In Illinois, where my mother is from and grandmother currently resides, there is a chain of convenience stores known as Casey’s General Store. They seem to be like any other convenience store: small and overpriced, except that they are curiously known for their pizzas. They have a variety of them, from Taco Pizzas, to more standard toppings, but the one that immediately caught my attention was the most underrated, under-offered pizza of them all: breakfast pizzas.

How do more places not carry these? More to the point, how do no pizza chains carry these? I get that the logistics of keeping eggs fresh would probably get a little pricey, but that would be offset by the sheer monopoly that place would have on the industry. And it’s not like breakfast pizzas are the kind of product that would only appeal to a small niche of people: it has everything that people who love breakfast love, and since everyone loves pizza, that’s a demographic so large I’m honestly surprised that no one has the guts to jump on it.

Needless to say, Casey’s breakfast pizzas became the go-to breakfast for us during our stay in Illinois. I also happen to love Aldi’s frozen breakfast pizzas (released under the “Breakfast Best” moniker), so imagine my excitement when I saw that the discount grocer would be offering a take and bake breakfast pizza, complete with sausage AND bacon, cheese, egg, and a cheese sauce. How could this not be good? A fresher, deli-style version of a frozen classic? I was ready to immediately praise this as a triumph before I even took my first bite.

This pizza is one of the biggest letdowns I’ve ever encountered from an Aldi store. The sausage is the closest thing to “delicious” on the whole thing, but it’s so overloaded with sodium that the salt overpowers the actual sausage flavor. My wife made the claim that the bacon tastes like “dog food”, which I found to be a little extreme…but not by much. It’s kind of bacon-y, to the point that you can tell that’s what it is, but it is by no means a “good” bacon taste. It’s just like little clumps of jerky, with a smokier flavor. There weren’t a whole lot of bacon pieces on our pizza, so you shouldn’t notice them too much (seriously, my wife was at least two, maybe even three, pieces in before she even realized bacon was on it).

I was really hoping the cheese sauce would bring everything together and win me over, but even that sucks. There’s no tang to it, nor anything interesting…it’s just a bland cheese sauce that doesn’t taste a whole lot like cheese. Just for the sake of saying something nice, I will say that texture is perfect, as it’s not so thin that it runs all over the place, but it’s The only thing that I didn’t pretty much completely hate is the crust, which according to the box is a “croissant style crust”. I don’t think “croissant” would have crossed my mind if I hadn’t read the packaging in advance, but it is light and kind of buttery. There’s not much flavor at all, but when the rest of the flavors are so bad, something tasteless is better just by default.

This 12“ pizza retails for $5. Normally, I would be ranting and raving about how that’s expensive for a frozen pizza, except I realize that breakfast pizzas seem to naturally be more expensive anywhere you go (and there are disturbingly very few companies that offer them; why no major chains have jumped on board is a complete mystery, except for probably the logistics of keeping eggs and the other ingredients fresh), so it’s about on par with what you can expect to pay elsewhere. Only, there can be no value for something that’s bad; this is by far the worst breakfast pizza I’ve ever had. In fact, it’s the only one that I’ve ever tried, and haven’t liked. That probably says it all.

Overall: 2.5/10. Hands down the worst breakfast pizza that I’ve ever had, which is a complete shocker to me, considering Aldi’s frozen breakfast pizzas are pretty excellent. The cheese sauce has a great texture, but a taste that’s just “off”, while the sausage is made up of 90% salt. My wife mentioned she thought the bacon pieces tasted like “dog food”; while I think that’s a little bit of a stretch, I will admit the look and the flavor have more in common with jerky than actual bacon. I didn’t mind the crust…it’s light and lightly buttery, and that’s enough for me to call it the best thing on the entire pizza. Breakfast pizzas are one of my favorite things in the world, and I was super-excited to give this a shot; to call this even a “massive letdown” feels too understated. Unless they improve it or change it up completely, we will never be buying this ever again.