Blast from the Past: Gondola Pizza
Hated the place but it was popular with some school mates. Here it’s a pizza joint going back to your author’s formative teen years, when dinosaurs ruled the earth*. And in outward appearance at least it hasn’t changed one bit…until recently that is when it went out of business. It’s Gondola “Incomparable” (Mezzopane) Pizza, open some thirty five plus years in 2017 when the attached photo was snapped, but gone soon after. It was found in the community of Killarney-Glengarry, Southwest Calgary, your author’s sometimes stomping grounds back then.
Always thought it dog food, but recall it being cheap and with their commercial endlessly blaring on the radio, they became quite popular in spite of any shortcomings. The power of marketing. “Gondola Pizza…our pizza can’t be beatsa! When you put it all together, it’s incomparable.” Or some such jingle, played day and night ad nauseum on CKXL.
And now it’s gone, having been replaced by a trendy pizza “boutique”. House rules…no plaid, no man-bun, no “analogue” camera around your neck, no service. It’s called “Baked 3.14” (get it, Pi) a business that certainly goes down as the most minimalist place on the planet when it comes to design and decor. There’s a real Soviet prison block vibe going on here which I guess is a thing. But I hear the eats are good and that’s where it counts. Warning, prepare yourself for sticker shock.
There used to be good number of other Gondola Pizza outlets in Calgary with a couple still remaining even after the closure of this one. Interestingly there’s a chain in Manitoba that uses the same name and an almost identical logo. They two must have been connected at some point.
And here we see in this most unremarkable photo, their sign dating back to the early 1980s. Table games? While waiting for your pie to be thawed and microwaved, I mean hand made and baked, you could partake in a “cocktail cabinet” version of Pacman, Berzerk or Gorf. “Intruder alert!” “Bad move space cadet!” Back then, arcade games were everywhere. Haven’t returned since them days. Not sure if the product improved over the years, but that it shut down suggests probably not. I always thought a McCain’s frozen was a step up. Still, Gondola was a blast from the past. I see the website is still up.
Mezzopane (correctly Mezzo pane, Italian): Half bread, in reference to the style of thin crust pizza served here.
*And by dinosaurs we mean hulking Chrysler Cordobas and Oldmobile 88s. These memories go back to circa 1980-1982.
Something totally unrelated…
Hanna Roundhouse Revisited.
Short Subjects: reports that for any number of reasons are brief in nature. They might be updates to older articles, previews of posts planned or not yet published, brief snippets of things that don’t fit in anywhere else or subjects that are so obscure that information on them can’t be found. Or sometimes we just ramble on about Lord knows what.
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Date of adventure: September, 2017.
Location: Calgary, Alberta.
Gondola Pizza SW Calgary, unchanged since the ’80s.
I think Baked 314 is closed, another victim of cororna maybe? Their pizzas were only marginally better then Gondola’s but cost twice as much.
I’m not sure that’s true. We looked and see recent activity on their FB page. Like any pizza place, there are those who love the product and those who don’t. It’s just one of those things. We can’t say from personal experience in regards to Baked 314, but I recall Gondola being awful.
In 1982 my son, Jeremy, did a couple of tv commercials for gondola pizza in Calgary. Anyone remember the little boy in the baseball cap saying *Gondola pizza. It’s incomparable!”
Cool! It’d be something if you could find a copy of that commercial.
My brother worked for the location in Brandon, Manitoba. I always thought that their pizza didn’t really taste much better than the box that it came in.
Now that’s a bad pizza. Not sure if the Manitoba Gondolas were in any way connected to those in Calgary, but given they share (or shared) nearly the same logo, it must be so. Thanks for commenting, it made us chuckle.
“It’s Incomparable!”
Can’t be beatsa!
I remember their jingle more than their Pizza.
Funny how that is. Known more for that, then the food being peddled.
The best ever!
I guess not everyone thought so or the place wouldn’t have closed. Seems we have a house divided. One one side, the best, and the other, something close to the worst.
their boss was one of the best pizzas I’ve ever had!
One for Gondola being good.
Dog food yes. Grossest pizza ever.
Seems we’re getting some support for Gondola. Not everyone hated it. Like you to us it was awful.
Thought Gondola Pizza was garbage but loved the old Shakeys near Westbrook.
Yes, Shakey’s, a go to for Ernest Manning Students (so your author), not because it was good (IMHO) but because it was cheap and close. While still not much more than a frozen McCain’s Shakey’s was still better than Gondola. Again, in our opinion.
That’s the neighbourhood I was born in!
Cool. I had friends from the area that I went to school with (at Ernest Manning). I recall a small corner store in the strip mall next block over from Gondola. Always stopped for a cold Coke in the tall bottles.