TJFLR – Pizza al Pollo Asado – Half Pizza, Half Tamale, Half Delicious

A new regular Fooddouche feature – Trader Joe’s Frozen Lunch Review! For those of us who eat lots of sad lunches at our desks and try to spice up our routines with TJ’s latest attempt to replicate ethnic food.

We’ll start with TJ’s Pizza al Pollo Asado, an attempt at a Mexican pizza. What’s so Mexican about it?

It’s more accurate to ask, what is so pizza about it?

The crust is an interesting corn masa puck, dense and heavy. Instead of red sauce you get a schmear of refried beans. A non-descript cheese and some lightly flavored chicken. There’s also a bit of not really spicy chile salsa on top.

It’s not bad, once you understand this is more like a tamale than a pizza. Once that penny drops, you will think, oh, this isn’t weird — it’s just kind of an overly salty, not awesome flat tamale. Or maybe more rightly, it’s like an unfried, oversized sope.

The verdict: not worthy of inclusion in the TJFLR rotation. Too dense and not quite tasty enough. It’s OK, but I’ll stick to the more familiar Mexican-ish dishes, the enchilada and quesadilla.