Here’s my beef: Where’s the pizza?

Pizza Hut @ Industrial & St. Laurent Ottawa

This week our usual Friday night jaunt took us to Pizza Hut at Industrial and St. Laurent in Ottawa. Our selection is usually made in a relatively democratic way. We take an impromptu vote and the majority normally prevails. This was our third trip within the last six months and it will be our last for a while! 

Although our penultimate visit turned out to be reasonable, our first visit was so bad that after a showdown with the manager, our meal was given to us free. For some unknown reason, that did not deter us from making a second and then subsequently a third foray. Perhaps our second trip had lulled us into a false sense of security! The main impetus for this visit was that we had learned that Pizza Hut was introducing an evening buffet. A few years back, we often frequented the lunch buffet at the now defunct Pizza Hut on Montreal Road at Shefford. We had good memories of it and thus wanted to give this evening buffet the once over. 

Our party, as is usual on Friday evenings, included three young ladies ranging from five to twelve years of age. The absence of wait times is a huge plus for this demographic! In the normal run of things, buffets are a great boon to adults with hungry, impatient kids in tow.

As we pulled up to the restaurant, Amber, the eldest of the three girls, noticed that the buffet only went to 8PM and it was already 7:20. She shot like a rocket in through the door and pushsed right to the desk to get a table. The rest of the group ambled in at a more leisurely pace all the while being urged on by Amber. Upon being assigned a booth, the waitress somewhat sheepishly informed us that they had run out of cutlery and she would be back with some in short order. That seemed strange enough, after all, the restaurant was, at best, only one third full. 

The Emperor’s Pizza to match his new clothes!

 Pictured above is the main dish of the buffet! At least it was most of the time that we were there. To be fair, there were a couple of salads and some garlic bread but most of the time we were there, we had to constantly wait for a new pizza to arrive from the kitchen and then it was pounced upon like hyenas on a wildebeest’s carcass. Apparently, on offer were four different types of pizza. Not surprisingly, the one that was most often available (read: least popular) was the Veggie Lovers. Hawaiian, Meat Lovers and Pepperoni rounded out the listing. Eventually, we did actually get to try all four but the waiting definitely detracted from the experience.

• Positives: Pizzas were hot, tasty  and well endowed with both toppings and cheese. Desert pizza with spiced apples or cherries with icing drizzle were a nice ending!
• Negatives: Waiting for food, Slow service, general lack of cleanliness.
• Summary: I could not recommend this restaurant. Next time we feel like Pizza Hut Pizza, we will drive a little farther and check out St. Joseph in Orleans.