Does Costco Actually Have A Chicken Bake Pizza?

There are items in the culinary world, mostly in the realm of fast food, that are elusive, legendary, and, at times, apocryphal. For instance, Panda Express has an innovation kitchen in Pasadena, California that offers chimeric versions of menu items like an Orange Chicken burrito with lo mein and veggies. There are also custom items that require some customer elbow grease, namely McDonald's "Land, Air, and Sea," which combines a Big Mac with patties from an original McChicken and a Filet-O-Fish sandwich for a mountain of meats. There are even secret menu items that take a pro to order. These "have to see it to believe it" items are what makes a legend like the Costco Chicken Bake pizza a plausible reality, but is it?

In a video shared on TikTok in April, Allen Shapiro claimed that by placing a pizza order at Costco and using the code 69247, customers could get a pizza that was an approximation of the big-box store's iconic chicken bake. But after making calls to three Costcos and asking if the product was real, a Grand Rapids, Michigan employee referred us to the app, where there was nowhere to enter a specialized code that unlocked a secret pizza as Shapiro implied. Another food court employee in Cleveland, Ohio said they'd never heard of it, and a third in Tacoma, Washington said that while people have been requesting the chicken bake pizza, it does not exist. Still, the video they posted featured a pizza that was strikingly similar to a chicken bake, so how could this be possible?

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Chicken Bake Would Make A Good Pizza

For those unfamiliar, Costco's chicken bake is a tube of dough stuffed with shredded chicken, bacon, mozzarella cheese, and Caesar dressing -- which the dish really hinges on -- and topped with parmesan cheese. This lengthy riff on a calzone is rich and zesty and offers a flavor profile unmatched by Costco's other signature menu items, namely the serviceable pizza slice and the forever-affordable hot dog and soft drink combo.

Given the Italian-adjacent collection of ingredients that go into a Costco chicken bake, it seems understandable that the store's food court might offer a take on the popular item in pizza form. And yet, that doesn't seem to be the case. If you've ever grabbed a slice at Costco, you know they don't offer a range of pizzas; only pepperoni and cheese. So the propensity of oddball ingredients Allen Shapiro claims to have gotten on their pizza seems odd.

While the TikTok account may have gotten a willing Costco employee to go "off-book" in regards to menu items available, they also only feature the pizza in their house. That may mean that they've baked their own version of a Costco chicken bake at home or modified a Costco cheese pizza with added ingredients. Whichever is the case, it doesn't seem like chicken bake pizza is yet on the menu at Costco -- but one can hope it is on the horizon.

Read the original article on Tasting Table.