There’s nothing worse than craving a hot, cheesy pizza only to end up with a bland, soggy letdown. With so many pizza chains across the country, it’s easy to get stuck with a slice that disappoints. But some chains deliver bubbling cheese, crispy edges, and fresh toppings that make every bite worth the drive. Before your next pizza night, save yourself the regret—and the wasted calories—by knowing exactly where to go and what to skip. Here are 8 pizza chains that deserve your appetite and 8 you’ll want to cross off your delivery list for good.
1. MOD Pizza

The magic of MOD lies in its build-your-own approach that puts you in control. Each personal-sized canvas starts with fresh-made dough, then becomes a masterpiece with unlimited toppings for one flat price.
Employees skillfully guide you through dozens of fresh ingredients, from classic pepperoni to roasted garlic, without rushing or judgment. The super-hot oven transforms your creation in minutes.
Beyond customization, MOD’s commitment to hiring people with employment barriers shows their heart is as good as their pizza. Their crispy-yet-chewy crust provides the perfect foundation for whatever flavor combination you dream up.
2. Blaze Pizza

Speed demons who refuse to sacrifice quality have found their pizza paradise at Blaze. Their 180-second cooking process in blazing hot ovens creates a perfect thin crust with that coveted char.
Celebrity-backed (LeBron James is an investor) but never pretentious, Blaze offers chef-designed combinations alongside build-your-own options. The dough, made from scratch daily, undergoes a 24-hour fermentation process that develops complex flavors.
What truly sets Blaze apart is how they’ve revolutionized fast food without the fast-food guilt. Ingredients are free from artificial preservatives, colors, and flavors – proving speed and quality can coexist deliciously.
3. Jet’s Pizza

Motor City magic happens in every square of Jet’s signature Detroit-style pizza. The secret lies in those gloriously caramelized cheese edges that climb up the sides of the steel pan, creating a crunchy, cheesy border that pizza dreams are made of.
Jet’s dough rises twice before baking, creating an airy yet substantial base that supports generous toppings without sogginess. Their proprietary brick cheese blend delivers that authentic stretchy pull with each bite.
While their deep dish gets deserved attention, don’t overlook their thin crust or hand-tossed options. The Turbo Crust – brushed with garlic and romano – transforms any style into an aromatic experience worth crossing town for.
4. Lou Malnati’s Pizzeria

Lou Malnati’s doesn’t just make Chicago deep dish – they perfected it. The Malnati family has been crafting their legendary butter crust since 1971, creating a flaky, pastry-like foundation that supports the weight of their generous fillings.
What looks heavy actually achieves perfect balance. Their exclusive sausage blend covers the entire pizza in a single layer, ensuring meat in every bite. The whole-milk mozzarella comes from the same small Wisconsin dairy they’ve used for decades.
Their signature “Lou” pizza showcases spinach, mushrooms, and sliced tomatoes with a garlic butter crust. The tomato sauce, made from California plum tomatoes hand-selected and packed exclusively for them, crowns every deep dish masterpiece.
5. Mountain Mike’s Pizza

Mountain Mike’s has mastered the art of pepperoni cups – those magical little discs that curl up during baking, creating crispy-edged pools of savory goodness. Their signature Pepperoni Mountain pizza piles on over 100 pieces, ensuring pepperoni in every magnificent bite.
Family-friendly without sacrificing quality, their dough is made fresh daily in each location. The cheese blend incorporates whole-milk mozzarella for perfect melt and stretch factor. While many chains shrink their pizza sizes yearly, Mountain Mike’s maintains generous proportions.
Their legendary “Mountain” size spans 20 inches – perfect for hungry gatherings. The crispy-outside, chewy-inside crust provides the ideal foundation for their mountain of quality toppings.
6. Buddy’s Pizza

