Delissio - Thin Crispy Grilled Chicken, Tomato, Spinach

Continuing with our log of frozen pizzas, this is Delissio’s thin and crispy series. This is the second thin and crispy pizza we blogged about.

Right away we see the toppings are scarce and also very tiny.  Eve the cheese looked like dust instead of shreds.

All our pizzas are cooked in a conventional convection Black and Decker table top oven at 400 degrees F.  Normally we cook for 10 minutes, then we spin the pizza around  to ensure equal cooking for another 6-7 minutes.  This square shaped Dilissio is larger than the round ones as it covered all of the cooking area of our oven with little space to spare.

Because the last Delissio thin and crusty was overcooked, we dialed down the oven to 350 this time to minimize the risk of overcooking it.. 

This thin crust unfortunately was still very cardboard like despite using a lower temperature.  It did not taste like dough at all.  As mentioned, toppings were quite scarce and the chicken pieces were so small that we forgot it was the main topping.

Having a cardboard like crust was a turnoff.  We’d probably steer away from this particular line in the future.  This is the 2nd thin and crusty just because we bought them together at the same time.  Price wise, you can find it for under $5 at local supermarkets when on sale.

SFDD gives 2.5 out of 5 Delights.

Delissio - Rustico Spinach

Continuing with our log of frozen pizzas, this is Delissio’s Rustico series. This is advertised as having a stone ground thin crust.

The pizza is sealed tight inside a plastic bag.  One thing we first noticed was the abundant amount of cheese.  This was a simple pizza with lots of spinach and some onions.

All our pizzas are cooked in a conventional convection Black and Decker table top oven at 400 degrees F.  Normally we cook for 10 minutes, then we spin the pizza around  to ensure equal cooking for another 6-7 minutes.  

The result on this one was a tad overcooked as you can see the browning on one side.  Perhaps next time we need to keep it under 14 minutes.

Despite the overcooked pizza, this thin stone ground crust was still very tasty. It was just a bit crispier than our Greek Rustico, but the crust did not taste burned at all nor was it cardboard like.  Again, it felt like the crust was freshly kneaded!  It had a perfect balance of toppings and more than enough cheese. 

The Rustico series has now become one of our favorites.  Price wise, you can find it for under $5 at local supermarkets when on sale.

SFDD gives 4.5 out of 5 Delights.

Delissio - Rustico Greek

Continuing with our log of frozen pizzas, this is Delissio’s Rustico series. This is advertised as having a stone ground thin crust.

The pizza is sealed tight inside a plastic bag.  One thing we first noticed was the abundant amount of toppings like olives, onion tomatoes, cucumber.

All our pizzas are cooked in a conventional convection Black and Decker table top oven at 400 degrees F.  Normally we cook for 10 minutes, then we spin the pizza around  to ensure equal cooking for another 6-7 minutes.  

The result on this one was perfectly cooked around. 

 

This thin stone ground crust was also very tasty.  It was not cardboard like at all and tasted as if it was freshly kneaded!  It had a perfect balance of toppings and cheese.  Despite the amount of veggie toppings, the pizza did not turn out watery afterwards. 

The Rustico series has now become one of our favorites.Price wise, you can find it for under $5 at local supermarkets when on sale.

SFDD gives 4.5 out of 5 Delights.

Delissio - Thin Crispy Ham and Pineapple

Continuing with our log of frozen pizzas, this is Delissio’s thin and crispy series.

The pizza is sealed tight inside a plastic bag.  This seemed to have more ham than pineapple.

All our pizzas are cooked in a conventional convection Black and Decker table top oven at 400 degrees F.  Normally we cook for 10 minutes, then we spin the pizza around  to ensure equal cooking for another 6-7 minutes.  This square shaped Dilissio is larger than the round ones as it covered all of the cooking area of our oven with little space to spare.

The result on this one was a bit overcooked.  Partly because our oven is a bit hotter on the back.  As you can see after flipping around once, the centre is less cooked than the front and back.

This thin crust unfortunately was very cardboard like.  And it was not because it was cooked too long.  It did not taste like dough at all.  It also did not have a whole lot of cheese and the toppings were limited and unbalanced on the pizza. 

Having a cardboard like crust was a turnoff and it was difficult to finish the whole pizza.  Luckily we got it on sale just to try and blog about it.  We’d probably steer away from this particular line in the future.  Price wise, you can find it for under $5 at local supermarkets when on sale.

SFDD gives 2.5 out of 5 Delights.

