Dave and Lori

Pizza 73 a franchise“joint venture” style take-out/delivery pizza chain that has been a favourite of ours in Calgary for many years.

The pizza is at best mediocre, it’s edible, but certainly not fantastic and you can do much better for the price, although if you get lots of their cheese dip, it helps. So why is it a favourite?

One word: Wings.

I haven’t found any other pizza delivery place in Calgary that has even half way decent wings, and especially not breaded crispy wings that stay crispy by the time they show up. The hot wings are somewhere between good and great depending on the day, although nothing a bit of extra hot sauce won’t fix right up.

Best of all, online ordering at pizza73.ca.

Apparently Pizza 73 was bought out by “Pizza Pizza” in 2007. Who knew?

I’ve eaten at Fatburger in Vegas at two locations and it was great! I’ve also heard rave reviews from friends in other parts of the US, so I was very excited when they showed up in Calgary. Unfortunately the experience was rather unpleasent.

The burgers were plain tasting and obviously low grade fatty beef, and while some may like it, I’m not a fan of gristle. For some reason it was crazy loud, the music was loud enough that you couldn’t hear the person across the table from you, but also it was hollow and echoing, so you couldn’t even enjoy the music.

The unpleasent atmosphere and medicre food combined together to result in my girlfriend and I leaving without finishing our meals.

Although I warned my parents of this first experience, my mom was still interested in trying it after my glowing reviews of the Vegas location, so my parents and I stopped in one day. After determining that the music was too loud for the cashier not be able to hear our orders without screaming, we decided it was too loud and moved on without tasting anything.

I have since re-visited the Vegas location, and although there were a pair of just-married couples who were too drunk to remember to use their inside voices and there was music playing, I still enjoyed the not-too-loud-to-hear-yourself-think atmosphere and burger was fantastic.

Based on the Calgary experience, we drove right past FatBurger in Vancouver last weekend, and I don’t intend to visit another Canadian location, although I’ll certainly drop by one in the US should I happen to be in the area.