Absolutely not. Listen, I don’t think the P’Zone or the P’Zolo should be brought back from the past, but if you do, keep it to yourself. Think the thought and don’t let it go anywhere. That’s what people used to do before they had access to Twitter and Instagram and all that. You just think thoughts all the time. Go post it on a message board in your village. Make some flyers. Yeah, put it up in the village in the town square. Thank y’all so much for stoppin’ by Mythical Kitchen. We’ll be makin’ more more of this crap Crappy food. next time. Like, subscribe, click the bell or whatever. I’ll see you next time. Bye. I’m still gonna eat it though, I’ll tell you what. The Sporked team is tirelessly taste testing groceries every day so you can buy only the best. Find what you’re lookin’ for on sporked.com.