Papa John's

Everyone wants junk food once in a while. I recently had a depressing experience in which the facilitators of a group I was part of ordered pizza for everyone as kind of a surprise treat, as we were all exhausted and had been working long hours. Of course, it was all cheese, even though it's fairly easy to get vegan pizza in Philly (or anyplace there's a Papa John's). I know my group did not intend to exclude me, or the other two vegans in the group, or our lactose-intolerant colleague. It's just that people don't typically think of pizza as a vegan food. But pizza is actually one of my favorite foods.

Shortly after the above-mentioned incident, our group had pizza again, but this time it wasn't a surprise, and I was able to put in a request for no-cheese pizza, which was no problem. The local place we ordered from didn't really know how to do it, and there wasn't much flavor, as they apparently relied on the cheese and meat for flavor and didn't bother with the sauce or crust, but at least we all had something to eat. Papa John's, on the other hand, makes a delicious and flavorful cruelty-free pizza. Counterintuitively, even their "butter" garlic sauce that comes with the pizza... is vegan.

So, for your informational delight, here is a suggestion for a cruelty-free pizza you might order. This is a screen-shot of my actual online shopping cart on the Papa John's website.

It's as easy as that. No animal cruelty anywhere in there. Papa John's online menu allows you to select "No Cheese" from a drop-down menu. We've ordered this several times (except we don't usually get pineapple, because I'm the only one in the house who likes pineapple on pizza), and it has never once turned up with cheese on it. Interestingly, the one time we ordered from Papa John's face-to-face, they did screw it up and put cheese on it. But every time we've ordered online, it's gone well. And during football season, you can often find specials where you get extra toppings depending on how many touchdowns your home team scores. Fun, huh? And not a bad deal.