Boston Pizza - New West Queensborough

We visited Boston Pizza (BP) to try out their $10 lunch specials being promoted since Fall 2016.  I think this is our first time visiting BP.  We arrived just before noon and the restaurant was still quiet.  We were seated promptly.

There was quite a variety to choose from in their $10 half time lunch specials.

The first lunch plate we chose was the roasted Veggie and Pesto flatbread.

This was presented beautifully with a generous amount of fresh toppings.  It was cooked perfectly.  The flat bread was very fluffy as well.  The size is probably equivalent to a small pizza.

The second plate we chose was the Thai chicken wrap paired with a side salad. 

This was not part of the $10 lunch menu but the price was just a couple of dollars more.

There was lots of chicken breast strips inside the wrap.  The lettuce and onions were also quite fresh.  The Thai part of this wrap was the fried crunchy noodles and Thai chili sauce.  This tasted quite good.  The side salad was also quite fresh.

Unfortunately, we found something wrong with the 2nd half of the wrap (hair).  However, they corrected this issue for us right away when we brought this to the attention of the server.

Service was quick and friendly and the food was quite good (except for the hair).  I’m sure this was just an isolated incident.  We still would like to visit BP again to try their other $10 half time choices for lunch.  Probably we would visit another location.

SFDD gives 3 out of 5 Delights.

Maui, Hawaii Special – Pizza Hut

After a nice dip in the beach during sunset in Maui (which is around 7pm), we trekked to a nearby Pizza Hut for a quick dinner as we didn’t want to venture out too far while wearing our wet bathing suits.  This location only had take out available and was bustling with a few customers when we arrived.

We were hoping for some grand deals, better than what we can find at Canadian Pizza Huts, but were quickly disappointed that they only had a couple of promos happening as indicated on the posters on the window.

We ended up getting 2 personal pan pizzas with one topping.  Being in Hawaii, we thought we’d make our own Hawaiian pizzas so one had ham, the other had pineapple and we just split it between us.  We picked up a couple of canned pops at the nearby ABC convenience store.

The grated cheese and chili flakes came separately in nice respectable packages.

Pizzas were done just right and was still hot by the time we got back to our hotel.  It had a generous amount of cheese for this personal sized pizza.

It is too bad there wasn’t more specials available when we were there.  The wait was a bit long but maybe we were just impatient as we were still soaking wet in our bathing suits.

SFDD gives 3 out of 5 Delights

Cheesecake Factory - Bellevue

We were back in the USA for some shopping, despite the weak Canadian dollar we still found good deals such as $0.62/ltr gas and LED light bulbs.  We ventured out as far as Bellevue Square mall where we lunched at the CK Factory.  We’ve blogged about this place couple years back so it was time for an update.

We didn’t want to eat too much lunch since we planned on having some cheesecakes afterwards for dessert.

We ordered from their special lunch menu where the portions are a bit smaller.

This is the soup and salad combo.  Soup of the day was baked potato soup. It was very rich, creamy and filling.  It was like eating a fully loaded tomato since it had all the fixings.

The salad was very fresh and crisp.  They usually include at least half a tomato cut into big wedges.

We also ordered the lunch pizza and salad special.  This seems to be a new addition to the lunch menu as we didn’t recall seeing this in the past.  You can choose any pizza, so of course we chose the everything pizza.

It had peperoni, sausages, onions, yellow pepper and mushrooms.  It looked nice but I think they left it on the counter too long so part of the crust on the bottom was soggy.  The size of this pizza was somewhere between a personal pan pizza and a small pizza.

It also came with a salad which was fresh and crispy like the one above with big wedges of tomato.

We had 2 bonus slices of cheesecake gifts, but we were too full to cash in both.  We shared the red velvet cheesecake. It was quite superb as usual.

The 2nd cheese free cheesecake we ordered it to go and chose just the regular cheesecake.  That was also still very good when we ate it in the evening.

Service was good as they have many staff on duty.  If it weren’t for the soggy pizza crust, we would have given it more Delights.

SFDD gives 3 out 5 Delights.

Panago Pizza - Steveston Richmond

We found some generous Panago coupons in our mailbox around mid August where you can choose any 2 medium pizzas for $20.  That seemed to be a great deal considering a medium pizza at Panago ranges from $14-$16.  Panago seldom has deals like this but they are faced with tight competition from Pizza Hut offering the $10 medium deals and Dominos who regularly has specials that change all the time.

We ordered to pick up from the Steveston location which is at the corner of Steveston and #2 Road.

