Una Pizza

…and wine.

I need to get this off my chest first (and why “off my chest”? Why not “off my shoulders” or “off my brain”?): Calgary has some excellent pizza. There, I said it. One of the most recurring complaints on chowhound (for example) is that Calgary sucks for pizza because it doesn’t emulate some example that’s usually eastern, and eastern US at that. Now, I grew up with outstanding pizza done in the Chicago style. That’s the REAL Chicago style, meaning a fairly thin (but not ever remotely crisp) crust, a savoury garlicky sauce, a ton of cheese done brown, topping UNDER the cheese and preferably and always with a layer of crumbled, never sliced, Italian sausage, and importantly, squares, not “slices.” This was the pizza of my youth and I do miss it desperately. I also miss what tourists think of as “Chicago style” pizza, which is stuffed or deep-dish (but not stuffed), and yeah, I love that style too. But it’s not available here, so we make do with what we have.

And a lot of what we have is delicious. I know that if I moved back to the Chicago area, I’d miss the best examples of Calgary’s Canadian-prairie-style Greek pizza (what somebody on chow called “bar pizza,” which is a good term): It has a thick buttery crust that’s a sort of foccaccia, a sauce that tends to the sweet side with cinnamon (see, Greek) and is generally one heavy-ass pie. Among some of the best purveyors of this style in Calgary are Nick’s, Sophie’s, Spiro’s, and The Ship and Anchor Pub. I order most often from Nick’s because it’s nearby (the 14 St SW location), fast, well-priced, and most importantly, fantastic.

BUT let’s say you don’t want a Greek-style Calgary pie. Well, the pickings get slimmer. There are some very nice “flatbreads” at some finer restos here- some tasty examples are the ones at Olives and Cilantro- but the specialization at these sorts of places is not “pizza.” We have at least one dedicated pizza place that serves authentic, “certified” Neapolitan pizzas (Pulcinella in Kensington) and Brian and I both like it a lot, but that style is not to everyone’s liking with its soft, almost wet crust (you have to taste it to see what I mean), and my thin-crust tastes are a little more, well, crispy.

Enter UNA PIZZA AND WINE. This is a new restaurant (it’s been open about three weeks as I write this) at 618 17th Avenue SW, and it’s replaced the venerable and (in my considered opinion) extremely overrated Wicked Wedge, which was notable for being open laaaaaate and, well, not a hell of a lot else. WW is now in Chinook Centre and initially I was a little disappointed that WW, for all its mediocrity, was being replaced by yet another wine-focussed place (this was just judging from the name). I mean, I have a partner whose passion is wine, but what I want(ed) was cheap and cheerful- maybe a BETTER pizza-by-slices place or or a burrito joint or whatever.

I changed my thoughts about the place when I started to pay attention to the posts on its blog, with pictures that were mouth-watering. Early reports on chowhound and elsewhere looked positive and so I decided the week before last to check the place out for lunch.

First impression: WOW, what a physical transformation. I’d have never known that WW was hiding a long, long skinny room that has dimensions I can describe as Toronto-esque (if you know inner-city spaces in Toronto, like in the Annex, you know what I mean). All of this was masked by the way the kitchen and seating were apportioned at WW. Una has exposed all of this space and it is just magnificently URBAN. Sweet. I sat at the bar and ordered three “pintxos” or tapas (3 for $5, 5 for $8) of white anchovy, bocconcini and roasted red pepper with dollop of a basil sauce (not a pesto per se) and they were utterly delicious. I also got a pizza, potato (yes, potato) with a schmeer of honey, a challenging pizza but a tasty one with a crust, oh, a crust, a crust that I fell in love with. One of the finest I’ve ever had. ANYwhere. Add to all this deliciousness the fact that this is the first resto I’m aware of that’s taking its coffee program seriously (Intelly Black Cat for espresso!) and I knew this would be one of my local faves.

Two days later I went for dinner with Brian. We had more of the same pintxos, two tasty appies (especially a raw zucchini salad that was just stunning), split a magnificently flavourful mushroom pizza, and had a desert each (both spectacular) as well as a couple glasses of wine, and not only was everything spot-on perfect, but also the bill came to a very reasonable $80 with tip.

Add to all this the fact that the resto was PACKED packed and has a great, lively, fun urban vibe. I can’t recommend it highly enough.

We’re in the big leagues, pizza-wise, Calgary. Celebrate.

