There are few culinary experiences like the first bite of a Domino’s pizza. The finest N25 caviar or a perfectly seared lobe of foie gras surely can’t compare to the ecstasy that comes from that mouth-cutting cornmeal that they sprinkle all over the base, or that sweet, cloying ‘cheese’, or those tart, dancing cups of pepperoni. In these moments, resistance is futile. It’s not a question of whether this is the best takeaway pizza there is, or even the best food there is. It’s a question of whether this is the best thing there is.
Of course, we know how it ends. Fifteen minutes later, caked in sweat, parched, filling yourself up like a swimming pool. And then, if you’re unlucky, an awakening in the middle of the night. You wheeze against the table. The sight of the final two slices makes you feel like you’re in a car going up a windy mountain. You have to have Domino’s only once a year, to remind you of why you haven’t had Domino’s for a year.
Still, it’s a great, great tradition, deserving of the cliche ‘iconic’. It’s perhaps the quintessential takeaway, a single, circular dinner in a box. The fact that they still use their own fleet of drivers, rather than palming it off to Deliveroo or Uber Eats, adds to that Nineties feel.
But there’s signs, sad signs, that people are going off Domino’s. An FT headline last week made me surprisingly glum: ‘Domino’s turns to fried chicken as chief says Britain nearing peak pizza’. The chain, the paper reports, is suffering from a ‘broader slowdown in demand for pizza’. Demand apparently fell by 1.5 per cent over summer (although a Pepperoni Passion probably isn’t the best lunch on a hot day). The company’s shares have sunk to a ten-year low.
Domino’s is worried, and it is looking enviously at fried chicken places like Popeyes and Wingstop, which are reporting healthy growth. Their chief executive said that ‘chicken is the fastest-growing protein’, so moving into the market seems ‘pretty obvious’. Domino’s will now sell three chicken tenders for £4.50 or eight wings for £7.50.
Ah, man. Everything becomes the same, doesn’t it? Domino’s moving into the fried chicken market is probably one of the lower-brow cases in point that we are descending into a monoculture, but it’s no less significant for that.
The triumph of fried chicken over pizza is, to be fair, probably more in keeping with this country’s eating habits. Fried chicken shops have been part of the London vernacular longer than pizza has: just listen (or try not to listen) to sarf Lunnun wannabe roadmen get emotional about their local Morley’s. Other chains abound around London: PFC, Chicken Cottage, Sam’s Chicken (my favourite). It was a particular Noughties neurosis for adults to fret about schoolkids getting all their calories from these shops, chicken grease dripping down untucked shirts under those harsh dentists’ lights.
Ah, man. Everything becomes the same, doesn’t it?
But the pendulum swing towards fried chicken has an additional element now, and it’s depressingly summed up by the Domino’s chief’s use of the word ‘protein’. According to modern health mantras, particularly mantras aimed towards men trying to build some muscle, protein is all. Protein is king. It literally doesn’t matter what else you eat, so long as you are hitting 150g protein a day. A typical Gen Z man’s meal nowadays – and one that I see cooked quite regularly in my flat – would be about half a kilogram of beef or turkey mince, on top of either loads of mushrooms, or a small bit of rice. On TikTok, despairing girlfriends post about their Patrick Bateman-esque boyfriends eating ‘boy kibble’.
According to this logic, where you must never be off the clock for the sake of your gains, then you should go for fried chicken if you’re going to indulge at all. Chicken meat – particularly breast – is one of the most protein-dense foods going, and what’s a couple of breadcrumbs gonna do? In contrast, pizza – all bread, cheese and tomato, a glucose spike as tall as Everest – is unpardonable. All of this, the quantifying approach to food rather than following when you’re instinctively hungry, is obviously very sad.
There’s another reason we should lament the decline of Domino’s pizza, though. It knows what it is. It is very unhealthy, non-elevated tasty pizza. Crucially, it’s not a particularly pretty thing, which is why I think it looks better in fuzzy, static-filled Nineties adverts. These days, pizza is taken almost too seriously. There was a pizza outlet in Hammersmith called Crisp that had multiple-hour queues (the pizza is tasty). It opened an outlet in Mayfair last week, and the queues already go round the block. It is striving to be something unique, whereas Domino’s strives to be something familiar.
I hope Domino’s doesn’t die. I want it to be there, the next time I have a hangover that warps space and time. We already have too much fried chicken, and a pizza chain won’t win (eight wings for £7.50 is monstrously expensive). Domino’s should ignore the imperatives for more protein and stick to doing what it does best. Killing us.
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