Yes pizza box I agree, it is Pizza O'Clock... because it's always Pizza O'Clock in these parts.
B-Town Pizza is (one presumes) so named for it's city of origin, that being Brampton... a place always much larger than I think it is. Opening up sometime in early 2021 (aka not the salad days of the pandemic) B-Town Pizza made a name for itself by offering a fusion of classic North American pizza elements with Indian cuisine... certainly not a common combination but not completely out of the blue either. After a few years an opportunity to expand to the big(ger) city presented itself, resulting in B-Town's second location on Elm Street right in the heartbeat of downtown Toronto. Which is where I come in.
Not entirely related to any of this but I want to mention how much I like Elm Street... and keep in mind this is coming from somebody who avoids most pockets of downtown Toronto like they're a talkative obnoxious party guest with corpse breath (who just got back from traveling overseas). Elm Street has a sort of old-timey classiness that reminds me of certain parts of Montreal... maybe it's the streetlamps, the little storefronts with stairs, the brick buildings with arched windows... whatever it is I approve. If not for the endless construction I'd almost pleasantly forget where I actually was.
It was just past two o'clock on a Friday so the inside of B-town was quite dead. When ordering from the menu I was legitimately torn: do I go for a more traditional pizza and see how that compares to the countless others I've tried? Or do I embrace their calling card, the cuisine fusion, to gauge how interesting and potentially different it is? Ultimately (after far too much deliberation, sorry 'dude behind the counter') I opted for the latter... building my own pizza with butter chicken (with a butter chicken sauce instead of tomato) with pineapple for sweetness. Plus a garlic dip because... it's a garlic dip. Do I have to explain everything???!???!!11
First off, a colourful and aesthetically pleasing pizza no doubt. This was one element to B-Town I'd suspected coming into this, seeing as they are one those places that do the 'heart-shaped' pizza for Valentine's Day (no need to revisit my V-Day rant from the La Roma review so lets move on).
While I do greatly enjoy butter chicken, I've had bad experiences in the past when likewise combined with other dishes. Most notoriously was a butter chicken mac and cheese I tried at the Friar and Firkin I used to work at: it was a one time daily special and no surprise why: those two kinds of creaminess (the rich bechamel versus the punchier, earthier butter sauce) clashed so badly there were simply no survivors in that flavour.
On a pizza though... it does work somewhat better. Dough and cheese, particularly of this meh quality, don't exactly overwhelm in the flavour department... allowing the butter chicken taste to dominate without much obstruction.
The pineapple ended up (believe it or not) providing a solid sweet reprieve from the other more intense flavours. Alas it was obviously canned pineapple, seeing how soft and dehydrated the chunks were once out of the oven.
As for the chicken... it's formed and diced into far too perfect little cube-like pieces, with a far too consistent texture and juiciness. Never a good sign. However, that hint of tandoori spices and colouring along the chicken does add a more roasted taste to it, not a typical flavour one finds on a pizza. Chicken on pizza often doesn't work (especially at bigger, cheaper chains) because places don't season or marinate it at all... resulting in extremely bland, dry and rubbery bits of breast. B-Town here is at least a solid step above that.
All of that coriander helped both make the pizza look pretty and give some nice herbal zing to every bite. Having a butter sauce in here instead of tomato sauce... it's certainly different and I would've liked considerably more of it. Far more of a grounded earthier taste than a creamy one and as such it blends into the baked dough and cheese more than giving the pie any kind of saucy texture. A shame: pretty sure this was the first ever time I'd encountered bits of ginger in a pizza and it actually worked pretty nicely here.
The more classic "pizza" elements aren't all that impressive... the mozzarella is just your typical thick pizza cheese with little burnt bubbles, the same stuff you find at zillions of cheap-ish pizzerias. Likewise the crust/dough is quite light and airy, with some solid crispy bubbled parts along the crust that are tasty. These aren't great ingredients quality-wise but to B-Town's credit the pizza itself is baked to it's ideal point, giving this pie a good balance of that light hollow crispiness and softer cheesier bites.
Overall... I think this proves the concept of a butter chicken pizza can indeed work but you need far better base ingredients to work with. B-Town does the best with what they've got and it does make for a fairly tasty pie... but the level of quality is right in that "generic" range.
On quality of the pizza alone this is far from distinctive... but the little touches like the coriander and the tandoori lick on the generic white chicken bits are good for a few positive points in my book. I wouldn't recommend you need to go B-Town asap and I'm in no rush to go back myself (especially since these aren't cheap pizzas either) but I'll give them a "C++" for delivering something a little more interesting than your typical run-of-the-mill mediocre cheap hole in the wall.
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