Friday, April 01, 2005

Patxi's Pizza: Soy Cheese Challenge

My friend Scott eats at Patxi's Pizza quite a bit. Born with supernaturally low cholesterol, Scott eats enough Chicago deep dish pizza to fell a lesser man.

Scott's miracle biology aside, the good folks at Patxi's still thought it wise to begin weaning Scott from standard cheese filling to a potentially healthier alternative.

Last week, unbeknownst to Scott, they gave him a Chicago-style pizza filled with soy cheese.

Scott is easily the most finicky eater I know, so I was taken aback to hear that he barely noticed the difference between soy cheese and Patxi's standard issue cow curd. Since a more thorough investigation had to be immediately conducted, four of us descended onto Patxi's last night for a more rigorous scientific evaluation. We ordered one pepperoni with regular cheese and one with soy cheese.

We began dining without knowing which pizza was loaded with cow and which pizza was slathered with beans.




Both pies arrive.


Slice 1: Soy Cheese Slice


Slice 2: Standard Cheese Slice


Judgment. I am the only diner to incorrectly guess which pie had soy cheese instead of standard cheese.

I'll save the detailed comments for my dining companions. I don't have the most refined pizza palate, so I had absolutely no idea which was which. I incorrectly guessed that the regular cheese pizza was the soy cheese pizza on the theory that it tasted just a little bit too much like cheese.

Until soy cheese is proven to be bad for you, I'll be ordering soy cheese from here on out.

2 comments:

Jane Hamsher said...

And on your recommend, I am going to go out and order a soy pizza! Who knew?

Jane
http://firedoglake.blogspot.com

Hoff said...

I suppose I should fully blog about this, but haven't gotten around to it yet, so I'll just comment.
As a regular consumer of soy beverages, I picked out the soy pie successfully on first bite - it had a certain unusual, baking-spice sort of flavor that pointed it out as distinct from cheese, as well as a somewhat less gooey consistency. Eating only the soy slice, I didn't find the difference overly distracting. After consuming a slice of regular cheese, however, and then returning to a soy slice the difference was notably more significant, to the point that I found it almost dislikable. I will be very interested to sample a blend of the two.