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i can only remember once feeling jealous on Twitter (that’s an emotion usually found lurking under the veneer of Instagram’s rounded corner). It was halfway through the hell of 2020, and even though there were a billion pressing things I should have been fixing, I found myself repeating the same story to any friend trapped in my distant social presence: A woman from Truro had relocated to New York, the literal pizza capital of the world, but was craving Greco – an Atlantic Canadian chain that has no discernible ties to anything Greek (what does the name even mean?) and is widely derided as the lowest reincarnation a piece could receive as punishment. for his past sins. “Imagine,” I’d tell friends as their eyes shone with the same sheen as Greco’s plastic mozzarella, “she had to explain to her boyfriend in Queens—who has probably only ever had real pizza —what made this mass-produced schlock so special! And then Greco sent her a build-your-own kit, complete with delivery box!”
The rift, so to speak, was that Greco was apparently ready to airlift his one-of-a-kind combination of breadcrumbs, sweet sauce and melted putty cheese to this woman while I, who living in the south end of Halifax, couldn’t convince the Clayton Park outpost of the chain to drive downtown with a $38.99 party pizza deal. Not even on my birthday. (Yes, I offered to pay extra for delivery. No, it didn’t sway the powers that be.)
So, earlier this year, when a looming image of the Greco Chef was plastered over a Gottingen Street window with the words “coming soon,” my phone started lighting up with the news. Every friend who had to listen to my rant told me that this was the sign that had already been broken somehow my luck was changing. Perhaps my Summer George, so to speak, was finally coming to an end and this was proof that, after multiple personal crises, disasters and grief, the universe was throwing me a bone—or perhaps a piece of the trademark stuffed crust a chain.
My friends wondered aloud if the restaurant’s arrival at 2174 Gottingen signaled that the neighborhood had reached a noble high water—or if the budget chain’s newest location meant we had come full circle. I don’t have an opinion either way, as I’m too busy enjoying my favorite slice.
The appeal of Greco’s pizza – the only good thing ever to come out of Moncton, DS, where the chain started in 1977 – would be easy to dismiss as an elaborate preference, a reverse snobbery against the many great restaurants in the city. a city that appreciates fine technique, atmosphere and local ingredients from sustainable sources. (You won’t find any of these things in Greco.)
But not inverse, anti-Bon appetite thing It’s much simpler. For me, growing up in northern New Brunswick, the square, industrial party pizzas from Greco were the $5 hot lunch that marked the end of the school week. They were a staple of birthdays and slumber parties, and the sweet neon sauce is smacked in the corners of many of my childhood memories.
By high school, we saw how janky the chain could be. In Miramichi, at least in the early 2000s, the local Greco was teenage shorthand for greasy, and if you wanted to create an annoying comparison, you’d ask someone when they last ate there. (The real joke, however, was the fact that we all attended.)
“Even the brand new Gottingen Street Greco already has the deathly lights of a place that time and god forgot, and it’s only been open about a week.”
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Even the brand new Gottingen Street Greco already has the deathly glow of a time and god forgotten place, and it’s only been open for about a week. Once this summer, when I was in Moncton, my boyfriend and I stopped by Greco in a weird industrial park. I asked if they had a bathroom while we waited for our order – and the waitress made me swear I wasn’t going to shoot up in the stall before she was willing to hand over the key. (Don’t make me regret this,” he said, pleading with our eyes. It was 8pm.)
But longing and high-low love are not Greco’s only siren calls. When it comes to mass-produced pizza, it also happens to hit harder than its competition. Domino’s thinks it offers spice, but in reality it provides a sauce so acidic that it sends your teeth filing for divorce from their enamel. Pizza Hut’s crust is so bland that you feel embarrassed for it when you reach for a knife and fork. Pizza Pizza, Ontario’s entry into the bad-good pizza canon, has no distinguishing features that would help you pick it off a late-night craving list. Greco offers a flood of sweet savory complexity as its sugary tomato sauce clashes against the bland yet salty mozzarella. It has a lot, but retains structural integrity. Sometimes you want organic, carefully crafted food—but sometimes you want the antithesis of that, and you can call 310-30-30 (Greco’s original jingle; he never bothers to update it) to get it.
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