Re: The Best Vegan "Traditional-Style" Pizza I Have Ever Had

As a pretty avowed political vegan, there are many things in life which I have made off limits to myself: Skittles, leather shoes, jello shots, and traveling with ease in a foreign country. However, nothing has been so hard for me to let go of as pizza. My passion (and longing) for pizza has remained unabated during the nearly five years of my veganism. My desire for ice cream, already small, became nonexistent. My need for macaroni and cheese resurfaces less and less often. My intense love affair with peanut butter M&M's now troubles me not at all. But pizza! Ah, pizza. Just thinking about it makes me feel sorrowful and itchy. The smell of it makes my mouth water. If I could pick one thing in this world that would magically no longer be made of animal products, it would be pizza. Tragically (or maybe inevitably), cheese is the one thing they haven't found a good soy substitute for yet. There's great vegan ice cream, hamburgers, skittles and leather shoes. But fake cheese? No way. Forget about it. I'd rather eat a cockroach.

There are many kinds of vegan pizza out there. There are the kinds which try to recreate traditional pizza using soy cheese, which tastes truly terrible. There are the kind that just say "F the cheese," and give you a pizza with veggies and tomato sauce only, sort of like a glorified bruschetta. And there are the kind that seek to reinvent the pizza format by creating a cheeseless pizza that is nontraditional, such as the Bella Faccia vegan pizza, which uses a creamy cashew-butter spread instead of the traditional tomato-based one.

The Bella Faccia vegan pizza is truly hard to beat. It tastes wonderful, with many different layers of flavors bursting into your mouth at different times during the eating experience. Their crust is salty and firm, and their choices of toppings are really beyond the pale. Offering such important standbys as sundried tomatoes, green as opposed to black olives, roasted red peppers, and artichoke hearts, Bella Faccia really takes its vegan pizza seriously, and their efforts pay off.

But sometimes you want a traditional pizza. You want that buttery crust and that tangy tomato sauce. You want the slightly sour, thick undertaste of some really good mozzarella cheese. I'll be the first to admit it: Sometimes even the creamy cashew butter at Bella Faccia doesn't quite fill the gaping, aching void that pizza left in my life when I eschewed animal products in the name of a kinder, gentler lifestyle. Sometimes I just want a good old fashioned pizza that I can eat with a fancy microbrew.

As many of you know, I have recently relocated to Santa Cruz, California, along with my lover, Mr. Peterson. The other day I was cranky and antsy like a little fussy baby, and in response, Mr. Peterson did a search for "vegan pizza" on google. What he found was a listing for a place called "Engfer's," which delighted us not only with its bizarre and hard-to-remember name, but also with its proud boasting about "our 100% vegan pizza!"

Yesterday, after a depressing several hours spent driving to apartments we saw listed in the paper and then finding out that they were vast, sprawling complexes with tiny boxes for windows and that they all cost $1,050 a month, we decided it was a good time to check out this Engfer's.

Upon finding the address, we realized that Engfer's was in the part of town in which we most want to live. We drove there, and found a place with high ceilings, fans, and lots of natural sunlight. Engfer's has pleasant ambience, and their selection of beers really brought the Pacific Northwest to me in full effect, because of all the Sierra Nevada pale ale and what-not. We looked at the menu and discovered a happy surprise: Engfer's approach to vegan pizza is traditional-style, but WITHOUT soy cheese!

They begin by coating their crust with a layer of "tofu spread" which is intended to recreate that tangy undertaste of a fine mozzarella. We were intrigued, to say the least. We ordered a large, with peppers, olives, mushrooms, onions, and sundried tomatoes.

Our total was 20 dollars, which I think is reasonable for a huge, fancy pizza.

When the pizza arrived, we examined it with the eyes of jaded and cynical connoisseurs of the vegan pizza genre. But! Our eyes could find no flaw with the pizza, at least not upon an initial aesthetic review. It was firm, sizzling, the crust crispy in all the right places, the toppings evenly spread. We made eye contact and nodded solemnly to one another.

After our first, exploratory bite, we discovered that the taste of this pizza could not be beat. Crunchy crust, flavorful, delicate tomato sauce, and the exact right approach to the whole "tofu-spread" thing: not too much. They put a thin layer underneath all the toppings, and this definitely recreates the cheese-style vibe that I have been searching for all these years to no avail.

My spirit really was uplifted by this experience. I awoke this morning with a fresh longing for Engfer's vegan pizza, and I plan on availing myself of another visit post-haste. It has truly given me another reason to search for apartments in the Seabright/Live Oak area of Santa Cruz.

Respectfully submitted,
Marianna Ritchey