When Domino's said that they'd re-invented their pizza "from the crust up," I was skeptical. Generally, there's a basic Pavlovian reaction: If it comes out of a red-and-blue box with the Domino's logo on it, it's going to taste nasty.

But then I started to second-guess myself. Had I just been conditioned to believe that Domino's was gross?

To find out, I staged a reality-TV-style showdown between the new pie recipe and famed executive chef and talk show host Shawn Gamble.

I started by askingChris Brandon, Domino's public relations spokesman, about the process of "reinventing" their pizza. Did they just dump a little basil in the sauce, or what?

"It was a two-year process," he told me. "We went through multiple sauces, cheeses and dough treatments."

Two years of testing is impressive, I guess, but weren't these the same people who thought it was okay to sell the crap they'd been calling Domino's pizza for years prior? Couldn't they have just spent two years playing "Yo, Noid," dipped the crust in some garlic butter and called it a new pizza? What did they actually do?

"Well, for one, the sauce is bolder -- it's got more flavor, and a little bit of a red pepper kick to it," said Brandon. "We've improved our pepperoni and sausage, and the crust -- it's got a garlic seasoning on it. We hear a lot of people say that that's the most compelling thing about the new pizza."

Then I dropped my surprise: In order to determine if what he was saying was true, the next person to sample the pizza wouldn't be me. It would be Executive Chef Gamble, the former owner of Austin Italian hotspot Gypsy and current host of the "A Chef's World" radio show, who spent 25 years living in Europe and knows a thing or two about good pizza.

"Oh, good," Brandon said. "Chefs tend to appreciate sauce with more bite." So he was confident, at least.

I introduced myself to Chef Gamble as I strode into his house with a box containing a large Domino's half-extra-cheese/half-pepperoni pizza, which Brandon recommended as their taste-test-winning flavors. I dropped it on his kitchen table and asked him about the last time he'd had a chain pizza like this. He smiled and said that he couldn't remember, adding, "With pizza, it's almost as easy to make one as to have one delivered, you know?" He'd be perfect.

He opened the box and sniffed around the pizza. "Smell is three-quarters of taste," he explained, before unleashing a tide of surprises. "The presentation is a lot better," he said, the first of the many things he said that echoed the Domino's PR guy. "You can tell that this is actual rising dough," he said. "They're using more herbs, too."

"What about the sauce," I asked. "Can you taste the 'red pepper kick'?"

Hit bit into the slice, tasted the pizza, and looked at it. "This ... is much better," he told me. "It's actually -- it's actually pretty good. I'm ... surprised about the sauce."

"Here's the challenge, if you're a Domino's chef," he went on to explain. "You can make a perfect pizza any day you want, sure. But I can see the dilemma, because it has to be repeated a million times over by a 16-year-old who doesn't care."

What he was saying made sense, but I wasn't totally convinced. I asked him to try a slice of the pepperoni side, to see if that tilted the balance any. He bit into it and smiled. "This is much improved," he said. "The pepperoni used to be horrible. I would actually buy that pepperoni. This side's much better than the cheese side."

Was there anything he didn't like about it?

"Well, the cheese is obviously processed cheese. It's better than before, but it's still not, you know, fresh mozzarella. But you have to consider that they need to keep the ingredient cost down, if they're going to be selling them so cheap."

I thanked the chef for his time and grabbed a slice of pepperoni for myself, to eat on the road. I bit into it with Gamble's expertise fresh in my mind. And he was right -- this wasn't bad pizza.

We now live in a world where a man named Barack Obama can be elected president, the New Orleans Saints can hoist the Lombardi trophy proudly, and Domino's is no longer the worst pizza you can buy. This new decade is shaping up to be a weird one.

Dan Solomon is Asylum's Pizza Correspondent.