Tag: pizza

Steveston Pizza: From Canada to the Philippines

Posted on by jane

Who says NO to pizza? Ah, ah, NOT ME! And not when I am invited to try out Steveston Pizza which originated from Canada!

First let me tell you that I had no idea what Steveston Pizza was offering (but the thought of eating pizza appealed a lot to me!). Second, I was eager to check out UP Town Center because I heard of the place from my son but did not know exactly where it was.

Suffice it to say, I was pleasantly surprised upon arriving at the place. Apparently, UP Town Center is now the newest watering hole and the converging place for the students of UP Diliman, Ateneo and Miriam College.

I was early so I did some work at J.Co nearby. Noemi joined me shortly and we got to put in some productive time before moving over to Steveston Pizza close to lunch.

From the outside

Karen Go, who is part-owner of Steveston Pizza, joined us and recounted its history. Nader Hatami is its solo founder. A trained chef, he concocted all the pizza creations you can find at Steveston Pizza, which is located in Richmond, B.C. I actually googled them and found out that Steveston Pizza is known for creating the first commercially available and world’s most expensive pizza. Believe it or not, that pizza (C6) costs $450 and is made of thermidor of lobster and black Alaskan cod, side of Russion osetra caviar, and needs to be ordered a day ahead. Whew! And there’s more. Steveston Pizza singlehandedly won Best Pizza by the Richmond Review from 2008-2011. Straight!

It’s actually amazing that while they are this popular in Canada, they chose the Philippines to open up a presence. Nader Hatami is a part owner in the Philippine branches so you can be sure the quality will stay as good as it is in Canada. Karen also emphasized that they only use the freshest ingredients. She said that for pineapples, they never used the canned ones but always put fresh pineapples on their pizzas.

If you check their menu, you’ll notice something that sets them apart from other pizza places. Their pizzas only come in 1 size – 12 inches! I asked Karen why and she said it was so that they could better control its quality. And look, so many choices — 28 in all!

For some who are used to ordering the 18-inch pizzas available elsewhere, you may think 12 inches is too small for your appetites, right? Wrong! The Steveston pizzas are loaded, piled high and densely packed in those 12 inches. Their pizza pictures are not just for show. You actually get them as they look on those photos!

Here’s what we pigged out on. First, the salads.

Classic Caesar, PhP 175
Flying Caesar, PhP 195
(with paprika and lemon scented chicken)

Both are great but if you’re not into very spicy food, take note that the Flying Caesar’s chicken is very spicy.

Then on to the pizzas!

Classic Cheese, PhP 399 

They have 2 other flavors for the same price as the Classic Cheese: Margarite (tomato sauce, basil chiffonade, cheese) and Pepperoni.

One of 2 very gourmet pizzas — C2, PhP 1,299
I’m not kidding. If you have to break your budget over a gourmet pizza, you must try the C2 (prosociutto ham, brie, semi-dried roma tomatoes, and a dollop of roasted garlic mousse). Each ingredient is its worth in gourmet goodness. Nothing was spared to make this premium pizza. Just see all that prosciutto heaped on top of the pizza, practically one for every slice! That alone is a full meal and more!
Karen wanted us to try as many different flavors as our tummies could hold so she suggested 2 flavors in one pizza – half and half. (Take note ha, doing 2 flavors in one pizza is not a regular thing with them. But if you really want to try, ask them. Maybe on a not-too-busy day, they’ll give in.)
The first one brought out was the Black-Blue pizza combo from the Colours category (so named because as you’ll see, they are all named after the colors. 
Black, PhP 699
(honey-glazed chicken breast, fig gorgonzola and mascarpone mousse, walnuts, arugula julienne)

Blue, PhP 699
(rosemary-smoked bacon, caramelized onions, mushrooms, baby spinach, stilton blue cheese mousse)

I loved the walnuts of Black but my favorite was Blue. Know why? It was liberally coated with blue cheese — my favorite! The combination of everything else just made this my choice. I was tempted to go for a second slice but held off knowing more was coming.

Next was Green-Pink combo.
Green, PhP 699
(herb pesto butter, shrimp, brie, scallions)

Just look at that picture above again. With some other pizzas that say they have shrimp, you often find a few tiny shrimps here and there but not much. But Steveston Pizza’s Green pizza is LOADED! Just check how densely packed the shrimps are on this one. And see, they are huge, fat and juicy looking! No scrimping here!

The PINK pizza is smoked salmon, asparagus, bocconcini, and onion with pesto drizzle. Now WHY don’t I have a picture of that other side? Too busy eating, maybe. But it’s up there — in the menu pics.
So that was our pig-out lunch. But that’s not all. I noted a few more things about Steveston Pizza that I really liked so I’m pointing them out. You’ll observe that when you go check them out.
* Their pizzas are NOT GREASY! No kidding! I held all my pizza slices with my bare hands the whole time and believe it or not, my hands were not dripping with oil, unlike most other pizzas which are quite greasy to the touch.
* Their plates and utensils are biodegradable (that is a +1 in my environment-friendly score card!). And as they are use-once types, I know that it will be a lot more hygienic and healthy than reusable ceramic plates.

