Banquet Mega Deep Dish – Meat Lovers Review

Hey everyone! Welcome to my review of Banquet’s Mega Deep Dish, Meat Lovers! As you can probably tell from the photo, this is pretty much a cross between a pot-pie and some saucy marinara smothered meatballs. I have to admit, I got really hungry just from the package. I mean, it combines two of my favorite things, pot-pie and saucy Italian meats. Whats not to love? Here is what I experienced.

First Thoughts

The first bite reminds me a lot of Franco-American or Chef Boyardee spaghetti and meatballs, except there no spaghetti. This is most true in the sauce and the type of meatballs that are present here. That’s not necessarily a bad thing for me either, as I love those types of canned spaghetti’s.

The sauce I think is the best part here by far. There are a lot of spices here in the sauce. Even more than you would find in a traditional canned marinara sauce or canned spaghetti for that matter.

The crust here I thought was quite good as well. It did a decent job adding a bit of bready flavor to an otherwise marinara concentric dish. I honestly thought it was a nice counterbalance. If your looking for an exact flavor for the crust, think of any frozen pot-pie crust you’ve ever eaten and that’s pretty much it.

Now on to the Negatives

My main complaint here I think are the meatballs. They honestly taste pretty bland. They could most definitely have benefited from some Italian spices thrown into the meat mix or something else like that, just to make the flavor pop out a bit. I wanted to love them, but they just didn’t taste as “meaty” or even flavorful for that matter. Dull or bland I think is the best way to describe them.

I also think naming this “meat lovers” was a mistake as well. This should be “marinara lovers” if you wanna call it anything, because the sauce is definitely the cornerstone of this whole meal.  The meatballs are not really that abundant either. Why call something meat lovers if there’s hardly any meat?

Final Thoughts

Honestly, I was pretty disappointed here. I think anyone looking for “Meat Lovers” would be pretty disappointed too. The highlight here is the sauce and to be honest, that’s not why anyone would be picking this meal up. If they reworked their meatball recipe and added a few more of them to the mixture, I might want to pick this up again, but until then, I’d honestly rather just try something else.