Restaurants
Best Pizza in Vancouver
By Neal McLennan published Apr 30, 2010
We're celebrated for our diverse and accomplished culinary scene. But can we muster up a decent pizza?
I was suffering from the effects of an Olympic injury most Vancouverites are still suffering from: a strained rotator cuff, the result of patting myself on the back too frequently. The houseguests had been sampling our city's eateries and each night the raves grew louder. But by Games' end everyone just wanted comfort food. "Where do you get a good pizza around here?" asked one. I opened my mouth, but no words came-where the hell do you get a really good pizza in Vancouver?
In a city celebrated for its culinary prowess, how is it that we lack so woefully in something as basic and fundamental as pizza? Adding to this odd contradiction is the fact that North America is in the middle of a pizza renaissance. The hottest table in Chicago isn't a new venture from Charlie Trotter or Rick Bayless-it's Great Lake, a nondescript hole-in-the-wall recently named the best joint in America by GQ's food arbiter, Alan Richman. Seattle has no fewer than five spots that turn out the sort of pies people line up for (Ballard's Delancey and Tom Douglas's Serious Pie are the standouts). Even Calgary-a city half our size-has a great spot in Pulcinella. I asked a number of Vancouver chefs where to get a good pie and mostly they just shrugged. I'm pretty sure Rob Feenie understood the question, but he still answered, "Prima Strada in Victoria."
There are a few themes that connect those out-of-town places. Some claim they're making true Napoli pizza, some do New York, and others insist on the Brooklyn variation. Some use coal-fired ovens, others wood-fired, and a few even churn out great pie with the much-maligned electric. They all spend virtually no money on décor, yet manage an effortlessly cool vibe. And the chefs, or pizzaioli if you must, rarely have the highfalutin' credentials that today's sophisticated diners have come to expect. Because the truth is, great pizza should be easy-it's just water, flour, and yeast mixed together, kneaded out, and put near a cranked-up heat source with some tomatoes and cheese on top. Even when pizza is mediocre, it's still pretty good.
So I set out on a pizza expedition to unearth our great pies. The ground rules were simple: ask everyone to recommend their favourite place and then go kick some tires. What was immediately clear was that there's no real consensus, itself a harbinger that all the contenders are less than superb. On the assumption that after a few days' absence any pizza would taste good, I packed the tasting into a grotesquely short period to separate the semolina wheat from the durum chaff. I avoided fancy toppings where possible, on the basis that creating a great short-rib pizza likely showed that you were good at cooking short rib. Finally, I swore to never use, in any circumstance, the affectation "'za."
