End of the week pizza

So last Friday after a looooooong week at work I picked up little A, jumped on the first bus headed to Whyte ave and called the hubster to meet us there for supper. Anywhere. Anywhere that served pizza.

Specifically, Famoso.

A and I had to kill about 30 minutes so we headed over to the Chapters to run off some steam in their toy department. It was brilliant. They had a baby grand piano set up and he bashed away for ten solid minutes. I especially enjoyed how the toy department people had located it on the very outer fringes of the toy department, nearest the Starbucks. The stink eye those latte-drinking, headphone wearing, laptop typing folks gave us – OY! I kept telling A, “louder, LOUDER”. I think the Chapters folks are trolling them.

After A’s repeated attempts to eat a dozen crayons from the drawing table, and with a few tears as we left the corn popper behind, we headed over to Famoso, a great little Edmonton grown pizza chain. I was worried it was going to be a hassle to snag a table, but by slipping in at 5:30 we got one of the very last ones.

Famoso is famous for its wood fired oven where pizzas are cooked in roughly 90 seconds, and their fancypants imported flour. It’s called 00 and that’s all I’m willing to find out about it. What I love about them is their non-standard toppings. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Famoso is sort of half-fast food, half-sit down restaurant. It works like this:

-you get a table

-you go up to the counter and order your food and drinks

-you sit back down and they bring it all over to you

-if you want something more, you can order it from the waitress

-when you are done, you go back up to the counter and pay your tab. (Although sometimes I have paid right away after ordering when I know I’m in a bit of a rush).

Yay! Menus are fun!

We ordered the Spicy Thai pizza, which is our alltime fave. It has mildly spiced peanut sauce, fire-roasted chicken, fior-di-latte, smoked mozzarella. Topped with matchstick carrots, bean sprouts, cilantro, crushed peanuts, and a lime wedge. Unconventional and DEEEEELICIOUS. We also tried one of their new offerings, The Korean BBQ pork, which has slow-roasted spiced pork butt, Korean BBQ sauce, fior-di-latte, green onion, cheddar cheese,  and hoisin sauce. We also split a Caesar salad. 

Spicy Thai, forgot to take photos of the Korean pizza

For drinks, momma was relieved to see Bellini in single size bottles, and T ordered a Moretti beer.

Besides feeling that I deserved a peachy, raspberry, sparkling wine drink because my week had been so mentally taxing, the single serve bottle was aluminum and became a useful plaything for A to entertain himself with while we waited for dinner. Because we had forgotten to pack a toy. Again. And since his Raffi addiction is out of control and I just upped my data limit again and didn’t need to go over it by streaming ‘six little ducks’, I was pretty happy for him to roll it around and repeatedly drop it on the floor to watch it bounce and roll.

Momma's little helper.

Dinner arrived pretty quickly (10min) (also, thank Goddess). A’s dislike of salad did not magically disappear with the arrival of our Caesar salad, but we picked out some bacon and parm for him and he gobbled them up. He was pretty wild about the spicy Thai (beansprouts ERMAGAD), but the Korean BBQ must have been too spicy for him as he cried and needed to be watered down after a few misadventurous bites.

Me: I continue to carry the torch for the spicy Thai and would eat it every day. The Korean BBQ? Sweet and yummy but too ‘saucy’ as it soaked the dough and gave it the consistency of being undercooked. Also, I got a few bites of the spice and I think our pizza maker must have had a really liberal hand. It buuuuuuuuurned.

I really wanted to have dessert as their dark chocolate salted caramel gelato is drooooooooooooool. But A was at the end of his rope and it was time to get.out.of.there. before we hit meltdown level 9. And we couldn’t get the waitresses attention. So after drying a few tears (mine), hubster ran up to pay and we booted it out of there.

All in all I would rate it:

1. Did they have a highchair?             Yes (5/5)

2. Did it look like it had been wiped down this calendar year? Yes* (5/5) *It’s only January

3. Change tables: (2.5/5)

Ladies room: Yes (+2.5)

Mens room: No.  Tdot wasn’t able to get into the men’s stall but the waitress told us there wasn’t one (0)

4. Did the wait staff give us stink eye? No, but they didn’t fawn over my baby and I really wanted to order that gelato (3.5/5)

5. Was the food awesome? Yes, even despite the spiciness and sort of sogginess (5/5)

Total: BUT WAIT, SURPRISE ENDING!

When we got home, Tdot realized I must have biffed his wallet from his coat while wrangling our baby gear and baby. He madly dashed back to the restaurant in mild panic while I called them to ask them to keep a look out for it. To our deep, deep relief, it had been turned in and they had it. Even more of a bonus: no money was stolen out of it. YAAAAAY for good people. YAAAAAAY for wallet karma coming back to us! AND he brought home the Salted Carmel Gelato!!! WIN WIN WIN!

Bonus points: 5/5.

Total: 26/25

Our recommendation: go eat there and bring your baby!