Happiness is having an outstanding pizza takeaway on your doorstep – well it certainly helps. Which is why we were thrilled to discover Call-A-Pizza in Sea Point.
This is no ordinary pizza place. The menu is seven pages long with all sorts of mouth-watering delights from the classic to the unusual to the, quite frankly, weird. But first some history. Call-A-Pizza was started in 1987 by two model friends who returned from Europe and were dismayed to find they couldn’t get the deliveries they were used to. It’s said to be the first company to deliver pizzas in the country. Its current owners took over in 1989 and have developed this uniquely special place.
We first discovered it last year and (having had a couple of beers) went about ordering from the Make Your Own Pizza section. When we picked up our boxes we were amazed at how heavy they were…okay we were hungry and had gone big on our toppings, but we had no idea how generous they were going to be. Even the most basic of pizzas have generous portions of everything, making for a fabulous pizza experience. We couldn’t even manage half of what we had ordered. Greed had truly got the better of us.
Choosing from the options on the menu is not easy. There’s vegetarian, seafood, chicken, gourmet combination gourmet pizzas, meaty pizzas (normal and well-topped) and mega pizzas which are described as super well-topped. And in this mix as well as the Italian norm you’ll find flavours of India, Thailand, Portugal, Mexico, South America, the US and South Africa. Here’s a few examples.
The Taj (well-topped)
Spicy mince curry or mild lemon and ginger chicken curry with basmati rice under mozzarella cheese, topped with a drizzle of chilli oil with separate tubs of sambals, chutney, banana and whole curried chillis.
Sausage Fest (well-topped)
Garlic, frankfurter sausage and pepperoni under mozzarella cheese, topped with salami, chorizo sausage, Russian sausage and boerewors (South African sausage).
Jose Grande
Beef mince chilli con carne (with baked beans) and our famous red chilli ‘fire’ sauce under mozzarella cheese topped with mixed peppers, chopped tomato and onion rings and avocado, peppadew and nachos after baking.
Or you could have The Works which has 21 set toppings, a large one weighs over 2.5kg and serves 4 (at least I would say). Choose this and you have garlic, chilli, mushrooms, chicken fillet, beef bolognese mince, salami and ham under mozzarella topped with cheddar, feta, whole corn, asparagus, pineapple, green and red and yellow peppers, olives, tomato, onion and bacon with peppadew after baking. The mind boggles. It reminds me of one of my favourite sayings by Miss Piggy from The Muppets: “Never eat more than you can carry” – you get the idea.
For me, the basic meaty pizzas are perfect. Not that there’s anything basic about them! I’ve fallen in love with their Hawaiian which is so cheesy and hammy and a medium does me for two meals.
The best Hawaiian pizza ever?
Also in the ‘normal’ meaty section is the American – pepperoni under mozzarella topped with jalapeno chilli and tomato. Beautifully spicy. Oh and their bases are wonderfully thin and crisp (they only do them one way and it’s perfect).
An American with extra onion
Find out more and gaze at the choices at www.callapizza.co.za. They’ve certainly taken the whole genre into a different league. It’s given me plenty of food for thought when I next create a pizza at home, though that won’t be for a while with Call-A-Pizza across the road.
Call-A-Pizza is at 57 Regent Road, Sea Point.
