Montreal is renowned for doing a lot of things very well – festivals, live music, smoked meat, poutine – but sometimes the things it does badly are overlooked. Specifically, pizza. There is no great pizza in Montreal. I know pizza isn’t a Montreal specialty, like smoked meat, but one might expect at least a few places to sneak in and corner the market. I’m not talking about artichoke and goat cheese pizza from Pino or Bice; gourmet pizza doesn’t count. I’m talking about cheap, by-the-slice pizza with no toppings fancier than some pepperoni or veggies. The good, cheap, clog-your-arteries pizza with homemade crust, tomato sauce and mozzarella cheese.

Right now, you’re probably thinking of all the times you’ve had 99-cent pizza on your way home from Vol or Bifteck. It was delicious at the time, and therefore you are thinking that I couldn’t be more wrong. But drunken love of Montreal pizza doesn’t count, because we all know that drunken judgment often overlaps bad, or at least questionable, judgment. Of course it tasted incredible- just like that guy looked hot… until you see him when you’re sober and get a little dose of reality. There just isn’t a comparable wake up call for the pizza. If you think back on all your time at McGill (which I realize may only be a few weeks for some), have you ever eaten pizza totally sober and thought that it was actually great?

Now, I am not very picky when it comes to pizza. In general, I agree with that bumper sticker that says something like “sex is like pizza, when it’s good, it’s really good and when it’s bad, it’s still good.” Or something like that. However, in my four years here I have found that a lot of pizza is actually bad, and the rest of it is okay at best. Obviously I haven’t been to every pizza place downtown – I’m not a freak – but I have been to a lot of them and I think one of the things I find most bizarre is the pepperoni. Why is it huge, hidden under the cheese, and why does it taste like bologna? The first time I ever ordered pepperoni pizza in Montreal, I called back to say that they’d gotten the order wrong. I couldn’t imagine that a pizza place would have a bologna pizza, but that was clearly what my brother and I had gotten. They assured us that we had received pepperoni and had no idea what I was talking about regarding the bologna situation. I assumed it was a freak accident and that the language barrier (and not my vagueness) was the reason they didn’t understand what I meant by “real” pepperoni. I soon learned, however, that this soft, flavorless meat-pulp is the standard for pepperoni in this city.

I mentioned that I thought Montreal pizza was generally pretty bad to some friends this past week and about half of them disagreed with me. After thinking about this for a while, I decided that there are three reasons a person would really believe that pizza here is good. The first is that they have only really ever had it while under the influence when, let’s be honest, everything tastes good. The second, that after having lived here for a couple of years, many people start to adjust to the standard and therefore their entire perspective changes- what was once mediocre is now pretty damn good. The last is that they have no sense and just enjoy really shitty pizza.

So if you think that I’m wrong, you have three options: go to the place you’re thinking of that has such great pizza, eat it sober, think back to the best pizza you’ve ever had in your life, and then compare that to what you’ve been eating lately or, admit that you like terrible pizza.