What Makes Sam's Club's Pizza Pretzel So Delicious

You can bicker all day with fans of warehouse snacking whether Sam's Club or Costco has the better food court. But only Sam's Club has come up with the innovative pizza pretzel, a merging of two top-notch snack shack provisions that pile exciting flavors onto paper plates for everyone to enjoy. Even if the rest of the menu is a toss-up between the two outlets, it's Sam's Club that brings this level of imagination to its noshing possibilities, giving the chain a tasty edge over the competition.

But what is it about the pizza pretzel that makes it such a delicious decision? Pizza lovers may argue that it's the slices of pepperoni snuggled under layers of cheese or the marinara sauce that comes on the side. Pretzel fans are sure to claim it's the chewy dough and bready goodness of the crust that brings the magic (even if the twisted knot offer no indication how pretzels really got their shape). It turns out that determining the yum factor in a Sam's Club pizza pretzel requires a snacking calculus that takes these and other dimensions into consideration to create a munchie matrix of practically unlimited possibilities. You may think this affordable bite is just another item on the Sam's snack bar menu, but it's so much more than that.

You can't help but be dazzled when you see how enormous a Sam's Club pizza pretzel is in real life. This oversized knot with gargantuan puddles of melted cheese spilling over the top takes up the entire surface of the paper plate it's served on. It's no Sam's Club food court secret that the items behind the counter are generous to a fault, but seeing this twisted temptation in real life is a bit of an eye-popping experience. It's enough to make you wonder if you can finish the entire thing by yourself or if you should have brought a friend to help you polish it off.

The short story being told by this dynamic double-up: You're actually getting two of Sam's sensational dishes in one, an oversized pretzel and a gigantic pizza slice. They just happen to be merged into a single item at a single price. So if your dining dilemma triggers a coin toss between the pretzel and the pizza, opting for the pizza pretzel kills two cravings with one deliciously sized combo that keeps you from having to choose. It's a tasty case of more is better.

One of the major draws of the Sam's Club dining hall is the price structure, a listing that keeps consumer costs as low as the goods in the rest of the warehouse. In a fast food world where the struggle to find items below $3 that don't sacrifice satisfaction is real, the $1.98 price tag is a sumptuous victory for the quantity and quality of what you get.

Of course, the tempting $2 tier is a standard in the Sam's Club food court world. Whether you choose something from Sam's Club's secret menu or stick with the selections on the digital marquee, you always know you're getting a fair shake for your snacking needs. Prices hover between $1 and $2, with ups and downs expected but no major jumps like other easy dining spots enact. In my years-long experience at Sam's Cafe, the price of a pizza pretzel is exactly in line with the company's long-held tradition of providing deliciously affordable food that satisfies your appetite and your budget.

Sam's Club opens at 10 a.m. to provide pizza pretzels for a late breakfast or brunch all the way through dinner and evening snack time. And you don't need to request a change in the membership card to sneak over to the snack bar to get one; Sam's allows access to its food court to anyone with money and an order in mind — and even that can be figured out once you get there. Add a drink or a dessert while you're at the register and maximize your visit — the world is your oyster, but it's made of pizza-topped pretzels, frozen yogurt, and carbonated beverages instead of actual oysters (pearl not included).

With nearly 600 Sam's Club locations throughout the U.S. and Puerto Rico, you can find a warehouse serving up pizza pretzels everywhere in the country except for five states: Alaska, Massachusetts, Oregon, Rhode Island, and Washington. While it would be thoughtful for Sam's Walmart counterparts to provide a snack bar with pizza pretzels at the ready, it's still a treat to have such a decadent order available throughout the states.

The word "copious" might as well have been invented specifically to describe the quantity of cheese Sam's Club uses on its pizza pretzels. It all runs into a gooey pool in the center of the twist, browned perfectly to bring out flavor and firm up the substance. It's real mozzarella too, the same shredded stuff the kitchen uses on its full-size pies, heaped over the entire pretzel for a cheese-lover's paradise that gives your fingers no un-cheesed surface. You have no choice but to get your grubby mitts even greasier while eating, but oily fingers are part of the package. And there are plenty of napkins available to clean yourself up when you're finished.

Since this is a Sam's Club creation, it's a natural conclusion that this marvelous mozzarella is from the Member's Mark label. The company does offer its own take on the classic pizza cheese as a purchase item in refrigerator cases, so using another brand instead would be counterproductive to pushing the high-quality goods the house brand is famous for.

