Takeout Review: Connie and John's Pizza
Address: Simmons Building, 618 Confluence Way SE; Website: https://www.connieandjohns.com/
I first came across Connie DeSousa on Top Chef Canada. She was one of three female competitors in the competition and being from Calgary drew me to her side even more. She was one of my favourite cooks to watch.
As soon as I found out that she was the chef behind Charcut, I added the place to my to try list and I was fortunate enough to be able to try it in 2015…after 4 years of saying I was gonna go…and not going.
Over the years, Connie has opened up several other restaurants - notably Charbar and Connie and John’s Pizza. I’ve known about both for a long time and like my delay in trying Charcut, there was a significant delay between finding out and actually trying.
Like my husband, for me, pizza is something I tend to order to the house to enjoy in my PJs while watching something in front of the TV on a Friday night after a long week at work. Or in this case, for a games night with friends.
The boxes they arrived in were so cute! There were games and little comics on them! I love how personalized (to Connie and John) they were!
We ordered The Roni Cup Detroit Style Pizza and the Island Pie New York Style Pizza.
The Detroit style pizza is essentially a Chicago deep dish pizza. The Roni Cup is basically what it says on the tin: a pepperoni pizza with cheddar and mozzarella cheeses. This was my husband’s choice and it was his preferred pizza of the two. I felt that it was a basic pepperoni pizza topping on way too much dough.
In contrast, the New York style was a little bigger than what I’m usually used to for a “standard” pizza size and a lot floppier. I didn’t mind it because I liked the thinness of the dough; it reminded me a lot of the pizzas I had in Italy. The only big difference was was that there were a lot heftier toppings on this pizza which made it a little hard to lift with one hand. The Island Pie consisted of shaved Italian ham, mozzarella, pineapple and provolone. It was basically a Hawaiian pizza. I loved how big the chunks of pineapple were but they also kept falling off the pizza which was annoying. And I loved how ripe the pineapple chunks were. Too many times I’ve had just really sad, tasteless, personality like cardboard pineapple. The ham wasn’t too stiff and crispified from the baking process and it wasn’t too salty either. The crust had the perfect chew to it. There was a taste, however, that I couldn’t really pinpoint that was like aged parmesan that had also kind of gone bad that I didn’t love, but it wasn’t so bad that I couldn’t enjoy the pizza either. All in all, I probably ate half this pizza so…I don’t think I disliked it. The other kind of “issue” was that the delivery driver seems to have tilted the box because when we opened it, the pizza was kind of smushed to one side of the box…which is not great.
I really wanted to try the Fun Guy pizza but my husband mentioned that truffle and mushrooms could be pretty divisive and that a Hawaiian was the safer choice to go with. I definitely will be going for the Fun Guy one next time I order from here.
We also ordered the Caesar Salad and added on a dip. The dip, as it turns out, is the exact same as the dressing for their Caesar salad. The Caesar Salad was fresh grated parmesan, crispy bacon (which was not so crispy after transportation to our house), gluten free croutons, grape tomatoes, and a wedge of lemon. It was pretty good, but was it worth $16.50? I don’t think so. Was it different due to the dressing? Yes. Was it a good different? Also yes. I did notice that the quality of the lettuce was a lot better than most other places I order salads from. I don’t make it a habit to order salads, but sometimes needs must and today I had a massive craving for salad.
Even though I devised a new criteria for ratings in my reviews, I realize with takeout and delivery, I will need to switch things up a little to suit the situation. So for delivery and takeout my proposed criteria and rating are as follows:
Service: 4/5
I ordered this through SkiptheDishes and they were pretty quick with the delivery, getting it to us in less time than originally estimated by the app, which I was pretty happy about. It gave me time to take pictures before our guests arrived so I wouldn’t be too disruptive to the dining experience.
Food: 4.5/5
Honestly, this was really great pizza. I loved the amount of toppings, the overall flavour of it all, the texture of the dough.
Price: 3.75/5
I think part of this is due to the fact that Skip marks up a lot of the prices so it does seem a little overpriced for what it was. That said, the New York Style Pizza is 16" so like $30 isn’t that unreasonable.
Overall Rating: 4/5