Life in the Lower Mainland (BC, Canada)

In this post we'll talk about the best way to reheat pizza. Since a pizza is baked you might think you can just pop it back in the oven. You can, but that just further dries it out and generally makes it taste worse. You could steam it but the crust generally becomes soggy and icky. Instead, use your frying pan and do both: In a large, clean, frying pan, put in your slice of pizza. You'll need some room on the side to have just a little bit of water, maybe a tablespoon or so. Ideally the water shouldn't touch the pizza and be soaked into the crust, but it won't totally ruin things if it does. Cover with a reasonably tight lid because we want to keep the steam under the lid. Doesn't have to be pressure-cooker tight. During reheating, do not open the lid or the steam will escape and you'll lose a lot of heat suddenly. On the stove, turn on high heat and listen for the water to start sizzling. That means it's starting to turn to steam. Turn off the heat and let...

I got lucky and scored an invitation to try Blaze Pizza at their downtown Granville street location at a Yelp Elite Event . It was a warm no-pressure invitation to try their pizza and process and have a good look around. Blaze Pizza operates sort of like a Subway sandwich shop: You tell them what you want and you follow them down the counter as they assemble it. They pop it into the open and a few minutes later it's ready for an optional finishing touch (like a drizzle of balsamic glaze) and you pick up your order. In between there's a lot of customization available, like more or less or extra toppings and slight touches like a sprinkle of sea salt before it goes into the oven. They try to make it easy with fixed pricing, and it's all the no-cost little extras like the finishing touches that gives the pizza a touch of class and personalization. Whether that's worth money to you depends on how you see pizza. If you think of it as super-cheap stuff-your-face ...

Walked in on an unrushed sunny Wednesday afternoon. My first time, so maybe I shouldn't have ordered a new seasonal special, but too late now. With that in mind, this review is mostly about one particular pizza, so don't judge the entire menu by it, especially the less adventurous items. Bombay Cauliflower ($17.65) mango chutney, fior-di-latte, marinated curry cauliflower, diced mango, red onion, jalapeno, mint yogurt, cilantro, lime wedge. Rated "spicy", but except for when I plucked off a jalapeno slice and put that in my mouth on its own, I didn't find this spicy at all. Dripping wet with sauce, from mango and/or chutney. Way too wet. Tasted like mango-flavoured syrup. That dominated everything, sadly. Other than a composition which wasted all the ingredients except mango chutney, the pizza crust seemed really good and not seared with large black burnt patches or bubbles at the bottom either, which can sometimes happen with Neapolitan pizza. Price f...

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 eg...

What do do when you need a snack? I ran out of pasta sauce so I subbed ketchup. Recommend you use much less than I did if you want to taste your cheese more. Chili flakes optional for some buzz.

Virtuous Pie 's smallish brightly lit room with communal seating looks spacious up until around 6pm when the dinner rush starts and goes out the door. So come early or do takeout. At $12 per small pizza (one size only, and apparently no bulk discount) the price is OK for a basically thin-crust neapolitan style pizza. With this type of pizza and the typically sparsely distributed toppings, you are at great risk of having a slice with an OK amount of toppings, or too little; and it's also hard to get an even distribution of the stated ingredients. Don't believe the picture-perfect ad copy on the website and go see for yourself. Virtuous Pie isn't alone in uneven toppings for small, thin-crust pizza, so it's apparently a niche pizza sort of trait and you either accept it or you don't. Add 1 star / 1 point if you are vegan because beggars can't be choosers. We had separate orders of pizza (placed at different times) with the gluten-free crust (+$2 extra...

Got a chance to discover City Side Winery tonight during a presentation of Curiate for investors. Turns out they are much more than winery -- a beautiful space with communal tables and a few boardgames, plus a small bites menu including flatbreads. Flatbreads are OK in side and maybe a bit more loaded than stricter Neapolitan style ones for a similar price point. I got to try some proscuitto ones and they were of course salty, but otherwise with a spread that includes some edible garnishes like tomatoes or grapes, each plate is quite nice and tasty. Cheese is spread more or less to the very edge but is not oily or wet there. Toppings are pretty generous (for flatbread style pizza) near the centre. Crust is thin yet firm enough to lift each slice easily -- overall construction is good and convenient. Happy Hours available: Tuesday to Thursday 4-6pm $2 off four flights of wine $3 off flatbread (approximately 25% off!) ...

Whoa, Caffe Brixton is vegetarian! This pub-like place isn't in-your-face advertised as vegetarian, but if you look closely at the menu, it is. We dropped in tonight when it wasn't super-busy, but they also didn't have a lot of staff on the floor either, so getting water topped up only when we asked might have been a short-staffing issue more than an oversight. Still, for a place that is "seat yourself", I think staff need to be more alert. TIP: The very-discreetly-tucked-away washrooms are definitely worth a look. If you go into the bigger (handicap stall) one, look closely at the Star Wars wallpaper and you'll notice a misspelling of "Leia". The music is played pretty loud here! Tandoori Tofu Naan ($10) caramelized onions, goat's cheese, tandoori tofu, mango chutney, arugula Totally not what I was expecting as they tofu-topped and toasted the naan into a crunchy-at-the-edges flatbread pizza. There's no point calling this a naa...