Before Detroit-style pizza became trendy nationwide, Buddy’s was perfecting it back in 1946. The original innovator uses blue steel pans (originally automotive drip pans) that conduct heat perfectly, creating that signature caramelized cheese perimeter that defines Detroit style.
Their Wisconsin brick cheese extends edge-to-edge, with sauce dolloped on top after baking – a reverse layering technique that prevents sogginess. The dough undergoes double proofing, developing complex flavors and that signature light, airy interior beneath the crisp exterior.
The Detroiter pizza showcases their heritage with Motor City cheese blend, pepperoni both under and over the cheese, and their secret spice blend. Each square slice offers the perfect balance of crispy corners and chewy middle.
7. Grimaldi’s Pizzeria

Grimaldi’s coal-fired ovens reach a blistering 1,200 degrees, creating that distinctive thin crust with the perfect balance of char and chew. The intense heat creates microbubbles in the dough that pop during baking, creating a light, airy texture impossible to achieve in conventional ovens.
Their secret weapon? Brooklyn water. The mineral content is recreated in every location to ensure dough consistency nationwide. Fresh mozzarella is made in-house daily, and San Marzano tomatoes provide sweet-acidic balance in their sauce.
The Margherita showcases their minimalist philosophy – quality ingredients need little embellishment. White pizzas shine with ricotta, mozzarella and garlic, proving great pizza doesn’t always need tomato sauce. Each location’s brick oven is built by third-generation craftsmen from Italy.
8. Tony’s Pizza Napoletana

Chef Tony Gemignani isn’t just a pizzaiolo – he’s a 13-time World Pizza Champion who studies dough like scientists study DNA. His San Francisco flagship offers seven different pizza styles, each cooked in specialized ovens at specific temperatures with distinct flour blends.
The Napoletana, limited to 73 pies daily, follows strict Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana guidelines. Dough fermented 24-48 hours creates complex flavors and perfect digestibility. The Margherita that won the World Championship in Naples features hand-crushed tomatoes and buffalo mozzarella.
Tony’s Detroit style uses brick cheese from Wisconsin, while his New York pies get a 48-hour cold ferment. Coal-fired, wood-fired, electric, or gas – each style gets its perfect cooking environment, proving pizza perfection comes from obsessive attention to detail.
1. Little Caesars

The “Hot-N-Ready” concept revolutionized quick pizza pickup, but speed comes at a significant quality cost. That $5 price point means corners get cut everywhere – from the bland, overly sweet sauce to the rubbery, low-moisture cheese that barely melts properly.
The crust presents the biggest disappointment – neither crispy nor chewy, just oddly spongy and often undercooked in the center. Despite being freshly baked, pizzas frequently sit in warming cabinets, developing that distinctive cardboard texture.
Their famous Crazy Bread might be the only redeeming menu item. While budget-friendly for feeding large groups quickly, the flavor profile remains firmly in the “edible but forgettable” category. The pepperoni consistently releases orange grease pools that require multiple napkins to manage.
2. Cici’s Pizza

The concept sounds promising – unlimited pizza varieties for one low price. Unfortunately, quantity trumps quality at every turn in this buffet nightmare. The crust resembles flavorless cardboard, neither crispy nor chewy, just sadly existing as a vehicle for minimal toppings.
Sauce lacks any distinctive herb profile, registering as vaguely tomato-adjacent. The cheese stretches more like plastic than dairy, with a strange film that develops as pizzas sit under heat lamps. Buffet pans often contain pizzas with burnt edges yet somehow undercooked centers.
The macaroni and cheese pizza exemplifies their strange combinations that sound intriguing but disappoint in execution. Even unlimited amounts can’t compensate for the fundamental flavor void that defines the Cici’s experience.
3. Papa Murphy’s

The take-and-bake concept seems clever until you realize you’re paying restaurant prices for the privilege of doing the cooking yourself. Instructions promise crispy perfection but frequently deliver underdone centers with overcooked edges regardless of how precisely you follow them.
Toppings arrive with that distinctly pre-cut, mass-produced quality. The cheese blend lacks character, and their signature herb blend tastes predominantly of dried oregano with little complexity. The dough contains dough conditioners and preservatives that impart a slightly chemical aftertaste.
While customization options abound, the fundamental components remain mediocre. The “fresh, never frozen” claim means little when the ingredient quality starts at such a baseline level. Home ovens simply can’t replicate professional pizza oven results.
4. Sbarro

