Dine Out Vancouver 2018 - Bufala

For Dine Out Vancouver 2018 my friend's pick was Bufala for a late Sunday afternoon lunch. We got in late-ish almost at 2pm I believe and seating was pretty easy, no reservations required. They were however out of two of three desserts on their Dine Out menu! So you might want to take that into consideration.

The Dine Out menu is basically their whole menu minus some smaller appetizers. The $20 appy and pizza deal is almost half price and a goodly amount of food!

Their pizzas are very thin Neapolitan/Napolitana style with a pretty generous amount of edge crust. To help you eat that crust there are three flavoured oils (that you can slather over your pizza ingredients too if you like): Chili, Herb, and Parmesan. Flavours of the oils are on the subtle side but unless you drown your pizza you (or at least I) won't feel the same heavy feeling from food being too oily.

Kale Caesar Salad (normally $13) green & purple kale, grana padano, anchovy, bacon, salt-cured egg yolk

• Fluffy and light and kale not particularly bitter.

Beet Salad (normally $12) salt-baked golden & purple beets, arugula, ricotta, cucumber

• Mix of sweet and bitter tastes. Fun cucumber shapes and colourful slices make presentation pretty. Otherwise ok.

Funghi Pizza (normally $19) roasted mushrooms, goat cheese, watercress, pecorino tartufo, bianco

• Pretty decent tasting but goat cheese may not have been as evenly distributed as it could have been because I missed the pungent flavour.

Artichoke & Olive (normally $16) fior di latte, kalamata olives, artichokes, garlic confit, basil, marinara

• Really decent but watch out for salty olives. They add some zing to the pizza but when clumped too close together can be pretty salty.
• Also watch out for soft cloves of garlic. Shouldn't be a problem unless you pick it right off the pizza thinking it's a piece of artichoke and pop it in your mouth. (Guess who did that...)

Bufala Lemonade ($5, not included in Dine Out, non-alcoholic) peach purée, rosemary, soda

• Pretty decent. Sharpness of lemonade greatly tempered by sweetness of peach.
• Not overloaded with ice!

We were too full and skipped dessert. The server was kind enough to leave it open during ordering -- that is, she offered to retroactively change our order from 2-course Dine Out to 3-course if we wanted to add dessert later. I had been interested in the Lemon Curd with fennel seed but they were out. In any case we were full enough that we didn't want to force it down and just left with our leftovers -- half a salad and almost one pizza worth of slices.

Overall food is good, enhanced by presentation and Dine Out value for price is really excellent. Regular price is also quite okay considering the portion size. Pizza might not be quite as filling as a big chain like Pizza Hut (for example) just because the crust is much thinner. They aren't shorting you on ingredients though.

Service is friendly and tries to be helpful!

They mis-stepped slightly and mis-timed our pizzas such that they came out of the oven while we weren't halfway through our salads. Partly our fault for yapping so much and so long.

• If you want to definitely avoid that so that you can focus on your pizza while it's fresh and hot out of the oven, you might want to ask them to hold off on actually baking it until they clear your appetizer plates. Neapolitan pizzas don't take that long to bake anyway.
• This situation brought to the fore the issue of table sizing as it was really a squeeze to get both pizzas onto the table while our big salad bowls were there as well. In such a case you might consider taking the long communal table (if it's not busy) and just having much more room to move and grab slices off each other's platters.