As promised, the pizzas were ready in 15 minutes.  We got there just on time and couldn’t wait to devour into the hot pizzas.  Ok, I know it looks like we ordered a lot of pizzas below, but it was actually from two different times. We’ll start with our first order.

On the left is the Chipotle Chicken pizza.  It does not use tomato sauce.  Instead it uses a creamy chipotle sauce so it gives a nice spicy kick to it.  It has grilled chicken breast, corn, red peppers as toppings.  It is a nice change from the normal pizza. 

On the right is a tropical Hawaiian pizza.  It has the typical Canadian Ham and lots of pineapple.  What made this one tropical was that the sauce was sweeter than normal.  Combined with the sweet pineapple, this made the pizza rather sweet.  It was not bad though, just sweeter than the norm.

The following week we tried some other flavours.  First is the pesto chicken:

This was also different because it has a creamy pesto sauce instead of tomato sauce.  The sauce was rather cheesy creamy and was very strong.  So it’s not the pizza to get if you don’t have a taste for smelly cheeses, kind of like parmesan like.  It had lots of chicken though and a nice layer of mozzarella cheese.

For the second pizza we went with the Italia Classic.  This one had quite a bit of toppings including pepperoni, Canadian ham, red onions, sautéed mushrooms, green olives, green peppers.  The mushrooms were superb, maybe because it is sautéed and not the canned type.  It’s also our first time trying green olives on pizza instead of black olives.

Overall the Italia Classic was our vote for the best due to the traditional sauce used as well as the number of toppings used.

The Steveston location seems to be generous on toppings.  They also have a big parking lot easy to navigate around as opposed to the awkward one shared at Westminster and Minoru.

What Panago does really well is the crust.  We chose traditional hand tossed for all the pizzas and they were all consistently soft and fluffy.  We certainly prefer to go with this location if ordering in the future.

SFDD gives 4 out of 5 Delights.

Domino’s–West Richmond

We blogged about this place 5 years ago, how time flies.

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We were lucky to use a 50% off coupon for online pizza orders a couple of weeks back. We decided to go for a large ExtravaganZZa which was one of their fully loaded Feast pizzas. 

It had: pepperoni, ham, savory Italian sausage, beef, fresh onions, fresh green peppers, fresh mushrooms and black olives with extra cheese.

Even though we used a coupon, unlike a lot of places Domino’s did not cheapen on the toppings. It was truly fully loaded.  I was already full after eating 2 slices.  I can normally chomp down half a pizza on my own if it was from Pizza Hut or Panago.  I think it was all the hefty meat toppings that made this a heavy weight.

We also ordered buffalo hot wings.  This was not that spicy. Strange was that it was a tad on the sweet side.  What was unattractive about this order was that the foil was burned, as you can see in the pic.

It looked like some of the wings got burned as well but luckily, not that bad as it did not totally affect the flavour.  If I had checked the wings at the store, I would have rejected it.  I didn’t do it this time due to the good experiences I had at this location on previous occasions.  I will definitely check my future orders inside out before walking out.

Despite the burnt wings, the pizza was prepared well enough that it made up for the shortfall.

SFDD gives 3.75 out of 5 Delights.

Costco Kirkland Frozen Cheese Pizza

Costco’s own Kirkland house brand is well known for great value and superb quality.  They make everything from prepared food to toilet paper.  This pizza is a regular item we buy because it is flexible allowing us to add or own topping as we wish.

They come in packs of 4, and cost about $10-$12.  It does not have a rising crust, but what stands out is that the crust is quite soft and ‘bready’, unlike other frozen pizzas that have a cardboard like crust.

As you can see, it has so much mozza cheese that you can hardly see the red sauce underneath.  We usually cook it in a small conventional oven at 425F for just a bit over 15 minutes.  The result of this particular pizza was a bit off balance as I did not turn it enough in between.  That’s why it looks so white in the middle while the edges are dark because it matches the position of the heat bars.

There is quite a bit of sauce so you gotta be careful when biting in as it can burn your tongue really bad if you eat it too fast.  The sauce is a bit on the sweeter size.  If you have leftover chicken or happen to have can of pineapple, you can certainly make this extra tasty and savoury by adding those before putting in into you oven.

For meat lovers, Kirkland also has a pepperoni version of these pizzas too for a couple of bucks more.  This certainly is one of my favourite frozen pizzas available.

SFDD gives 4 out of 5 Delights.

Palermo’s Pizza (Frozen)

Tonight was another playoff night in Vancouver which means dinner at home in front of the TV.  Instead of ordering pizza like last time we opted to make frozen pizza to save a bit of cash.