Sbarro has mastered the art of looking appetizing from a distance while disappointing up close. Those massive New York-style slices under heat lamps promise satisfaction but deliver leathery cheese atop sauce that somehow manages to be both bland and overly sweet.
The crust epitomizes their fundamental problem – what should be crisp on bottom and chewy inside is instead uniformly dry throughout. Reheating pre-made slices means nothing ever tastes freshly baked, just warmed over.
Toppings lack generosity and often appear dehydrated from extended heat lamp exposure. Their Sicilian square slices fare slightly better texturally but suffer the same flavor deficiencies. The strain of traveling to a mall food court for such mediocrity makes the experience even less justifiable.
5. Chuck E. Cheese

Children’s entertainment centers should acknowledge that adults also need sustenance. Chuck E. Cheese seems to have forgotten this crucial detail, serving what barely qualifies as pizza even by elementary school cafeteria standards.
The crust has that distinctive commercial mix quality – overly sweet and lacking any yeasty complexity. Sauce applies so sparingly you’ll wonder if they’re rationing tomatoes, while the cheese congeals into a strange plasticky layer rather than melting properly.
Toppings appear to be the lowest commercial grade available, with pepperoni that leaves mysterious puddles of orange grease. While the arcade games provide legitimate fun, the pizza exists merely as fuel rather than enjoyment. Even kids, with their notoriously undiscriminating palates, often leave slices unfinished.
6. Pizza Inn

Pizza Inn’s buffet concept falls victim to the eternal quality-versus-quantity dilemma. Their thin crust resembles a saltine cracker more than proper pizza dough, while the pan pizza somehow manages to be simultaneously doughy and dry.
The sauce lacks any distinctive herb profile or acidity balance, registering as generically tomato-adjacent. Cheese coverage appears suspiciously sparse, likely a cost-cutting measure for the all-you-can-eat model. Buffet pizzas frequently suffer temperature inconsistencies – scorching hot yet somehow undercooked in the center.
Their specialty pizzas like taco or bacon cheeseburger sound creative but execute poorly with low-quality ingredients. The chocolate chip dessert pizza might be their sole redeeming menu item, though that’s faint praise for a pizzeria.
7. Fox’s Pizza Den

Fox’s Pizza Den epitomizes the concept of forgettable pizza – not terrible enough to be memorable, just persistently mediocre. The crust lacks both flavor and textural distinction, occupying that sad middle ground between crispy and chewy without achieving either.
Their sauce presents minimal seasoning complexity, relying on salt rather than herbs to create flavor. Cheese coverage appears noticeably sparse, with that distinctive commercial blend that stretches like plastic rather than proper mozzarella.
Toppings lack freshness and quality, with vegetables that clearly came from institutional-sized cans. Their signature Wedgies (sandwich-pizza hybrids) sound innovative but execute poorly. The overwhelming impression is of a chain that established its recipes decades ago and hasn’t revisited them since, resulting in pizza that’s stuck in a time warp of mediocrity.
8. Godfather’s Pizza

Godfather’s Pizza makes bold claims about their “original thick crust” but delivers a doughy disappointment. The excessive thickness doesn’t translate to good texture – instead creating a gummy interior that never achieves proper doneness despite the exterior reaching proper color.
Their sauce suffers from an identity crisis, neither robustly seasoned nor elegantly simple. The cheese blend lacks character and proper meltability, often congealing into a solid mass rather than creating that desired stretchy pull. Toppings appear suspiciously uniform and processed, particularly their sausage which lacks any distinctive spice profile.
The “golden crust” they advertise frequently presents as pale and undercooked at the center. Their combo pizzas pile on quantity without quality consideration, creating a muddled flavor experience rather than complementary ingredients.
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