A few days ago, Punch Pizza was giving away free Mimis – sauceless Neopolitan-style pizzas with basil, cherry tomatoes, and mozzarella. Did I get in on that action? Of course I did.

Looks: The pizza I got could very well have been photographed for the ad – except for the size of the basil leaves and normal variations in the char of the crust, it was exactly as advertised. 4.5 out of 5

Taste: When I first started eating it, I was skeptical – no sauce? What is this, Soviet Russia? Due to the lack of sauce or melted cheese to glue the toppings to the pizza, I resigned myself to eating it like a breadbowl salad – toppings, crust, toppings, crust. However, as I continue to work on it, I started to get the hang of grabbing tomato, mozzarella, and basil in each bite, and the more I ate, the better it tasted – something in the juice of the cherry tomatoes combined with the slightly salty crust to produce a delicious combination that was completely unexpected and completely awesome. (I think I would have appreciated smaller pieces of basil, but that could be because I have trouble cutting leafy food with my incisors – long story.)

While there are only six Punch Pizza locations (and they’re all in central Minnesota), their pizzas are the closest thing to authentic Neopolitan pizza I’ve had in the U.S. Definitely try them out if you have a chance. 4.5 out of 5

P.S. Punch regularly announces deals and promotions via their @PunchPizza Twitter account.

Are you tired of making a pizza but having to throw most of it away since you can only eat one piece at a time? If so, you’ll want to check out Red Baron Pizza by the Slice. It’s like a whole pizza, but not!

It cooks in its own little cardboard and silvery-colored container that you stick in your microwave; this cooking method has the benefit of leaving the cheese in the middle of the slice cold but sill overcooking the bottom of the crust so that’s it’s strangely crispy.

If you buy enough of these that you can learn how to properly get it to heat up in your microwave, you’ll find that it’s a good-enough approximation of a normal Red Baron pizza – if you left it in your fridge overnight and then reheated it in your microwave in a little paper tray.

Looks: 2 out of 5 Taste: 2.5 out of 5

Today’s review comes from reader Megan W. of Lawrence, Kansas:

Looks: The actual pizza appeared to have more, and larger, pieces of vegetables than are shown on the box. The crust didn’t brown much at all. The sauce is as startlingly orange as it appears on the box. The vegetables had actual grill marks exactly as shown. When I first unwrapped the pizza some of the vegetables had migrated to one side so I arranged them to be more even across the pizza.4 out of 5

Taste: This was a delicious pizza. The crust very good: just salty enough with a nice mix of crisp and chewy. The sauce, although orange, was tasty and had noticeable tomato flavor. The vegetables were plentiful, not too soft, and actually tasted grilled (apparently the grill-marks weren’t just for appearances). Although the pizza was flavorful, it was a bit under-seasoned. It could have benefited from some Italian herbs and/or pepper. 4.5 out of 5

My only comment is that it appears that Kashi forgot to add the cheese. Even more embarrassingly, they forgot to add the cheese to the pizza they photographed for the box. Crazy!

Looks: “This is a tiny, tiny single serving pizza at 15 cm. (6 in.). There are perforations in the crust to allow for easy division of the pieces. It comes out of the toaster oven looking much sweatier (due to the grease) than the pizza on the package. The green pepper pieces are mere small shreds and there are no visible bits of red pepper. Perhaps the manufacturer was worried about lactose intolerance in Asian consumers and decided to use less cheese than the picture on the package would imply. The image looks like it has been shot through the kind of soft focus lens that is used to make wrinkles harder to see on aging actresses. The real pizza looks rather stark in comparison.” 3 out of 5

Taste: “The crust is really just very soft bread with a little sweetness to it. It’s common in Japan for sugar to be a bigger component in regular bread-based products and you can sense it in this pizza. The sausage is greasy and has the faintest whisper of pork taste, but really doesn’t taste like much of anything. Mainly, you taste the bread and the corn and get an oily mouth. The cheese is a minor textural element. It reminds me of the lame pizza bread I used to have in the elementary school cafeteria, only with more oil. Because of nostalgia, I’ll give it a 2 out of 5.”

If you’d like to see your food featured on FoodIRL, send pictures and descriptions to food@foodirl.com.