Thank you so much to Karen and to Steveston Pizza. I enjoyed that chance to meet up with my SoMoms friends again PLUS be treated to this sumptuous pizza experience like no other I’ve tried. The best pizza of Canada is indeed here in town now.

Thanks to Tin Dychiao — my one and only picture with the SoMoms at this event 🙂

Steveston Pizza

Ground Floor, UP Town Center, Katipunan Ave.
Brgy. UP Campus, Diliman, Quezon City
(02) 955-2273, 0917-9043428
Open 10AM-11PM

Also find them online:

My Yellow Cab epic fail dinner

Posted on by jane

(UPDATE: Yellow Cab responded proactively to my complaint and the store manager herself invited me and my family to another meal at their branch so that we would end up with a positive experience. And we did! Thank you, Yellow Cab. We still love you!)

There are nights when luck isn’t on your side and tonight I struck out on dinner. Rather, Yellow Cab struck out on us.
Since I only had 3 kids at home, we decided to treat ourselves to Yellow Cab pizza and baked potato wedges. To be fair, we love Yellow Cab and have not had any bad experience with them in the past.

But tonight went down as a true Murphy’s Law dinner.

I placed my order at 789-9999 and spoke with an Eric, who took my orders down: one 18″ pepperoni and mushroom pizza (I specified crisscut and Eric specifically told me it would be 32 crisscut slices) and an order of baked potato wedges. Total bill: P987.

When one of my boys called me to the dinner table, we excitedly opened up the pizza box and this was what we saw.

Pepperoni and mushroom – Yes
18″ pizza – No

At first I thought they just forgot to cut the pizza into crisscut but when I opened the box that was supposed to contain the baked potato wedges, this was what was inside:

They call it Charlie Chan Chicken Pasta

So I call the Yellow Cab hotline again to complain (the same Eric answered the phone). A while after he put down the phone, someone named Hatch called me apologizing about the misdelivery. But he insisted that the pizza was really ours, it was just not cut. He suggested that a rider would bring over our baked potato wedges and bring a pizza cutter to cut the sliced pizza into crisscuts. WHAAAAT?

Look, sliced or crisscut, it’s just a shape. I don’t like the idea of strangers coming into my home at night to what, cut a pizza up?

So I told Hatch no thanks, we’d eat the pizza the way it was. Hatch also said they’d be refunding me money representing a discount they are giving me for the inconvenience. My bill was to be P888 instead of P987.

We were a bit hungry already by then and I knew the pizza had gone cold so I agreed to just get the money back and get a fresh batch of the baked potato wedges in exchange for the pasta. But by the time I went down to tell our househelp that, their rider had already come by and got BOTH the pizza and pasta. He said both orders belonged to a condo nearby and his plan was to retrieve our orders from the condo and deliver what he retrieves to us.

Did he expect us to eat the pizza and potato wedges that some other people probably already opened up in their condo unit?

For a third time, I called the hotline and spoke with Hatch. Yes, he understood why I didn’t want to eat food that is no longer fresh. And yes, he’d send over an entirely fresh batch of both pizza and baked potato wedges.

Wait. wait, wait. Finally another rider came along (nope, he wasn’t the one who misdelivered. That guy went off-duty already, said this rider). We checked our orders at the gate. This time, they got it right. And I got P94 back as my discount for the inconvenience.

We finally sat down to dinner with our true order at around 9 pm already. And guess what. Good thing we did not settle by eating that first pizza because, as it turns out, our true order was a lot bigger than the first one delivered! Sus hindi pala 18″ yung unang pizza! It was not true after all that our pizza was not just cut crisscut style. It was really the WRONG pizza! Because here’s the right one:

Our real order: 18″ Crisscut pepperoni and mushrooms
Finally, THE baked potato wedges!

To be fair to Yellow Cab, your people on the phone were quite apologetic and understanding. But if you are to improve your service, allow me some suggestions in light of this incident:

1. Improve the dispatching procedure so mix-ups are reduced or better still, totally eliminated.
2. Before you tell us that the pizza was just not cut up crisscut style, make sure it is the same size as the pizza we ordered. What would have happened had we eaten the 1st pizza on your say-so, only to find out what was due us was a bigger pizza?
3. Never, ever let your riders take back misdelivered orders and expect us just to accept them. Once food is opened up by someone else, elsewhere, it should not be re-delivered to the right people. It behooves a true food company to order up a fresh batch for sanitation purposes.

I was assured that this incident would be elevated to the higher-ups of Yellow Cab. I really hope it gets to them so that this incident will never happen again. As for me, what was supposed to be my comfort food tonight unfortunately turned out to be a very stressful dinner.