Apartheid

I read this question today on AskMetafilter:

“A Canadian friend just got accepted to an American grad school (Chicago) for a 5 year Ph.D program. He’ll have funding, but how would his equally Canadian wife make a living in the U.S.? Getting the basic information is not as easy as they expected. What’s the s friend just got accepted to an American grad school (Chicago) for a 5 year Ph.D program. He’ll have funding, but how would his equally Canadian wife make a living in the U.S.? Getting the basic information is not as easy as they expected. What’s the skinny?”

And here’s what I wrote, which I knew would be deleted since this sort of commentary isn’t usually allowed on AskMeFi, but I feel strongly enough to post it here:

Did your Canadian friend also get into a Canadian grad program? If so, I’d recommend he ditches the U of C offer, and here’s why:

It is completely unfair and absolutely immoral that the opposite-sex spouse of a Canadian gets any visa whatsoever, when a LEGALLY MARRIED same-sex spouse of a Canadian would never get J-1, F-1, or sweetfuckall-1. What your friend is doing by accepting any such arrangement is accepting a form of apartheid that no Canadian should voluntarily accept.

If he were single, I’d say, sure, have at it. In his situation, as a married heterosexual man, he gets treatment that’s impossible for a same-sex spouse to lay claim to. If his wife doesn’t get to work, then she can sit and ruminate about how great it is that she’s not a man, because she’d never get her damn foot in the country.

This whole line of inquiry ties in perfectly what I said almost two years ago about the then-horrible status of same-sex couples at my alma mater, The University of Wisconsin-Madison. If same-sex couples are denied basic partner benefits, then YOU, O heterosexuals, are the ones who should be eschewing the benefits that YOU get to claim as an accident of your biology. For an opposite-sex Canadian married couple to move to the US and then to ask about what “the wife’s” visa options are means that they’re accepting a system whereby LEGALLY MARRIED Canadian same-sex couple are denied those same visas. That’s unacceptable, and unless you reject same-sex marriage, you have, in my opinion, a moral obligation to refuse to accept this offer, no matter what university organizes it.

Man(zo) at 46, and one helluva fantastic olympic torch thing.

Birthday 46. I seem to have got a few years back by shaving off the beard, but that’s just an illusion. Time only goes forward. Great day though- for the first time in my life, I’m having a party, and I don’t mean that I’m hosting one: Brian, sweetheart that he is, has arranged a get-together tomorrow night at my beloved Kawa Espresso Bar. For me- and no cleaning up afterwards! This is big, because when you’re a twin you’re never alone, which can be cool, but you also never get your own birthday, so as a kid, I never had my own party (for my b-day,  I mean). As an adult, I seemed to be cursed by missed opportunities or maybe it’s just that people didn’t like me… in my freshman dorm at Reed, our RAs (whom we called “dorm mom” and “dorm dad,” co-ed dorm) had a little do on everybody’s birthday in the dorm’s social room, at least everyone whose birthday happened while school was in session. Mine was, and nothing happened. Somebody dropped the ball for my 19th. On my 30th I was stuck, during an ice storm that closes the interstates, in Chattanooga with a boyfriend whom I’d only just then started dating and who had planned nothing for me since I was supposed to be back home by then… it just has always seemed as if I get the short end of the stick on my birthday, so I think I deserve this sort of thing, finally. Tonight, we’re off to dinner, for the first time for either of us, to Rush, which was named the third best new restaurant in Canada in En Route mag’s annual best new restos issue in November, and we’re both very much looking forward to it.

So, once again, happy birthday to me. Late 40s should be awesome.

As to the Olympic Torch: It’s been making its way around Canada since November, to every province and territory, and it came to Calgary on Monday morning and was here for two days at various spots. It arrived in downtown at Olympic Plaza at 7pm on Monday and I headed down after my afternoon course, way, way too early: I was under the impression that festivities started earlier than they did and so I was in the uncomfortable position of killing 5 hours (2:30 to 7:30pm) after my typically exhausting first day of lecturing for the week.

It turned out fabulously and I’m really happy that I stuck it out. The crowd was MASSIVE, in the tens of thousands; the weather was very agreeable; the whole thing was akin to the sort of quasi-religious crowd ecstasy that I really covet from time to time. It makes me feel as if I’m part of something much larger than myself. It was all beautifully inclusive too and made me fall in love with this city and this country once again.

