Mama Said Pizza Co.

Once upon a time, the pizza scene in Greater Vancouver consisted of Pizza Hut, Panago, Pizza 222, Domino's and a bunch of Greco-Italian restaurants.  How times have changed...   We now have many more options including different types of pizza including Neapolitan-style and Roman-style.  There are the most usual places such as Farina, Bufala, Via Tevere, Carano and many others.  Heck, we even have Pizza Garden dishing up gourmet thin-crust by the slice!  One place I haven't tried yet is Mama Said Pizza Co, that was once only a food truck but now has a B&M location.  We headed out to PoMo to check it out.

Just FYI, the place has limited parking in front, but there is a parking garage at the back.  We did that made the short walk to the restaurant.  We started with a Caesar Salad with house made croutons and a mix of romaine, frisee and arugula.  That in itself made this salad more interesting due to the textures and bitterness of the arugula.  Even the dressing was different where it was on the sweeter side, hence making it less sharp.

Onto the pizzas, we had to get the baseline - the Margherita.  It consisted of the usual ingredients including fresh basil leaves on top (after the baking process).  As you can see, the leoparding along the edges of the crust was pretty consistent.  As a result the crust was nutty and crunchy.  It was also properly salted.  I found the crust to be fairly even in texture up until the middle which was more tender.  This is optimal and they achieved that.  The tomato sauce was tangy with some sweetness.  This was a good Margherita pizza.

The Papa Roni was pretty similar except without the basil but add pepperoni, grana padano and fennel seed.  Again, the crust exhibited good leoparding including the bottom.  With the addition of a lot of pepperoni, covering almost every inch of the pizza, the pizza was more robust and a little spicy.  The oils from the pepperoni added aroma and body.  With some fennel seed, we also got background licorice notes.

Going another few steps forward, we had the Brooklyn which added pepperoni cups, bacon, sausage, mushroom, onion and grana padano.  With all of this meat, the pizza ate saltier, but in a good way.  The roni cups provided a totally different texture with a meaty chew.  Even though we had more toppings, the crust held up and didn't soften.  The fact that the onions weren't cooked too long meant there was some sharpness.

Our hands-down favourite pizza was The Mama with mozzarella, ricotta, prosciutto, pesto, arugula and grana padano on a honey sesame crust.  Oh where to start?  The crust was outstanding with nuttiness from the black and white sesame seeds while the honey helped balance off the saltiness of the prosciutto.  With some pesto, we got aromatics that were herbaceous, cheesy and nutty.  Arugula provided its usual pepperiness.  As you can see, we enjoyed the pizzas at Mama Said Pizza Co.  Good pies and killer tunes (mostly 80's), I'll be back.

The Good:
- Excellent thin crust that is consistent in texture
- Flavour combos are good especially The Mama
- Super awesome people there

The Bad:
- Place is small so it will fill up easily