This knotted novelty comes with plenty of pepperoni but would be just as fine without it. Not having access to the brand information on these spicy slices, my assumption is that it's a Member's Mark product, likely the same pepperoni you can buy in the deli section in case you feel the need to make your own pizza at home, in pretzel or traditional form. The good news for anyone who doesn't favor pepperoni on their slice: If you happen to catch the Sam's Club snack bar crew between rounds of pizza pretzel preparation, you can ask for a cheese-only version that's a perfect variation for vegetarians looking to leave the pepperoni in the package.

Should you find yourself in an already-pepperoni'ed snacking scenario, it's easy enough to lift the cheese and peel off the slices to offer a friend who doesn't mind second-hand snacking. They can arrange the pepperoni on top of the cheese on their own pizza pretzel and make a meat lover's pie that puts your scraps to good use. Add customizability as a bonus to the list of what makes a Sam's Club pizza pretzel so delicious!

Rather than make things messy by slathering sauce on the pretzel itself, Sam's Club takes the smarter path and provides a dipping cup of marinara instead. And what a dipping sauce it is. Though a marinara-style concoction is obviously a standard in pizza construction, this sauce feels different from what's slathered on the usual pies baking in the Sam's ovens. It's a substantial creation with dense tomato paste texture and vibrant flavor, bold and herbaceous and scooped into a condiment cup to provide a tidy take-along vessel.

While dipping is great if you're able to sit and enjoy your snack at a leisurely pace, you may need to race through the eating process so you can get on with your day. Should you need all the flavors in one place, you can easily scoop the sauce onto the cheese and create an inside-out pizza that shakes up the scene in even more exciting ways. I gave it a try and discovered how simple it is to turn the pretzel into a more familiar crust, with the interior cheese providing support that kept the flavorful sauce from running all over the place.

If any food at Sam's Club deserves a cult following, the soft pretzel should be at the head of the line. It's a genuine go-to selection that gives more modest snackers a no-nonsense take on the recipe without getting needlessly extravagant. The dough is chewy, crusty, and salty in all the right places, colossal in size, and perfectly yeasted to achieve a classic flavor that can be enjoyed plain or brushed with butter.

But when it serves as the foundation for a far more fanciful creation, this simple pretzel steps out of its comfort zone and lives up to its potential as the core of an inspired snack reimagining. It took the addition of cheese and pepperoni for me to realize that this is likely the same dough used for Sam's pizza pies, which makes it an obvious candidate as a holder for the toppings splashed all over the full-sized pizzas. There's no butter detected on this version, which keeps the oil content strictly focused on the pizza-specific parts and prevents competition among the flavors.

Customer taste will obviously determine for each pizza pretzel eater what truly makes this offering such a delicious dish. For me, there's no aspect of the pizza pretzel that isn't delightful, from the clever engineering that combines two of Sam's Club's existing offerings into a singular selection using premium ingredients to achieve a deluxe morsel to the fact that you can sneak in through the exit and grab one for $2. And being able to go with or without pepperoni or lopping your sauce into the center of the pretzel for a customary pizza presentation means you can tailor this natty nibble to your preference.

Being an aficionado of Sam's Club's plain pretzels, the pizza pretzel is a preferred way for me to enjoy a pretzel-plus or a pizza-minus — whichever feels like the right item for the occasion. Knowing there's a delicious high-concept order waiting when I glide into the warehouse to replenish necessities makes the possibility of ordering lunch while shopping a prospect I can't refuse. And I'm guessing I'm not the only lucky Sam's Club snacker facing this appetizing conundrum.

There were no pizza pretzels prepared when I arrived at my local Sam's Club to pick one up, so I got one that was fresh from the oven — no heat lamp time required. I did pop it into the toaster oven to revitalize the cheese, since it had cooled a bit by the time I arrived home. Luckily, it was an easy fit on the baking tray and only took a few minutes to come back to life, with no loss of quality detected. Despite having eaten these fantastic things in the past, to make sure I knew what I was talking about, I chose to peel back the layers and taste each one on its own. I gauged the quality of the elements separately and found that they rival prime pizzeria ingredients, not surprising considering the impressive flavor of Sam's Club pizza in general. Once the layers had been tested individually, I tasted them as Sam's Club intended for them to be eaten, both with and without the marinara sauce applied.

Not to gush over a snack, but having examined the pizza pretzel in such depth, I have no reservations when I say it's one of the best items at this price that you can find in the fast food sphere. Factoring aspects like size, price, and availability to qualify "deliciousness" as attractiveness made it challenging to find any single dimension that was more delicious than the others. It turns out that the Sam's Club pizza pretzel really is the whole package.