Being born and raised in Pictou County means one of two things: you're an acolyte of its glorious pizza, or you have $#*! taste in pizza. As I'm one of the former, I lament the lack of easy access to Pictou County pizza as I, like 75% or more of my peers, don't live there anymore. However, the pizza slinging entrepreneurs at Nayya have heeded my years of silent prayers and drunken rants and have brought a Pictou County-style pizza to their menu.
While I had heard good things from friends and reading reviews online, you're never quite sure until you try something for yourself, especially when it comes to something as subjective as taste. So after much too long, I used a movie night in Bedford at my friends' house as an opportunity to push for giving it a try. While I had assumed that they would have a set PCP pizza on the menu modeled after the combination pizzas at home (pepperoni, mushroom and green pepper), it seems that you can put whatever you want on your PC-style pizza at Nayya. They have a deal where you can get two medium PCPs for $32, so we went for that, getting one as a traditional combo and the other as a meatier one.
My buddy picked them up on the way in, so I can't attest to their customer service or how delivery would be.
Upon opening the box, things looked encouraging - a thick, browned layer of cheese on top of everything, with spice-flecked brown pizza sauce peeking out from underneath. The crust was dense, and a little dried out, but true to form for Pictou County (for better or for worse), the crust is more utilitarian than a focus itself. With the hefty amount of toppings, a thin crust would never do, but being dried out is never a good thing. The toppings were spot on though, and I was glad to see that they used Brother's pepperoni despite my buddy forgetting to specify that kind, so kudos to Nayya for either knowing to use it or having it as their default pepperoni.
That thick layer of cheese was just as good as you would expect, and the mushrooms and green peppers completed the flavour profile. As for the star of the show for any Pictou County pizza - the spicy, brown sauce - it obviously had a lot of taste testing put into it, or they stole the recipe, because I'd call it an almost perfect replica. Blind taste tests with it against the stuff from home would definitely be tough to tell apart. Bow before this sauce and cower, sweet red sauces of Halifax!
While I say Sam's or Acropole need to get it together and get a location on the peninsula near the hoards of Pictou County kids going to school and expats living there, Nayya more than fills the gap for non-gourmet pizza that you can enjoy at any occasion. read more