Somewhere along the line, people in this city decided that cheap pizza was better than good pizza. Slap some No Name™ spaghetti sauce on low-grade dough, sprinkle a thimble full of expired cheese, hang a sign offering 47c slices and watch the masses line up.
Sick of this degradation of one of our most noble food institutions, I decided to scour Vancouver to see if it was possible to get a decent slice anymore. My girlfriend, doctor, nutritionist and mother all begged me not to, but I answer to a higher calling (my editor).
Having fasted for three days in anticipation of P.Q. (Pizza Quest), I was having trouble focusing and was enjoying slightly hallucinogenic visions. My first visit took me to Fresh Slice, a flourishing franchise that offers cheap, no-frills pizza.
After devouring the $1.35 slice, I decided that "no frills" just might be Latin for "no flavour". It seemed like they use an atomizer to spritz microscopic amounts of their ketchupy sauce onto the crust (which I mistook for the cardboard plate it came on). I understand the economics of cheap pizza, but this was a slap in the face of whomever invented pizza pie. (Wikipedia tells me it was created by the Greek God, Zeus - which doesn't sound right, but hey?)
Next, I revisited an old friend in Pizza Hut. It had been a while, but everything looked pretty much the same (including the same fingerprints on the salad bar's Sneeze Guard!) I tried valiantly to find pizza on their menu, but was inundated with "Wingz" and "Stuffed Crust Bites" and other corporately-conceived, heart-attack inducing terrors. Frustrated, I rolled the dice and randomly pointed at something on the menu.
Fortunately, I ordered a pizza. Unfortunately, it was apparently a grease pizza with fried grease and spicy greaseballs. I'm far from a health nut, but after a few bites I was filled with the sudden urge to enroll in a really long, intense spin class. And grease prices must be at an all time high, because it wasn't cheap either.
Sluggishly, I carried on. My shirt was splattered with pizza sauce, there was mozzarella in my hair, but I had yet to find a quality slice. Nat's Pizzeria on Broadway offered hope, its walls covered in awards, glowing reviews and age-old sauce stains.
I'm a pizza traditionalist, so all this "thin-crust" business is a bit hard for me to digest (figuratively, of course. The thick crust is the one that is literally hard to digest.) Even then, I enjoyed the tangy sauce, bountiful toppings and even the way the slice sagged down and folded in half, just like in the movies.
But I knew I could do better. My arteries had hardened to the point where I was unable to really control my limbs, but luckily my next destination was downhill. Flying Wedge on Cornwall just down from Kit's Beach isn't cheap, but by God is it good.
Thick, man-sized slices are piled high with exotic toppings like roasted duck, pumpkin seeds and tomatoes (Tomatoes! On a pizza!) While it appears the crispy crust is merely infused with seeds, spices and grains, I contend it also contains an addictive chemical as I now crave it daily. Thank you Flying Wedge (and to a slightly lesser degree, Nat's), you've restored my faith in Vancouver's pizza industry.