Captain's Oven Pizza

I'm sure you've noticed that where there is a Skytrain station, there will be development.  It makes sense though because building condos and the sort is a good way to increase density near transportation hubs.  Ultimately, services will inevitably be part of the deal as all these residents need things like grocery stores, medical offices, pet stores, insurance agencies, hair salons and restaurants.

The last one is of particular interest to me since many of these are tucked away within the residential complexes and mainly serve the local residents.  However, many of these places don't solely exist because they have a captive audience.  Rather, they are worth visiting, even if you do not live nearby.  Captain's Oven Pizza would be an example of this as I was rather impressed with their wares.  We started things off with a Caprese Salad which was good.  The tomatoes were pretty ripe (which you can clearly see in the picture) where the texture was possibly a bit soft, but I enjoyed the natural tomato sweetness.  Large slices of fresh mozzarella completed things.

Onto the pizzas, we went ahead and did half and half versions so we could try more flavours.  For the first, we had the Superb Soppresata and Pesto Chicken.  Nice leoparding on the crust which meant we had crispiness and smokiness.  Nice nutty flavour as well to go with the properly-seasoned dough.  I liked the spicy zestiness of the soppresata while the chicken pesto was bright with lots of tender chicken.  It was good to see the chicken being moist despite being double-cooked.

So you would think that the Meat Lover's pizza would've been my favourite, but in reality, it wasn't.  Nothing particularly wrong with it since it had a good mixture of meats, yet I felt the other flavours were more interesting.  This was true with the Oceanside as it combined prawns and bay scallops with capers, red onion, grape tomatoes and arugula.  So we got the sweet brininess that was complimented by the tangy sweetness of the capers and freshness of the tomatoes.  Nothing overwhelmed the seafood and let it stand on its own.

Although the half and half veggie pizza was nothing much to look at, I assure you that they tasted great.  For one half, we had the Chef's Special and the other was the Truffle Mushroom.  In reality, these were rather similar having an Alfredo base and mushrooms, truffle oil and arugula.  However, the Chef's Special added pesto, pine nuts and sundried tomatoes.  That afforded some herbaceous notes and nuttiness with the tang of the tomatoes.  

One pizza caught out eye on the menu and we decided to get the whole thing rather than doing half and half.  Consisting of jumbo prawns, crab, bay scallops and smoked salmon, the Fisherman's Catch was super seafoody and briny.  The natural sweetness really came out and was tempered by the salty smokiness of the salmon.  We had aromatics provided by the garlic oil.  One byproduct of having so many things on top, the crust became softer.  But that didn't bother me since the flavours were appealing.

One look at the Chocolate Pizza and you might conclude that it was a default dessert due to the use of the same pizza crust.  However, it turned out be much better than expected.  The crust was crispy as per usual, but the chocolate sauce they used was delicious and not crazy sweet.  The fresh ripe strawberries slices provided that fresh fruitiness.  As for their Tiramisu, it was unique as the mascarpone cream was super light and airy.  It was also purposefully sweet.  It was a bit light on the coffee flavour though.  Overall, the pizzas at Captain's Oven are delicious and feature well-charred pizza dough.  I wouldn't mind getting some takeout from this location from time-to-time.

*All food and beverages were complimentary for this blog post*

The Good:

- Fresh well-seasoned pizza dough

- Brick oven cooks things fast with nutty charring

- Lots of choice for the pizza toppings

The Bad:

- Free parking is limited, otherwise you need to pay park