Santa Ana Pizzeria & Bistro

Santa Ana Pizzeria & Bistro

F-1631 St. Mary’s Rd

Tel: 204-415-1440

http://www.santaanabistro.ca/

January, 2013

When you walk up to an Earl’s Restaurant, you know what you’re going to get.  The modern stand-alone building always opens into a slick, contemporary dining room.  The same goes for The Keg.  The grandiose shack-like exterior conceals a wood-based, cabin-like interior.  You never get any surprises.  That’s why I love going into strip mall restaurants for the first time.  The more-often-than-not dumpy exterior can open into a palace or a bat cave.  While Santa Ana is no palace, neither is it a bat cave.  Well, I guess it could be a bat cave since its dark and moody dining room casts lots of shadows. 

Pictures of wine adorn the outside walls but the inside wall is actually a wine rack.  I love it—but too bad it’s a little too high to reach over and help myself to a bottle.  I guess I’ll have to get it the traditional way, which is still no easy feat.  The menu features a bursting selection of whites and even more generous array of reds.  The usual culprits (Lindeman’s, Wolf Blass) lurk on the pages but the huge selection of lesser-known names is sure to capture the attention of the most scrupulous sommeliers. 

Although the servers buzz like bees, our meal took three hours from entry to departure—so take your time and enjoy your wine.  It might be a good idea to start with an appetiser to keep Mr. Hunger Pang away while you wait.  I’m not a squid fan but all my dining companions love calamari; our tables always seem infested by tentacles.  Squid is a hard food to make.  The slightest overcooking turns your rolls into rubber.  Not so here—this is some of the most tender squids that I ever tried.  The light batter adds a bit of a crunch but not enough to mask the squid flavour.  For those of you who don’t like the taste of squid, the chili sauce has just enough zing to zap any fishiness the squid may have (and there’s very little).

If you’re not a seafood fan, think about the Wood Fired Sicilian Sausage.  Wander into any grocery store and you find all sorts of Italian sausages.  If you order Chinese sausage, you know you get a waxy, dried, sweetish sausage; if you order Kielbasa, you know you get a dense, smoked sausage; if you order Italian sausage, you never know what you get since everything else seems to lump into Italy.  Ana’s Sicilian sausage comes grilled nicely and packs a bit of a punch.  The chunks are big, so don’t overindulge and run out of room for pizza!

Ana either roasts the pizza over a wood fire, or bakes them over stone.  Our server recommends the wood-fired for the extra crispness and you should heed her advice.  The perfectly prepared crust has a crunchiness to it but no evidence of flame (meaning it’s not burnt).  The wood-fired zas measure 11”, which you can probably finish yourself; the stone baked zas measure 15”, which would leave you groaning with gut glitches if you finish it solo.

I’m not a fan of pineapple on pizza but the Tropicana works it well with barbecue sauce and saucy pulled pork.  If you’re a fan of alternative sauces, try the Pesto pizza.  The classic pesto-chicken combination works wonders with the pungent asiago.  The Mexican combination of nacho ingredients yields an equally wonderful pizza.  I often avoid Mexican pizzas since bad Mexican za tastes like Taco Time on a bun—no worries here.  Ana doesn’t hold back on the alternative sauces, which is great because the sauces taste divine.  However, the tomato based sauces are lacking as I needed to use my fork as a divining rod to search for it.

Sauce is especially missing on the meat pizzas, which desperately need a vegetable injection.  Meatheads will either want to try the 4 Meat or the Meat Lovers’.  I would avoid both since too much meet = too much salt and these pizzas are sure to constrict your arteries.  Instead, try the Deluxe, which combines three meats with mushroom and green pepper—another delicious combination.

Overall, I would like to see a bit more generosity in the toppings.  Ana rices the vegetables so it looks like there’s a lot, but they’re in tiny pieces.  By contrast, most of the meats come in substantial chunks, but there aren’t a lot of chunks.  Don’t get me wrong, they make good pizzas here—I just wish there’s more of a good thing.  

If pizza’s not your thing, Ana serves up some delicious pasta as well.  The mountain of lasagne oozes with cheese, meat and sauce (so that’s where the tomato sauce went).  My favourite is the pesto sauce.  I don’t order gnocchi often as I find it too doughy but the power of the pesto overcomes the dullness of the dough.  The Fungi Linguini is anything but dull as it leaves a party of textures in your mouth.  Alas, all of the textures come from the fungi as the linguini lie limply overcooked.

Ana’s food isn’t perfect, but it’s really good.  On the way out, you can pick up a jar or two of sauces and try to reproduce the dishes yourself.  Better yet, just come back again.  This is definitely one of those obscure strip mall restaurants that you should keep on your calendar.

**** /5


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