This isn’t your father's pizza. The modern-day pizza pie has developed into a profusion of styles that I'm not convinced our forefathers saw coming. Off the top of my head, I can think of California-style pizza, New York-style, Chicago deep-dish pizzas, breakfast pizzas, thin crust, thick crust, cheese-infused crust and many, many other variations. Back in the day, anchovies were just about as crazy as pizza toppings got. Nowadays, anything goes.
Vern's Pizza, with three locations in Calgary, manages to float the line between serving classic pizzas and embracing the reckless abandon that's of today's pizza makers.
Offering two styles, original thick and lite, they offer enough options to suit pretty much anyone's preferences. The lite pizzas are sold in pairs and, as the name indicates, are thinner versions of the standard "thick" pizzas. And when they say thick, they mean thick.
When ordering from a pizza joint for the first time, I'm often inclined to try anything that has "special" in its name. To me, it means that besides the usual pizza options, I'm going to get something that's not likely to be available elsewhere. It appeals to my culinary sense of adventure.
Luckily, Vern's offers just such an option. There's a Vern's special that comes loaded with pepperoni, salami, ham, mushrooms, green peppers, pineapple, onions, cheese and pizza sauce. Right up my alley: classic ingredients and all good choices. However, Vern's has taken this special pizza one step further with its Mama Mia pizza. The Mama Mia is Vern's special pizza, but served extra thick. The 18-inch version weighs in at over 10 pounds.
For our sampling, we decided to get the 15-inch Mama Mia ($34.95) as well as a side order of Caesar salad ($5.95). I didn't bother to weigh the box, but the 15-inch couldn't have been too far off the 10-pound mark.
Vern's offers an ordering option that I haven't seen other places: down side up (D.S.U.) — your pizza served in a pizza box turned upside down. They claim it keeps the crust drier.
We decided to give that a try as well. While it did accomplish a dryer bottom crust, I ended up flipping the whole thing back over anyways as it was hard to scoop up pieces without them disassembling and creating a mess. Maybe on a smaller pizza the D.S.U. option would have been valid, but on the Mama Mia it was simply too much.
The 15-inch Mama Mia came cut into 16 pieces, with the inner pieces being squares and the outer ones resembling traditional triangular pieces.
The pizza itself was at least seven-eighths of an inch thick on average, even slightly higher in some places. I've had sandwiches with far less meat on them.
Since there were only two of us, I knew there was no way we were going to finish this thing. It was daunting just to look at it. A side profile glance revealed layer after layer after layer of meat. Often, when there's as much meat involved as there was on this pizza, you end up with a messy, soggy grease pit, but this was not the case with the Mama Mia. The deli meats used are of a good enough quality that the pizzas aren't greasy at all. I tried to count the number of layers of meat at one point, and while I never did get an official tally, there were at least 20. Two pieces of this pizza would probably be enough for most people.
For those not quite up to the challenge of the Mama Mia, there are a ton of other options that also sound good, like the chicken ranch, consisting of chicken, mushrooms, onions, green peppers, cheese and ranch sauce, or the vegetarian, with mushrooms, green peppers, onions, tomatoes, olives, pineapple, cheese and sauce.
The salad was fine, but about as memorable as any other takeout pizza Caesar salad. Other non-pizza options include lasagna, chicken wings, dry ribs and the like.
As mentioned, the lite pizzas are a viable option for those times when the original pizzas might be a bit too much, but I don't think you can go wrong with any of the restaurant’s pizza choices.
Although I can't speak for everyone, for those guys who are reading this and drooling at the thought of ordering one of these bad boys, you might want to take the missus out for dinner this week for Valentine's Day and wait and order the pizza during your next poker game.
Vern’s Pizza is located at 3967 17 Ave. S.W.; phone, 747-0188.
