MTP Auto Leasing in Bellerose, NY

There is so much to love about this submission from our dear, dear friend Jenna. The village of Bellerose, NY, on Long Island is only 0.1 square miles and home to some 1200 or so lucky residents. Lucky because they all  know EXACTLY where to go when they need auto leasing (and services). Sadly, that convenience did come at the expense of the village's Pizza Hut, but hell, everyone in Bellerose knows that you just can just go up a few blocks to the corner of Hillside Avenue and Little Neck Parkway to grab a big old greasy pie at the NEW Pizza Hut, which, according to Yelp user Jemi, "is not real pizza. It tastes as if it was frozen and just got rapidly heated up."

And that, my friends, is the power of internet research.

UTBAPH Featured on KCBS in San Francisco

Our good friends over at KCBS in San Francisco decided to ask me a few questions to find out what all the buzz is about this blog. Despite calling me a restaurant (I assume she meant "resident"), I think I nailed the whole "trying not to sound like a complete idiot on live radio" thing.

Give it a listen.

The Brunch Box in Lakeland, Florida

I know what you are thinking, and I am thinking the same thing, so let's just cut right to it: there is nothing good about brunch. Wake up early, hungry, on a day that you are supposed to meet someone for "brunch" and you will see exactly what I mean. Brunch is for lazy people without alarm clocks. Eat some damn breakfast like the rest of us, you jagoff. And don't get me started on what happens in the early afternoon when your lazy-but-efficient self decided to roll breakfast and lunch together at 10:30am. You are hungry but now you have to wait for dinner. This is ridiculous.

That said, the brunch box does, in fact, serve breakfast and lunch, according to the sign. Whether you are a confused couple walking down the street or a few oddballs hanging out in the back of your illegally parked crew cab truck, you are welcome to enjoy breakfast, lunch, or that strange hybrid of the two with a slice of cantaloupe on the side at the Brunch Box.

Submitted by Josh, who, no doubt, wakes up with the sun and eats a bowl of Raisin Bran like the no-nonsense individual that he is.

Reding Brothers Martial Arts in Denton, TX

In 1984, a handyman/martial arts master (loyal reader, Sean) agreed to teach a bullied boy karate and show him that there was more to the martial art than fighting. 

That may have been the plot of Karate Kid, but, in my mind, that is what is happening right inside this former Pizza Hut every day. It looks like some serious renovations took place here, but the signature roof hump remains, and that makes me happier than when Daniel Laruso successfully executed that weird swan kick to beat the crap out of that bully guy whose name was on the IMDB tab that I just closed in my browser, so I apologize for the alarming lack of specificity here.

La Porchetta in Auckland, New Zealand

In Australia, New Zealand, and Indonesia, a chain called "La Porchetta" offers, I'm told, fairly generic family style Italian meals. This happy example, in the Henderson suburb of Auckland, is an unabashed UTBAPH. A quick paint job on the roof and some new signage, and voilà, you can almost smell your mediocre meal.

Big thanks to our friend from down under, Toby, for this fantastic submission.

Red Rooster in Traralgon, Australia

Did you know that:
1) There is is place called Traralgon that is NOT a typo made by a drunk cartographer?
2) There is a restaurant called "Red Rooster" that the locals call "Red Rooter" because "rooter" is slang for the F word (trying to keep my blog more kid-friendly since I assume that increases in childhood obesity lead more and more kids each year to search for blogs about Pizza Hut)?
3) There was a Pizza Hut some place that is NO LONGER A PIZZA HUT. Wait, that's not the name of the blog. Let me try that again. Did you know that there is a Pizza Hut some place that USED TO BE A.... crap. Well, you know what I am getting at here, right?

This strangely elevated Red Roo(s)ter in Tarragon (or Algernon, or something) Australia was indeed once a Pizza Hut. Man, the land down under is rife with old Pizza Huts, which leads me to the only logical conclusion: that Australia was an awesome place to live in the 80s.

Check the before and after of this beaut and let me know what you think in the comments.

Mentions Galore

Wow, lots of great mentions from some seriously awesome blogs over the past few days. First, from HuffPo (as those of us in the know call it), was a mention in an article about the 34 Greatest Moments in Pizza History from 2013. The triumphant return of this blog (their words, not mine) was deserving of the 18th spot on this list. For this, I was both surprised and humbled, as I did not see the triumphant return of this blog as being any higher than maybe #27 on the year.

Shortly after the HuffPo article was published, I was contacted by the Atlantic Cities blog (not to be confused with Atlantic City's blog, which is pretty much the same but with a fake orange tan and greasy hair) for an interview. The reporter kindly ignored my screaming kids in the background and even managed to mishear some of their crying as intelligent observations regarding the tie-in between architecture and brand awareness.

And then today I noticed that Consumerist.com could not help but join in the pizza party themselves, profiling my blog as well as some other similar blog not worth visiting.

More than anything, the new visitors to the site help bring even more content via reader submission, so I am eternally grateful (and confused) by the willingness of the readers to risk their lives to snap photos of old Pizza Huts from the medians of highways (or just to sit in their mom's basements and browse Google Street View).

Whichever.