Home Run Inn Deep Dish Pizza Review

10 hours ago3 min read

We're going deep into flavortown for this one

Home Run Inn's Hot Honey Pepperoni Deep Dish Pizza

Home Run Inn just launched their deep dish pizzas and they are currently offering 8" cheese deep dish pizzas for $5 (8-9 if you order a special pizza.) I of course opted to try it out even though I'm admittedly not the biggest fan of deep dish. I ordered hot honey pepperoni and a double play pizza with some hot fries as a side (I felt like going to the morgue today.) Delivery took an exorbitant amount of time. Almost two hours later I had my order which is a shame because it looked like the restaurant made the driver wait almost two hours while they "worked" on it.

Home Run Inn's Hot Fries with Cheddar Cheese and Buffalo Ranch Sauce — The hot fries raise the temperature

As usual the food looks good. The hot fries are indeed hot. It's mainly because of the habanero seasoning since ancho and chipotle aren't really hot. The fries come with two sauces, one of which is cheddar cheese and the other buffalo ranch. The sauces help with the heat of the dish, but these fries are definitely not for the timid.

"The sauces help with the heat of the dish, but these fries are definitely not for the timid."

Home Run Inn's Double Play Deep Dish Pizza — The double play which consists of sausage and pepperoni

The pizzas look about as perfect as you can get. Home Run Inn "cauterizes" the top of the crust with caramelized mozzarella cheese which creates a unique ring. Things get hairy once you dive in. Traditionally the cheese in deep dish is under the sauce, even serving as a bed on top of the crust in some cases. Places like Lou Malnati's or Giordano's make sure that there a nice thick bed of cheese so that customers get a good cheese pull. There's nothing of the sort here. In-fact there's barely any cheese. In HRI fashion they took a deep dish crust and dressed it like a normal pizza except they threw extra sauce on top. My guess is this maximizes profits since they don't need to increase their cheese usage.

The sauce itself is bad. You can tell the sauce is from a can with how salty and tinny the flavor is. It's like eating salty pennies. One can definitely see why HRI has made traditional thin crust pizzas all of these years and barely puts any sauce on them. A bit of sweetness comes from the hot honey, but it's ruined by the sauce. The double play is in the same boat with the meat being drowned out by the terrible sauce. Needless to say, but it's bad idea for a restaurant that uses less flavorful ingredients because they want their buttered crust to stand out to opt for a strongly flavored (in a bad way) sauce. It's like cheap Hunt's sauce and it probably is just Hunt's diced tomatoes in a can with sauce which they do indeed sell.

"You can tell the sauce is from a can by how salty and tinny the flavor is. It's like eating salty pennies."

Overall I see why Home Run Inn has lost it's luster over the decades. The competiton out there is just so much better. The buttery crust really doesn't stand out anymore, especially since when you get it from the restaurant it's hardly noticeable. It's like they say "don't meet your heroes in real life" except here just stick to buying the frozen pizzas. I'll definitely be in the freezer aisle because they taste better and are way cheaper.