We normally stock frozen pizza from Costco since you can normally get a pack of 3 for about $10.  Costco has some nice variety with some stuff not available in other chain supermarkets.

Frozen pizza has sure come a long way in the last twenty years.  I remember back then eating frozen pizzas was like eating a piece of  cardboard.  Nowadays in the freezer you can find much variety such as different flavours, thin crust, rising crust,pocket crust, personal size and so forth.

In our freezer was Palermo’s Chicken Fajita pizza. This is a thin crust pizza with chicken, red onions, fire roasted green peppers and err..sour cream?  It comes packed in threes.

This is how it looks out of the package.

The danger with these thin crusts is that if you don’t know your oven well, you can easily burn the crust if you leave it in too long or if your temperature is too hot.

The pizza is about the size of a medium pizza.  It was able to fit into our table top convection oven.  The instructions says to cook it for 15-20 minutes at 450F. From experience, this would be too much for our oven. Instead, we cooked it at 400F for 15 minutes.  After 15 minutes we monitored and determined to give it another 5 minutes as the cheese had just melted.

So after 20 minutes, we put on our oven gloves and took it out.  Smells really nice.  Look at those big chunks of delicious white meat chicken!

The crust didn’t burn nor was it too crisp.  If we used 450F, it likely would have turned out crunchy.

This was very tasty.  There was so much chicken. It had a touch of spiciness to it.  The good thing about thin crust is that you won’t end up with a thick soggy crust with overcooked toppings. I find that some of the thicker crusts pizzas, such as the rising crusts will overpower the flavour of the toppings.  So most of the time we try to stock thin crusts like this one.

This was simple to make and was not messy to prepare. The sour cream blended in with the cheese but was hardly noticeable.

SFDD gives 4.25 out of 5 Delights.

Pizza Hut | Panormous |Wingstreet

It was Hockey night in Vancouver with not a lot of time to prepare dinner we opted for take out at Pizza Hut.  We got the Panormous again since we think it is the best deal at Pizza Hut for such a size.  We ordered from our usual Terra Nova location. 

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There was also a deal where you can get 20% the full order if it is your first time ordering online.  Not sure how long this promo is going on for but was there last month when we ordered too.

I had a so-so experience picking up this time because the lady did not know how to operate the gift card machine thing.  Although the pizza was ready for me, I still had to wait an extra five minutes while she pushed all sorts of buttons on her machine.  My pizza was sitting on the counter getting cold. 

As a starter we chose some new chicken sides offered through their wing street menu.  They now have like 10 different choices of flavours and also offers option of bone in or bone out wings.  We chose the spicy BBQ, bone out.  The bone out option is fried and then covered with the sauce.  Also the bone out option uses white meat!  The pieces were large and juicy. Flavour was a tangy BBQ, not too spicy though.

For the pizza, we chose Hawaiian on one side and Mediterranean veggie on the other.  The Hawaiian had a big double layer of cheese which made it extra good.  There is just something about the Pizza Hut cheese that differs from other pizza places.  It seems to be more stringy and stretchy.  The Mediterranean had more toppings including red onions, feta, tomatoes, olives and spinach. 

We finished the wings but had about 5 pieces of pizza left.  The pizza was consistent in quality so no complaints in the preparation of it.  The only downside was just the experience picking up this order this time.

SFDD gives 4.5 out of 5 Delights.

Domino’s Pizza

We like to order pizza on days when we want to eat at home and we don’t want to mess up the kitchen.  We normally order it from their 9471 No. 2 Road Richmond location.  This is about five minutes further away from our local Panago.  According to wiki, Domino’s was started in 1960 and is the currently the second-largest pizza chain behind Pizza Hut.

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We had an entertainment coupon for Domino’s pizza so we took advantage of it by ordering a couple of their famous ‘feast’ pizzas.  They have a selection of 12 pizzas to choose from.  From our experience, they are quite generous with the toppings on the feast pizzas.

Tonight we ordered a Hawaiian Feast and a Deluxe Feast Pizza.  The Hawaiian was full of sliced ham and pineapples blanketed by a thick layer of mozzarella.

The deluxe had a more variety of toppings on it including sausage, pepperoni, green peppers, onions and mushrooms.

The pizzas just came out of the oven when we went to pick it up and were still hot when we got home.  Toppings were generous as usual.  The hand tossed is their default crust and it was nice, light and fluffy.  I can certainly tell the big difference between these Dominos pizzas versus the $1-$1.50 per slice downtown Vancouver pizzas.

For tonight’s pizzas:

SFDD gives 4.5 out of 5 Delights.