| My friend recently threw an O.C. party (Are you down with The O.C.?) and served the most fantastic dessert – banana bread pizza. The layer of sweetened cream cheese between two freshly baked banana-bread crusts had me pleading for another piece, and another. I had to find out where I could get my hands on some more. "Coco Brooks!" she proclaimed.
Scusi, where? While Coco Brooks (5725 Burbank Rd. S.E., phone 509-2626; 2020 - 32nd Ave. N.E., phone 250-2626) may be old news to many of you – after all, it’s been in Calgary for five years – this was the first I’d heard of it. My friends said it serves some of the city’s finest pizza, so I decided to check it out for myself and the other Coco Brooks virgins out there.
Owner Richard Osiowy and his family moved here from Regina in 1997 and, hard-pressed to find a pizza that tasted as good as his momma’s, he decided to "reinvent the pizza industry." Before going public, the couple operated a test kitchen out of their garage, asking friends, family and even their children’s school to sample their developing product and then answer followup questionnaires. Coco Brooks opened its first location in the southeast in 1999 and a second one in the northeast in 2001.
They serve 24 kinds of pizza, all eight inches, from traditional pepperoni ($5.37) to more creative combinations like San Pedro Egg ($5.14), made of chunky salsa, lean beef, eggs, mozzarella, cheddar and dried chilies, and Louisiana Chicken ($6.53), which combines Louisiana hot sauce, parmesan, chicken breast, chives, red peppers, mozzarella and chilies. The pizzas are made fresh daily and baked in about 12 minutes.
My friend and I shared the Egg ’n’ Bacon ($5.14) – farm fresh eggs, lean smoked bacon, mozzarella, tangy aged cheddar and a sprinkle of black pepper. It was a bizarre sensation eating eggs and bacon on pizza, but it worked. In fact, it’s the perfect answer to anyone who says you can’t eat pizza for breakfast. We also shared the delicious Sante Fe Chicken ($6.53) – tender chicken in a salsa and sour cream mix, red peppers, a few jalapeños, mozzarella and cheddar, topped with cilantro. The crust is thick, light and crisp and the pizza itself tastes lovingly homemade, unlike the mass-produced quality of other pizzerias.
There are also a few kinds of lasagna, calzone (gyros, $5.60; Philly cheese steak, $5.75) and kids’ pizza (cheese burger – burger sauce, lean ground beef, smoked bacon, mozzarella and aged cheddar; $3.99).
When it comes to the Coco Brooks experience, it isn’t about atmosphere – although the murals of downtown Calgary painted in the Fritz Lang Metropolis style of the 1920s at the restaurant in the southeast are pretty cool – it’s all about the pizza. I suppose the décor could be described as industrial chic with its barren, echo-y space, cement floors, black plastic chairs, exposed pipes, paper towel dispenser for serviettes and big tomato cans for condiment holders. And there are no plates here – the pizza is eaten right out of the recyclable cardboard boxes.
Coco Brooks delivers, caters off-site events and birthdays, and sells frozen pizzas as well as a Take ’n’ Bake kit for $5.99 (pizza board and cutting wheel, pizza server, two pizza screens and oven thermometer) so you can bake the pizza at home.
To take home, I ordered a whole banana bread pizza ($5.99) to devour on my own! |
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