Noms!: Victoria’s Pizzeria Prima Strada delivers underwhelming pizza

Pizzeria Prima Strada, a little pizza place on Bridge Street in downtown Victoria, with a second location in Cook Street Village, was disappointing, but may deserve another chance. Prima Strada prides itself on its authentic, Naples-style pizzas roasted in a fire oven, and is looking to bring a little piece of Italy to Vancouver Island.

The pizzeria is very unassuming on the outside, with a little yellow sign on the road’s edge to direct you to its doors. Inside it’s an open restaurant with tables strewn about and a bar near the entrance for seating.

After a 20-minute wait, we sat down at our little rickety table in some fairly comfy wooden chairs and took in the atmosphere as we read over the menus. Their lights are metal rectangles with bullet holes; effective enough for lighting the place appropriately, but I’m guessing the last time you said, “Do you know what we need? Metal lights with bullet holes in them,” was, well, never.

We ordered our food from our pleasant waitress and tried to make sense of the menus that were mostly in Italian. They included a large selection of pizzas as well as ice creams and drinks.

I had a pancetta and cheese pizza and my friends had fungi and Romano, and a third pizza that I can’t remember how to spell or pronounce.

I’ve heard great things about Prima Strada’s pizza and, honestly, I was a bit disappointed. My pizza was extremely salty, to the point where I had issues eating it, and the Romano pizza suffered a similar fate. I despise mushrooms, and steered clear of that one.

The unpronounceable pizza was easily the best of the bunch and basically had a salad on top of it; the pizza had good balance, was not too salty, and just tasted good in general.

I still can’t get over just how salty two of the pizzas were, but I feel that it may have been a one-off mistake for Prima Strada and that they warrant a second visit. If nothing else, they had fantastic pizza crust, and the crust is probably my favorite part of pizza. I’m odd, I know.

Ultimately, I would be hesitant to recommend the place, but I should give them a second chance to ensure that I didn’t receive salty pizzas as a one-time mistake.

That said, the pizzas are a bit pricey for what you receive. At $15.50 for a medium-sized pizza, you would expect a gourmet pizza, perfectly fire-roasted and delicious.

Perhaps next time Prima Strada will deliver a little better.