A few months ago, Papa John’s Pizza here in Korea introduced a new pizza to the market. This meat laden pie, named the Meatball Pepperoni, promises a lot according to the company. In fact, here’s the description of the pizza straight from the Papa John’s Korea website:
“Pizza with big Italian meatballs, crunchy onions and pepperoni in a meat chili sauce with a subtle spicy and meaty flavor.”
While recently visiting a friend, I noticed that we were close to the local branch of Papa John’s here in Ulsan and I decided it would be the perfect time to try this new pizza and see if it lived up to the hype from the company.
After ordering the pizza, I waited for it to arrive, and 25 minutes later the doorbell rang. The delivery person had provided a great looking pizza that was hot and fresh!
The pizza didn’t come with too many extras, just some garlic dipping sauce, pickles, and some hot sauce.
Finally, it was time to open up the box and take a look at this feast of meat.
Well, the visual component of the pizza was pretty good!
There were lots of meatballs, distributed equally so that each slice had exactly two. There was also some Italian sausage, and pepperoni. The pepperoni actually looked a little small, but I guess that the meatballs made up for that.
Now, the meatballs actually didn’t look huge, but considering it’s a pizza, I think that the size of them worked well in terms of proportions.
There were also some onions on the pizza, and a white sauce that tasted a little like sour cream, but was not strong.
The flavor of the pizza was okay. The pepperoni had a nice flavor to it and was very crispy so that it had a great texture to it.
The Italian sausage was pretty tasty as well, and the onions were pretty crunchy just like the description from Papa John’s.
The meatballs on the other hand were a bit disappointing, flavor-wise. They were quite substantial, and the texture was very good, not like they were filled with additives like breadcrumbs or eggs, but 100% meat.
The meatballs were, however, bland. There was just a tiny hint of Italian seasonings to them, but not much else.
Also, the meat chili sauce that the company talks about was nowhere that I could discern. Perhaps it was there mixed in with the tomato sauce, but to me it just tasted like Papa John’s regular pizza sauce.
Overall, the Meatball Pepperoni pizza from Papa John’s Korea is an average pizza. There’s a nice heft to it, and some of the ingredients are good, but for a pizza with a premium price, all the ingredients should be of premium taste.
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