Pizza Hut

201 - 203 S. Truman Blvd
Crystal City, MO
On the Interwebs.

It had been longer than we could remember since we'd had a Pizza Hut pizza. It was probably takeout. It used to be our go-to place until the Pizza Junction opened up here, closer, in Hillsboro.
We could have gone to the PH in Desoto, it's closer, but we headed to Crystal City/Festus anyhow. We knew they had moved recently, from one building in a shopping center to another. I'm pretty sure we hadn't been to either.
I asked Angel during the drive an interview-like question:
"So what is your level of expectation for Pizza Hut?"
"You mean like on a scale of one to five?"
"No, no, of course not... One to seven."
She thought for  a bit, then finally: "Four."
I thought this was an interesting answer, so I dug in.
She explained that back in the day, BPJ (before Pizza Junction) she'd always been quite satisfied with PH. "So my actual expectation is probably a bit higher than that." She amended.
It was a beautiful Autumn day, cool but not cold, bright blue October sky.
There weren't many people there.
The Place:
We were seated and then greeted by a young lady with 'Amber' on her name tag. I assumed that was her name. She handed us menus, simple, legal sized laminated cards.
"Would you like something to drink?" She asked politely.
"Why yes, yes we would." I replied and returned to casually scanning the menu.
Angel finally nudged me (poked me in the ribs with her elbow) and I looked up at Amber, she was looking at me, almost frustrated. I've recently discovered that people don't always ask the question they think they are asking and when you answer the question they actually ask, they look at you funny. Like that's my fault.
We barked out our drink demands, tea, unsweetened with no sugar, sweet tea and Pepsi.
I looked around.  The place did indeed look new.

They went with a sports theme, several big screens, thankfully muted and playing sports games. . .football, I think. On the walls were framed, full size sports shirts of game players that I'd mostly never heard of. Somebody once told me sports shirts were called 'Jerseys' which just made no sense. The garment long known as a Jersey originated on the Island of Jersey, a Crown Dependency of the United Kingdom. These knitted wool garments were the rugged and heavy predecessor of what we call a sweater. Modern sports shirts seem to be made from some sort of space age polymer and would hardly keep a man warm on the damp, wind swept island.
The tables and booths were all new and the carpet was barely worn. A nice place, if you like sports and misnamed articles of sports clothing.
The Food:
We had all decided to have pizza. Which was good since they don't really serve much else at Pizza Hut. We had also decided to get three individual pizzas. We all have favorite things on and styles of pizza, that do not sync up well. To build a 'compromise' pizza would leave at least two out of three of us less than satisfied.
So we all scanned the full range of options.

Angel likes thin crust, Adam and I prefer hand-tossed. Angel and I like the 'Supreme' Adam doesn't like veggies on his pie. Thus, three different pizzas.
As the drinks were delivered Angel and Adam had decided to get some wings, like Angel needs more wings. I rarely eat wings because they tend to spice them with acid, or whatever it is that makes a hot wing a hot wing. I've never found any I care for, at all. So they didn't even consult me. After some debate they eventually decided on  Bone-Out Asian style. Sure, fine. Just stop saying 'bone-out'
After a few minutes Amber brought some small plates, some bundled silverware and some napkins along with the wings. The wings looked like Chinese style, breaded balls, fried golden brown, with a distinct sugary smell.
Adam noticed it too. "They smell Asian." he said. I shut him down immediately. "Don't be such a racist." I scolded him. I know lots of people from Asia, they don't smell any worse than most Americans I know. How embarrassing.
I decided to go ahead and try one of the wings . .  .maybe it would be like Chinese. It sort of was, then the pepper spray element hit. Two bites, that was it. Angel and Adam seemed to like them though.
The thing with a pizza place is that there will always be a wait. We were prepared, we had devices, PH had WiFi.

Linoleum Thin Crust Supreme

Soon enough the pizzas arrived. Well, sort of. Amber led the delivery with an apology. "We made them all thin crust, we're making two more for you with the right crust, but here are the ones we made."
Well, color me impressed. Back when I worked in a pizza place we counted on botched orders, they became 'house pies' for the staff. It looks like managers finally figured that little scam out.
Yes it was a mistake, but the fact that she came out ahead of it rather than concocting some sort of cover story instantly made it not so bad.
I had one slice of the thin crust. Of course, the ingredients were all the same, so I sat and picked at them. I don't hate thin crust, I just prefer something a little more substantial, with a flavor and texture less like linoleum.