As we were walking through a quaint Mexican village, we stumbled across a little-known restaurante called “Pizza Hut.” We ordered the very Latino-sounding “Cheesy Pops Pizza:”

No formal ratings on this one, as I’m still shaking off my vacation-induced laziness, but it tasted exactly like an American Pizza Hut pizza.

Two other pictures for you from my travels abroad:

Whiskey – now in adult-sized bottles. (My thumbs-up is in the picture solely to provide a sense of scale, not to pass any judgment on drinking such a large bottle of delicious, thirst-quenching nectar.)

How many different kinds of chocolate cake can one cruise ship come up? The answer is 29. They were all delicious.

Looks: They didn’t add enough cheese for it to melt all the way to the edges, the tomato sauce more closely resembles a thin sheet of red paint, and the green peppers by far outnumber the chicken bits. (It’s called “Chicken with Peppers”, not “Peppers with Chicken.”) 3.5 out of 5

Taste: The crust is chewy right out of the microwave, but it becomes crackery if you let it cool. The chicken, cheese, and sauce were all passable (on the high end for microwave pizza), but I definitely would have appreciated more of them. (Although then I suppose they’d have trouble calling it a “200 calorie portion.”

One word of warning: don’t take the “recommended cooking instructions” at face value. There are two 200-calorie portions in each box, and for the first one, I cooked it exactly how long the box recommended I cook it based on my microwave’s wattage (2 minutes). For the second portion, I left it in the microwave for only 1:20. Can you guess which is which?

So if you cook it under close supervision and stop the microwave when the cheese melts, you’ll be ok. 3.5 out of 5

Looks: Like most frozen pizzas, this pizza isn’t cheesed adequately enough to ever have melty cheese string from piece to piece. Apart from that, the shape and color are appropriately depicted on the box. 4 out of 5

Taste: I present to you two facts:

1. This pizza is “Tony’s Crispy Crust Pizza.”
2. I’ve never eaten a less crispy pizza in my life.

It was very bready, and very chewy. If I ignore the fact that it was supposed to be crispy, it wasn’t too bad for a $1 grocery store pizza, but I have to score it low though due to the missing advertised crispiness. 2 out of 5

Looks: I still can’t get these pizzas to brown properly, even after following different advice I’ve gotten from readers: “Move it under the broiler”; “don’t preheat the oven”; “use a blow-torch.” None of it works. 4 out of 5

Taste: There is a definite quality scale of frozen pizzas: it starts with your Lunchables mini pizzas (ketchup and bread), then you have your Jack’s/Jeno’s/Totino’s, then up on the high end, you have your Digiorno’s and Freschettas – the “pizzeria-style” pizzas (if you believe their commercials). I would place this Red Baron above Digiorno, but below Freschetta. The cheese is thick, the sauce is zesty, and the crust is nice and chewy, but not as nice as Freschetta’s. This pizza has a good collection of herbs mixed in the cheese as well, and I think that is what really sets it apart from the Jack’s and Jeno’s. 4 out of 5

Looks: If Totino’s hadn’t felt the need to show off the bursting guts of the flying pizza rolls, this product would have gotten 5 out of 5. However, there’s no way that the amount of filling inside will overflow the crust like they depict on the box, unless you peeled away half of the roll rather than cutting it. Besides that though, the size and color are perfect. 4 out of 5

Taste: Except for being a little bit oily, these Pizza Rolls taste great. They have a rich flavor, and the bits of meat are actual tangible, unlike some other “meat” flavored products I’ve tried. Make sure you let them cool off for about five minutes before eating them, or your burnt mouth won’t be able to taste their delicious flavor. (Side note: I can’t look at the real-life picture without picturing the open pizza rolls singing a little pizza roll song.) 4 out of 5

Looks: It feels kind of like the toppings migrated towards the center of the pizza. I used to work at Domino’s so I know of this tendency, since it’s easier to just sprinkle the food over the middle than to work the whole pie, but come on Pizza Hut employee, take a little pride in your work. 3.5 out of 5

Taste: Come on, we’ve all tasted a Pizza Hut Supreme pizza before, right? I don’t have to describe it here, do I? It is Friday after all… I put up quality posts here, every day, at 6 am. Is it too much to ask for a day off once in a while? Here’s your stinkin’ review: bready, chewy, tasty, greasy, too many peppers. 3 out of 5