I’ve uploaded two videos of the event to both facebook and youtube. If you’re a facebook friend you’ve probably already checked it out; if not, here is the first video, my taking note of the crowd at around 5:30pm; it would grow a LOT from this point:

And here is the torch approaching. The crowd was so thick at the plaza itself that I headed over to 1st St SE to watch its arrival from a bit offsite, so the crowd on the street gives zero real indication of how massive a number of people were there, since the vast majority of folks were on the plaza. Anyway, here comes the torch:

Lots to look forward to this year!

He’s hip, he’s cool, he’s 45 (for one more day)

My birthday is tomorrow, and it only occurred to me this morning that I’ve wasted an entire year without reference (about me) to the “he’s hip, he’s cool, he’s 45″ Kids in the Hall sketches.

Dammit. Well, better late than never. Here’s a sample:

New decade, first post.

I don’t have an agenda with this post, but certain truths have become self-evident, and as a consequence I feel that I have to post something. Truth 1: The aughts are in the past. Truth 2: I have not written a thing on here this year. Truth 3: It’s not even what I consider the dead of winter anymore. It’s light, sort of, until 5pm now, the actual sunset (vs civil or nautical twilight) will pass 5pm in two days, and I’ve just completed my first week of teaching of what they call the “winter” semester in Canada but which is more hopefully, and maybe accurately, called the “spring” semester in the US. All things that are advising me that time is fleeting and that I’d better get back on this horse.

So here we are, well into 2010. I turn 46 next week and my sisters (Sheila and Carole) very sweetly have already gifted with a gift certificate from the always fantastic and comfy FARM restaurant, one of my favourite places on earth, and I mention this not only to extol FARM or my sisters, and not to trumpet my birthday either (I’ll do that next week), but to follow a request that I post more food stuff. This came from a poster at calgarypuck.com, which is nominally a website for Calgary Flames fans but the forums of which contain all manner of community discussion. I posted at a thread on Calgary sushi, mostly to put the kibosh on the predictable “Calgary sushi sucks” strains there posted by nineteen-year-old know-nothings, and somebody said something like, “I like your blog and wish you’d post more restaurant reviews.”

So yes, let’s talk food a bit. I’ve been lauding O Shima Japanese Cuisine (link is to facebook page) since it opened late last spring, but I have to admit that a lot of my initial enthusiasm for the place was because it’s so close to my house–I live less than a block from it, as the crow flies–and I can’t say that it was that much better than my other favourite sushi places. I wanted owner Jo Huang to succeed at this venture and didn’t want to see the departure of the excellent Mt Everest’s Kitchen, the location which morphed into O Shima, to have been for naught. But I can’t say the sushi was more than competent, not that there’s anything wrong with that; it was just that if I wanted to be blown away I’d head to, say, Sukiyaki House or Blowfish or El’s Japanese Fusion, all of which are superb and none of which are remotely as convenient for me as O Shima.

Lately, though? Something has clicked and clicked amazingly. Jo’s nigiri was always elegantly formed and quite tasty, but lately, it’s been stunning. His creations remind of the cappuccinos that come from a barista who has become incredibly practiced and who starts to stun customers (I can think of more than a handful of these in Calgary) with perfectly formed drinks and beautiful latte art. I’ve not had better nigiri than Jo’s anywhere, at least not anywhere in memory. The last lunch I had there, I got six pieces of nigiri and a house special roll (the “una roll,” with unagi, avocado and cuke; it’s very rich, with unagi sauce): two each maguro, inari, and “chile goma ebi,” which some places call “cajun prawn.” I took a camera phone pic, which makes it look rather shiny and oddly coloured, but will have to do (there are TONS of beautiful shots at the facebook page and elsewhere on the net) for now:

Lovely cuts, and the seaweed that forms the “boat” for the gunkan chile ebi? WOW. Crisp and fresh. The tuna is soft and not frozen. The inari is tender. The rice? Fucking perfect. My mouth is watering just describing the food at O Shima.

Now, I am posting this in part because some people (on and off calgarypuck) and have been annoying the hell out of me with presumptuous and ignorant comments about sushi in Calgary and I want them to know about this place. I also want to do what I can to drum up business, though I must say that I was happy to see seven tables of diners on this last visit (lunch, which has been slow since day one). Word seems to be getting out; there are lots of positive reviews on yelp and urbanspoon, now, but I still do what I can.

I promise: more food in 2010.