ASDA Stonebaked Four Cheese Pizza

It’s late in the evening, and the wide aisles of the 24/7 Asda Superstore are dotted about with the lost and the weary. Myself included. Around where I am the supermarkets are rammed full of impatient shoppers cramming all sorts of shit into their carts and racing about from the instant noodle section to the multipack potato ship zone like they’re entering the first corner of an F1 race knowing it’s their last one before being sentenced to death. At least at this time of night, its just myself and the people who need some peace.

I’d been by myself for a few days by this point and supplies were running low. Vegetables? Eaten. Pasta? Over boiled. Rice? Made too much in one go, over and over again until I was riceless. It was time to stock up for the next few days of solitude.

I slowly stepped though the security gates passed the uninterested guard and padded across the shiny floors towards the central thoroughfare. From there I could see all the aisles, replete with their brightly-coloured, attention-grabbing packaging, all made with love by robots out of chemically engineered flavours. Yum! I grabbed some essentials and took a shortcut down one of the frozen-food aisles to the empty checkouts. Along the lonely way, I saw stacks of cheaply dressed frozen pizzas, perfect for a cheaply-dressed frozen man such as myself. I consciously strode past all of the luxury-priced pizzas and stood before the cheapest looking shit I could ever have dreamed to look upon. There it was, a frozen disc of bread with what looked to be a burst spot smothered on it. Well hey, it’s less than £2 so I couldn’t be choosy here.

I got home and got to work to keep myself alive. The instructions on the box said to put it in the oven for 12 minutes at 200c, so I preheated the oven and tore into the box as if I were frantically looking for secrets whilst being delighted by the premise of ingesting micro plastics as the soggy disc of flat bread and dusty cheese shavings was wrapped in a polythene jacket. After the suggested time, I was presented with what looked be a soggy, acne-ridden face that was damp from a heavy winter’s mist, so I slammed on the grill and turned the oven up to maximum heat and left it until I remembered it in a panic a few minutes later.

The outside of the pizza was like a biscuit that fades into a soggy, bready mess towards the middle, and the cheese around the edge had carbonised into a new material. The tomato base was just tomato puree with nothing added to it. Herbs? Get outta here with that fancy talk. Spices? Absolutely not, kid! The four cheeses might have been four scrapes of bland cheese for all the flavour they didn’t give. I wasn’t expecting much for the price, but also I wasn’t expecting to consider eating the packaging to try and taste something, which I very strongly thought about.

There was an unsettling tanginess to each sorrowful bite. I fought against millions of years of evolution, waving at me like shipwreck-survivors begging me to spit it out and save myself from poison and potential death by old pizza, but I overcame my own self and said it must’ve come from one of the cheeses knowing full well that the cheese didn’t taste of anything. I checked to make sure I wasn’t eating melted plastic and re-read the three cheeses mentioned on the front of the box on this four cheese pizza. I’m assuming it was the Emmental supplying this battery-acid like ping, but it was enough for me to halt proceedings and place the rest of the pizza in the trash where it belongs.