Remember Mikey – “He likes it! Hey, Mikey!” – from the Life breakfast cereal commercials?
Vancouver diners are a bit like the finicky four-year-old. We don’t hate everything. On the contrary, we’ll try almost anything (and will often go back for seconds, if the food’s worthy). Thus, we are seen as discerning yet influential guinea pigs by food and beverage marketers.
Our trendsetting nature partly explains why Fatburger, Beard Papa’s, Starbucks breakfast sandwiches, Mekhong whisky and various Giffard liqueurs all received their Canadian debut in Vancouver and Richmond.
So it’s no great surprise that the following fast-food chain restaurants from afar – Hell Pizza of New Zealand, Chef Hung Taiwanese Beef Noodle and Mr. Kumpir from Turkey – recently chose to launch their first Canadian franchises on the West Coast.
Hell Pizza
What fresh hell is this? Spawned in New Zealand, this damned funny pizza chain is hell-bent on afterworld domination, having already spread its pun-licious menu – which features “gore-met” pizzas named after the seven deadly sins – to Australia, the United States and Britain.
Devilish advertising slogans – “Kids are evil, feed them” – are a large part of the company’s appeal, though some of its diabolical campaigns – such as an online promo that portrayed the late Queen Mother, Heath Ledger and Sir Edmund Hillary as decaying cartoon corpses dancing on tombstones – have come under fire for crossing the line of poor taste.
The new Lonsdale Avenue takeout shop, where you can also eat in at long communal tables, is a neo-Gothic lair designed in homage to Vincent Price, with black wallpaper, red velvet drapes, dangling plastic skeletons and an Addams Family pinball machine.
All-day delivery – in a hearse, by special request – is available throughout North Vancouver (with a radius soon expanding to Deep Cove and West Vancouver).
The pizzas, served in black boxes with cutouts that can be folded into coffins “for your remains,” come in two sizes: an eight-inch snack ($8 to $8.50) and a 12-inch double ($16 to $17). For the “little devils”, who will probably appreciate all the macabre hokeyness most, there’s the 333 ($5), a snack-sized pizza with one topping.
The deep-dish, pan-style base (also available gluten-free for an extra few dollars) won’t likely convert many thin-crust worshippers. The golden dough is soft and spongy, with squared-off edges that look unnaturally sharp. Suggested toppings come in the most ungodly combinations, such as the ghastly-sounding Grimm (chicken, apricot sauce, cream cheese, rosemary and spring onion).
We give in to Lust (pepperoni, salami, ham, bacon and andouille sausage), a notorious bestseller that once raised the ire of the New Zealand Catholic Church after being promoted with mail-out condoms. The meats are blandly inoffensive, as is the standard-issue mozzarella. But the sweet chili sauce is sickly and a side order of Hell’s own “Forked Tongue” chili sauce is so sour it makes my cheeks pucker.
Limbo is still undecided. Although advertised as a vegetarian pizza (mushrooms, blue cheese, caramelized onions, garlic and tomato), it comes with optional olives and bacon. Bacon is a transgression I can understand, but black olives with blue cheese and candied onions?
When Hell Pizza does shamelessly sweet, it does it very well. The Unearthly dessert pizza ($8) is piled thick with a sinfully good mix of fresh bananas, tart berries, chocolate and yolky custard. I’d go back just for this.
As for the rest? Meh. It may be fiendishly good fun, but it’s not worth selling your soul for.
Chef Hung Taiwanese Beef Noodle
In Taiwan, the Taipei International Beef Noodle Festival is a huge deal. And Chef Hung, a three-time contest winner since 2006, has turned his crown into a bustling business.