Hand Tossed Supreme

A while later Amber returned with drink refills and a question. "Would you like the hand tossed pizzas in a box?"

"No, we'd prefer these two in a box." I answered, pointing to mine and Adam's, which were mostly intact.
She brought a couple of boxes, followed shortly by our original choice pizzas. Angel was about a third of the way through hers.
I goofed up because I was hungry. I broke off one slice and stuck it into my face. The four hundred degree sticky cheese stuck to my tongue and sent shock waves through my system. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
I let the next one cool, I drank a little more of my stale and weak tea. Finally I was able to eat the thing.

Hand Tossed Pepperoni Lover's

It was kind of sloppy looking, hurried. It looked as though the kitchen might have rushed it through since it was to make up for a mistake. The toppings looked as though they were arranged with help from a hand grenade. Though the crust did have the signature poofy spots, which I love, the bottom of the crust wasn't faring well. It was  turning soggy and was disintegrating. I noticed that this pie had bigger, deeper puddles of grease, a little off-putting. By the third small piece, I was basically scooping the hot mess off the plate with my fingers, it was coming apart. I didn't get halfway through it before I slid the remains into my box. Adam did likewise. Angel had one slice left, we added it. We ended up taking away nearly three full pizzas.
Angel liked it though, she really likes, and I share this sentiment, the large, chunky peppers, mushrooms and onions. We also liked the sausage.
We always order too much pizza, that's because we all like breakfast pizza.
Summary:
The bill came to forty six bucks, not bad for five pizzas and eight chicken nuggets, I suppose, but we weren't paying for five pizzas, just three. This seemed a bit pricy for industrial pizzas.
By industrial, I mean 'franchise'.
If you can't make it yourself, you get somebody to make pizza for you. If you are going to buy a pizza,

there's a hierarchy. 1. Privately owned and operated places. 2. Franchises, 3. Frozen.
Private individuals that operate pizza places care about their food first and foremost. You can usually taste that passion. Franchises are businesses bought up by business people. They want to make as much money with as little expense as is possible. Some may be passionate about the pies, but not usually. In most cases the recipes are not even their own.
Frozen is what you eat when no one's watching. It's not really that much cheaper for a brand name frozen pizza than at a pizzeria, but you can eat it when you are alone and too lazy to actually prepare food.
All in all, for a franchise pizza, this was pretty good. Not nearly as good as Pizza Junction, or dozens of other places around the area, but if you want a fast, simple, satisfying pizza, this is a good place.
Amber did an exemplary job of handling a tough problem. I liked that. Mistakes are going to happen. Places get into more trouble when they try to cover it up. She kept the drinks refilled, the bill came quick. Excellent service.
We'll probably go back sometime, but probably not for a while. There's just too many great pizzerias in the area to settle for his very often.

Casey's General Store

10544 Hwy 21
Hillsboro, MO
http://www.caseys.com/

The Place:
Casey's General Store is a regular fixture in many of the Midwest's small towns. There are over 1700  of them, over three hundred in Missouri alone. There is only one in Kentucky, none in Maryland, and Tennessee is about to get its first in Dyersburg. Here though, it seems every little town has one.
What is it exactly? Well there's no way to put this more delicately, it's a convenience store. The one in Hillsboro is next to the car wash. There's nothing fancy about it.
In a small town though, a convenience store is a little more than a highway stopping-off place. Casey's recognizes this. We have other convenience stores in Hillsboro and they are nice too, some bigger and more modern. I'll admit I don't go to our Casey's much, in my opinion their gas pumps are too slow.
Those times I do stop in though they are busy, the customers are locals, and the trade is pretty heavy. It's not that I'd ever said to the family "Let's all gussy ourselves up in our Sunday-go-to-meetin's and dine in at the Casey's!" It's a convenience store.
This weekend presented a logistical problem. Not only was it my turn in the work on-call rotation, but there was scheduled maintenance activity for 4 to 6 P.M.  In the Corporate IT world that means for me, more like 3-7 P.M. since it takes extra time to prepare and extra time to wrap up. The work was not especially hard, but it would require my undivided presence at the laptop on the dining room table. A miracle of technology, I can manage the massive banks of globally accessed, powerful servers from my dining room.
But it also meant I couldn't go out to eat dinner on Saturday, the only day of this weekend that Angel didn't have a houseful of dogs to tend to.
This meant takeout.
This was actually Adam's Idea, or his mother's, I forget which. they get to Casey's more often than I do and made the observation that when they were there it seemed to traffic a lot of great-smelling pizza. I'd neve even considered convenience store pizza, I had images of those ubiquitous quick-stop hotdogs, spinning for days and days, wrinkling up, drying out, growing flesh-eating parasites at an alarming rate. You know what I mean.
But my options were limited. Why not try something different.
So as I buried my head into work they headed out. Adam had pre-ordered the requisite half hour to forty five minutes ahead of time.
They brought the pizzas home, accompanied by a couple of boxes of breadsticks. They also added some breakfast donuts, something Pizza Hut simply doesn't offer.
 The Food:

Supreme

My expectations were low, because of the spinning hot dog imagery, but I was also distracted. I have to admit though, they were some pretty pies. The toppings, those that I could see, were well spaced and rather generous.
Angel and I split a 'Supreme' Adam, who doesn't like many veggies chose a meat-lover and asked for an extra topping, bacon. He added more meat to an all-meat pizza.  The pizzas were still hot, the cheese was still melty. I tore off three slices and added some store-brand potato chips to my plate and went back to the laptop. I had a brief respite waiting for the other guys to do their thing with the systems, so i got to read and wolf down my pizza in peace. Angel and Adam settled into their dining area, the living room in front of the TV. This is just how we do things.
I have to say, it wasn't bad.

Meat lover, with extra meat

It was definitely not St. Louis style, it was more like what I consider Domino's style. The crust was soft, yet not too chewy, the cheese was plentiful, mostly mozzarella  and Parmesan from what I could tell. The meat was tasty. What it lacked though, and sadly so, was big chunks of veggies. There were some there, but if you zoom into the photo you'll see that the veggies are, if you can see them at all, quite small and not at all prominent. This is about the only complaint I have about it.
It was quite good. Not surprisingly Angel declared "Better than Domino's!" Which is our low-water-mark of disappointing pizzas. Many frozen pizzas get that same rating in her opinion.

Breadsticks

Her other comments were that the cheese was tasty, and the veggies too small, and they only offer one kind of crust. I'd equate it to 'hand tossed, not Chicago thick, or New York/St. Louis thin. It's the way I like a crust anyhow. Angel agreed that it was light and not too chewy, she liked it, though she's always been a bigger fan of thin crusts.
Adam was quite pleased as well, agreeing that it was much better than Domino's though the crust was softer than he expected. There was "nothing wrong" with the cheese and the toppings were plentiful and flavorful. Angel reminded me that she really enjoyed the spiciness of the sausage. Adam even rated it as good as Pizza Hut.
I can't say much about the sauce, I barely detected it, so it was neither outstanding or disgusting
Of course the best pizza I've ever had was made by my younger brother Jeff, in Cerulean Ky. He's not a professional cook, but he could be. He makes the dough (with just a drip of honey)  and sauce (from garden tomatoes) completely from scratch and gets the other veggies from the Amish food stand down the road. I don't really expect any franchise to top this piece of culinary art.
On reheating the next day, in our toaster oven since the microwave broke down, it was just as good. I was once again at my laptop, the on-call rotation can sometimes be quite demanding, but still, the pizza was thoroughly satisfying. I even tried the breadsticks, and found them quite good as well.
Summary:
At fifteen bucks per pizza that's not a bad deal. Because a pizza, or two in our case, can easily cover more than one full meal. The nearness of Casey's to our humble abode adds significant value as well. Pizza Hut and Dominoes are in Desoto, some ten miles further down the road. We make a pretty good pizza ourselves, but not on a whim. So I imagine that we will do this again. In fact I'm pretty sure of it. Casey's isn't the best pizza in the world, nor the cheapest, nor the fastest, but it is nearby and quite satisfying.
It isn't for everyone though. If you live in a city, or otherwise outside the Midwest, you simply won't find it. But for the three hundred locations in Missouri alone, it's probably as good as you will find without driving a lot extra. And there is nothing actually wrong with it.