A Six-Course Tasting Menu of Papa’s Signature Specialties to Impress Your Friends, Family, and Lovers

You all might be wondering why I invited everyone here tonight. I realize there isn’t much space in my studio apartment, and a definite lack of chairs, but please bear with me. We’re gathered to celebrate a wonderful event in my life. As some of you know, I’ve been writing for this website called The Shocker. Up until this point, I have been working mostly for stock options, which it turns out meant that I was getting paid in weekly installments of thin, almost-flavorless beef broth. Those days are over thanks to the recent acquisition of our publication by Papa John’s, America’s favorite pizza father figure. You’re the first lucky people I’ve selected to share this good news with, and the first to hear about a wonderful opportunity I have to offer.

First, let me assure you that The Shocker is NOT turning into a pyramid scheme. That’s not what’s going on here. Now that that’s out of the way, let me ask you a question: Do you smell something? What does it smell like to you?

*Papa John you are so cool*

Does it smell like a good memory? Football on a crisp fall Sunday, watching the home team pound a touchdown into enemy territory? Playing video games at your friend’s house late into the night when you were a kid? The inside of the delivery boy’s Impreza after you robbed him and stuffed his body in the trunk?

Yeah, that’s the smell of the six hot steaming pizzas I have in my kitchen. These aren’t just your ordinary pizzas, I assure you — they’re Papa’s Signature Specialties. We’re way beyond pepperoni. We’re way beyond mushrooms. America is a gourmet nation now, and if you don’t like it, you can get out.

No, that was a figure of speech. Please remain seated. Or standing, if you don’t have a chair. Now what’s going to happen is, I’m going to bring out these pizzas and you’re going to eat a slice. As you chew silently and savor this finely prepared Italian abbondanza, I’m going to describe the sensations you should be feeling.

John’s Favorite

Note: My apartment is not nearly this clean.

A Papa doesn’t like to play favorites with his babies, but if you get enough garlic butter in him he’ll admit that his first creation turned out the best: pepperoni, sausage, a six-cheese blend, and Italian seasoning. This was the first time in human history that pepperoni and sausage coexisted on the same pizza plane, and we’ve never looked back at those dark ages when you had to choose between them. Can anyone hazard a guess as to what the six cheeses are? Of course you can’t, because their admixture is so finely calibrated that they have become a perfect mélange, forming an entirely new cheese molecule known only as The Chimera. The Italian seasoning is meant to amuse the bouche, as they say in Portugal, and if you inhale through your nose as you chew you’ll detect the delicate bouquet of such fine herbs such oregano, salt, and garlic powder.

The Works

Perspectival blur in the foreground was an experiment for my photography class. It’s meant to illustrate the vastness of Papa John’s works as an allusion to the poem Ozymandias: “Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair.”

Aren’t we all sick of the workaday life? Punch in, punch out, drink your coffee, eat your sandwich, retire at 65. This masterpiece is the Papa’s testament to that time in his life when he was just another Louisville pizzeria owner making what people expected from him: a supreme pie with pepperoni, black olives, green peps, and onion. Everything changed on that fateful day when he mistakenly got a shipment of old ham from Ontario. He decided to slice it thinly, against the grain of the meat to enhance its tenderness, and throw it atop the same old pizza he’d been making for what seemed like his entire life. Now it wasn’t just a supreme, it was something higher, holier, sanctified by what we now know as Canadian bacon. Know why he called it The Works? Because it works, baby. And that’s the message I want to get across for you today. Let this pizza work for you, and enjoy life.

The Meats

Use white bread (pictured, right) to sop up the leftover grease that pools at the bottom of the box. Waste not, want not!

If God wanted us to live to be a thousand years old, he wouldn’t have made cholesterol so bad for your body. In many ways, the combined sensation of pepperoni, sausage, ground beef, bacon and Canadian bacon on your tongue is like taking a long drag off a nice Marlboro on a hot day at the lake, that foul tang of death and future suffering made sweeter in this moment of carefree life. Who’s gonna stop you? That’s right — yourself. Do not fear Thanatos, embrace him as the one true God.

The Spicy Italian

The Spicy Italian was actually Papa John’s nickname back in his high school days, if you know what I mean. In tribute to our patriarch’s lost youth, this pizza’s got a double helping of spicy sausage. Take a bite and let these flavors bring you back to those good times sitting on the hood of your LeBaron, sipping Robitussin that you stole from Grandma’s medicine cabinet, maybe pop some ‘Ludes and take a drive out in the country.

Why aren’t you eating? Oh, I get it — you feel like you’ve seen it all. Another pizza with cured meats atop a layer of delicious molten cheese and vaguely sweet marinara, all sustained by the fluffy crust that made Papa John a household name? I didn’t bring you here tonight to bore you. I brought you here to blow your minds, and show you what life can be like with a little Papa in it.

BBQ Chicken Bacon

So familiar, and yet so strange. It would be terrifying if it weren’t so delicious.

Bacon. Chicken. Barbecue Sauce. Onions. Sounds like an entree at a sit-down restaurant like Chili’s or Longhorn Steakhouse, but it’s on a pie that was delivered right to my door by a gullible young man who’s currently in the trunk of an Impreza. This is not Grandpa John’s pizza, but it’s not too far off either. The familiar peaks of crisped, caramelized cheese are still there. That ample container of garlic butter awaits your tearing fingers, its luxurious golden contents ready to add their complex flavor profile to those precious last morsels of crust. There’s no need to be intimidated. Have a slice. I insist.

I insist.

Hawaiian BBQ Chicken

I love a good New York slice.

Who’s ready for dessert?

On the surface, this might look a lot like the last pizza, but I assure you it is utterly transformed by the presence of this exotic tropical produce that the natives of Hawai’i call the “pineapple.” The light citrusy burst of these fruit chunks in your mouth will serve to contrast the sweet smokiness of the barbecue sauce and the saltiness of the bacon, elevating each bite by virtue of their harmony.

I see you’re not eating. Some of you are closing your eyes and appear to be crying. I used to be like you before I came to love the Papa and all that he does for me. Let me show you something that should change your mind.

SImple enough.

Like I said earlier, this is an opportunity I’m offering you. Look around at my studio apartment and you’ll see how good life can be, if only you’ll answer the door when the delivery boy knocks with six boxes of opportunity in an insulated bag. Treat yourself, your friends, your family, your lovers to a six-course pizza tasting menu like the one you’ve just enjoyed. Encourage them to do the same. It’s what Papa wants, and don’t you want him to be proud of you? Just look at the arrows that emanate from his name in the diagram. Those rays go on forever into the infinite, piercing the pure white nothing of the stock photo and marching bravely into the void, simply because that’s what great people do.

You each owe me thirty dollars for the pizza and water.