Pizza Hut is more than grease and nostalgia – I’m devastated at closures

Stacking my plate with steaming slices of pizza at the buffet, my mouth was already salivating.

It was 1994 and my friend and I were incredibly hungover after a big night celebrating the end of term.

Returning gingerly to the table, we both sat in silence and let the hot, salty carbs reanimate our souls. Part two of the cure came from life-giving gulps of cold Pepsi.

God bless you, Pizza Hut. You cured more of my student hangovers than I can care to admit – and I’m still obsessed with you, aged 52.

That’s why I’m devastated to hear about the news of the pizza chain closing 68 of its restaurants and 11 delivery sites across the UK after the company behind its UK venues went into administration.

Normally, when a big chain shuts up shop, there’s grief, nostalgia, and maybe even a petition – think of the outcry when Woolworths and HMV disappeared. But the news of Pizza Hut’s demise has been met with shrugs, snark, and food snobbery. The Telegraph urged people to ‘let it die’, while the Spectator said it was ‘never any good’.

Apparently, loving Pizza Hut is uncool. Well, I don’t care because no other restaurant chain has appealed to me throughout my life. 

It started with childhood treats, when I loved every moment in the plasticky red booths, studying the sticky menus. The visits to the salad bar made me feel grown up, as I heaped beetroot, croutons, and a bewildering quantity of thousand island dressing into a single bowl. Sometimes I even ate the salad.

Then came the student years, where Pizza Hut wasn’t a meal, so much as a clinical intervention. Later, it morphed into first dates and proper sit-down dinners.

Even as I changed, Pizza Hut stayed its usual, superlative self: everything on the menu was ‘ultimate’ or ‘supreme’, as though the kitchen were locked in an escalating arms race with itself.

And through it all, it evolved with me: from meat-devouring teenager, to earnest vegetarian, to fully-fledged vegan. Pepperoni binges became Veggie Sizzlers topped with plant-based cheese, but the joy — and the grease — remained consistent.

Pizza Hut even looked after me during the Covid-19 pandemic. When deliveries arrived during lockdown, it started to feel like that rare, childhood treat again because the world felt so bleak and so many of life’s pleasures were off-limits. Suddenly, life didn’t feel quite so apocalyptic.

But now it’s struggling and, although 64 sites have been spared the chop, this feels like it might be the beginning of the end for this glorious chain. The deeply unpalatable truth is that people have just become a bit too snobby about their pizzas.

These days, people are more interested in hand-stretched dough and nduja rather than thick, bready salty slices. They don’t want their pizzas served by an innocent kid in a uniform, they want it handed to them by a hipster with a topknot, tattoos, and the posture of a man who’s never apologized in his life.

Some people have moved on from pizza completely – those carb-phobic scolds who speak of the pie as though it were a lethal, controlled substance. 

I think this is such a shame. I mean, look, I enjoy a Franca Manca as much as the next snob , but let’s be real: when you want a Pizza Hut, nothing on God’s earth will do apart from a Pizza Hut.

Not sourdough. Not artisan basil. Not a man called Dylan telling you about the soil pH of his San Marzano tomatoes. Just. Pizza. Hut.

And this isn’t just about maudlin nostalgia or expanding waistlines — it’s about what dies with chains like this. Over a thousand people could lose their jobs. And our high streets will lose yet another familiar face.

How much more character is left for us to lose?

Given the public’s response to the chain’s woes, I doubt anyone will swoop in to save the 68 stores. It seems more likely that the remaining 64 outlets will close before long, which will be a sad day for the nation.

At the end of the day, visiting your local Pizza Hut is about so much more than the food. It’s a rite of passage.

It’s offered me a runway from childhood to adolescence to adulthood — all for the price of a stuffed crust.

Yes, the cynics will scoff and say it was only grease and nostalgia. But grease and nostalgia are two of life’s greatest pleasures.

And nobody — absolutely nobody — delivered them like The Hut.

Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing Ross.Mccafferty@usnewsrank.com. 

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