Well another week, and another pizza! This time, we have the Bistro Style Bruschetta Flatbread, released under the Specially Selected label at Aldi stores. We got this one because it’s a pizza fit for vegetarians, so it was one I could enjoy with my wife–although at a quick glance it looks like there’s chicken on the pizza, it’s simply made up of tomatoes, onions, and cheese, with a crème fraiche sauce, and some garlic in there somewhere.

Admittedly, we were a little pressed for time when preparing this–my wife had to be at work in under an hour–so our attempts to shave off some cooking time backfired a little bit; the edges were nice and crispy, but the center was still soft. It was cooked enough, but easily could have, and should have, served some more time in the oven. So the texture was a little off, but that was completely our fault. Still, the flavors remained largely unchanged, so while the onions were a little flimsier than they probably should have been, it didn’t detract from our enjoyment of the pizza very much at all.

For starters, not having a tomato-based sauce on a bruschetta pizza (bruschetta being an Italian appetizer, kind of similar to salsa in appearance, though not so much taste, that is made up of about 90% tomato) is a pretty gutsy call. I mean, even most margherita pizzas, which feature tomato as the main topping, also have a tomato-based sauce; not surprisingly, this means there’s not a real heavy tomato flavor. Instead, we get a strong dose of garlic and onion, along with a sprinkling of tomato in there somewhere…I’m really kind of baffled as to why they picked to market it as “bruschetta”.

So fans of tomato might be slightly disappointed. But I thought the flavor was good right out of the gates, and I would pick this flatbread up again in a heartbeat. The crème fraiche is good as it always seems to be, even in processed frozen foods, and adds the perfect first layer of toppings to the proceedings. The cheese is also rather scantly placed, so don’t expect a lot of it, but I liked that it was light and not overly cheesy–it allowed the other flavors to shine through.

My biggest gripe, and I believe I’ve mentioned this before under a similar product, is that, much like the name insinuates, flatbreads are very thin. Yet these retail for as much as Aldi’s other pizza products. I don’t care what angle you come from–Specially Selected seems to be the discount grocer’s more “upscale” products–paying the same price for a clearly smaller amount of food just feels, well, kinda stupid. My wife and I each ate three pieces for dinner, and it wasn’t nearly enough, so I went back and ate two more later, which still wasn’t very filling. I guess what I’m trying to say is: Why pay for this, when you can get something twice as filling for the same price? As I said, the flavor is good, but nothing so outstanding that it’s worth the inflated price tag.

Overall: 6.5/10. Let’s get the “knocks” out of the way first: Why it’s marketed as a bruschetta product when there’s barely any tomato on it (even the sauce is crème fraiche, and not tomato-based at all) seems kind of pointless; so is the fact this retails for the same price as Aldi’s other pizza products, despite being very thin and unfilling. But the flavor, which mainly consists of garlic and onion, is pretty good. If you want something that more resembles a snack, or if you’re just eating this all by yourself, or you’re not at all hungry, then you might get more of your money’s worth. I ate this with my wife, and was still pretty hungry after we split it, so I didn’t feel like there was much in the way of value. I’d get it again, but not in the near future, and not very often.