Posto’s mortadella balsamic onion and pistachio pizza
Calgary certainly does not lack for a variety of creative and delicious pizzas at any time of the year but chefs will really get to show off their pizza-making chops from Friday September 26 to Sunday October 5 during YYC Pizza Week. Brought to you by the same people behind YYC Burger Week the inaugural edition of this citywide pizza competition challenges restaurants all over town to try and beat each other out with winning pizza creations.
Up to 50 restaurants are putting together pizzas that fall into either the “thick” “thin” or “unusual” categories — none of which can appear on their regular menus. Special pies include Pizza Crave’s curried lobster and crab pizza a sushi pizza from Blowfish a potato latke pizza from Gruman’s Deli plus round discs of deliciousness from restaurants like the Coup Una Lava Dining Bocce Double Zero and many more. Pizzas sell for $20 each with $3 from each sale going to Meals on Wheels (gluten-free alternatives may cost a few dollars more).
On September 24 YYC Pizza Week sponsor Cibo hosted a pre-launch for the event introducing Posto’s outstanding mortadella balsamic onion and pistachio pizza (which I predict will be an early front-runner in the competition) and Cibo’s own “four seasons” pizza with a quarter of each pie representing seasonal ingredients from spring summer fall and winter. Chef-about-town Pierre Lamielle also showed off his collection of YYC Pizza Week T-shirts which will be available on his Food on Your Shirt website for the duration of the event (a portion of sales will also go to Meals on Wheels).
There’s plenty of fun throughout the week — local food bloggers will also compete in a pizza recipe competition using surprise ingredients Kyle MacQuarrie (the guy who ate 36 pancake breakfasts during this year’s Stampede) will attempt to eat one slice of pizza from every restaurant on the YYC Pizza Week list and anyone can pick up a passport at a participating restaurant to see how many pizzas they can check off the list. For those of you who are off the gluten local gluten-free advocate Amber Romaniuk (@amberapproved) is keeping her eye on the competition’s g-f options and will be hitting social media with her findings on Wednesday October 1.
For more information and to vote for your favourite pizzas (beginning September 26) visit the website. You can also keep close tabs on the action by following YYC Pizza Week on Twitter. The winning pizzas in each category will be revealed at a wrap-up party (location to be announced) on October 15.
