The Pizza Showdown – Edgemont

When we first moved to North Vancouver in November, our temporary housing was near Capilano Lake Park … so not far from the Edgemont neighbourhood. We’d go there to do grocery shopping … but we moved to Lower Lonsdale about a week after we arrived and then I left to return to Toronto until Christmastime, so we didn’t get to explore the Edgemont neighbourhood together much.

Edgemont seems like a really nice place – kind of has a small town feel to it. Bakeries, little grocery stores, this, that, the other – but I didn’t realize that it had two well-known pizzerias; Nicli Anitica and Bufala.

Recently, some work colleagues from North Vancouver were discussing pizza – which is pretty well my favourite food.

It was mentioned that Nicli has the VPN designation (Verace Pizza Napoletana) – which made my ears perk up, but doesn’t guarantee a homerun, in my opinion.

Coming from Toronto, where there are three brands that fly the VPN flag, of which I’ve visited two, Libretto and Pizza e Pazzi, I know that there are many non-VPN designated pizzerias that are stellar – and, in my opinion trump the two aforementioned.

Namely, Terroni and Via Mercanti. The pies at these two places are consistent and hit the mark, every time. Now, my good friends in Toronto might roll their eyes at me for mentioning Terroni because of their sanctimonious attitude towards their recipes and the Roman Catholic Church-like position on anyone customizing a dish … but good food is good food. And I can deal with people being jerks about things, as long as I get my way in the end.

Getting back to Vancouver, where it’s been difficult finding stellar Italian food (DiBeppe has been the only home run, so far) we decided to have a pizza night – squaring Nicli and Bufala against each other.

The down and dirty details are in the video below – as well as a little bit on the VPN designation.

Enjoy and let me know if you have any suggestions for a great pizza joint in Vancouver!

Here is the link for the video:

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