A fun Hamilton food challenge with the grandkids

We love having the grandkids in from Montreal for Easter and Christmas and a couple of weeks in summer, but there's always a slight worry: How are we going to keep them entertained? An 11-year-old boy and a girl who considers herself eight, though is two months shy. Different interests, different personalities.

They've got one thing in common, though: They love food.

For the past several visits, my wife has organized food contests in Hamilton. Running around to gelato and ice-cream shops, delis and noodle counters is a great way to explore the city, keeping them away from screens (both handheld and wall-mounted) and engaging the children in discussing food, nutrition and cooking. And, we realized, after they boarded the back seat of their parents' car to return home, these contests need never end. A kid's gotta eat, right?

Last summer's ice cream contest was a hit for the preteen and adult crowds and marked a step-up: a scorecard. We judged, on a scale of one to 10, on flavours, types of cones, sizes. We dealt with meltdowns: ice cream, of course, since this was a summer, eat-out-of-doors contest in the midst of a pandemic when not everyone had yet been vaccinated as well as the kiddie kind. Our granddaughter, six at the time, ordered a cone that didn't last the walk home from Paradise Ice Cream before landing on the sidewalk. From this point, ice cream was served in cups with cones on top.

This was particularly smart when we got to Biggie's on Upper Sherman. The servings were so large we initially thought the soda jerk had taken a liking to us or pity on us suffering in the heat. Not the case. Servings here are huge (adults can be satisfied with the kiddie scoop). Needless to say, Biggie's won out, though Paradise has five times the varieties.

Our plans for Christmas involved a search for the fleeting, mysterious sixth sense of umami in the form of ramen. For a variety of reasons, however, the contest was abbreviated. One reason: Our grandson, who had recently professed a love for hot sauce, found the soup he ordered in the Hamilton Farmers Market's noodle shop TOO hot. The second reason: He'd already had my ramen and found it a hard one to beat. (Aren't grandkids wonderful?)

The ramen I prepare isn't my recipe, I'll admit. But since recipes are subject to so much alteration it has over time become mine, at least chez nous. I cook the noodles according to the package directions, take the pot off the heat, add an egg and poach it for a minute, then add a teaspoon of salted butter, a handful of shredded sharp cheddar, chives and sesame seeds, plus flavoured hot sauce for those who like it. Who can compete with that?

The discussion of what to do for their Summer 2022 visit began last year standing around the kitchen island, scarfing down pepperoni slices from Garth Pizza and talking about the best pizzas we'd ever had. Let no one tell you otherwise: Pizza is personal. It's geographic. It's nostalgic. Some of my earliest memories involve eating meatball-pepperoni pizzas from Spiro's Pizza around the table in my family's house in Massachusetts 45 years ago. Largest? The family slab at Capri's in Holyoke. Best sauce? Bardeco's in Lachine, Quebec. Never found out what the secret ingredient was.

When visiting Montreal, we never fail to go to Pizza 900, a 15-minute walk from our kids' house in the north end. Our grandson fell in love with fiore di latte cheese there.

So it was decided, over mouths full of Garth pepperoni that we should have a contest for the best pizza in Hamilton. Parameters were set: The restaurants had to be local independents. The three Hamiltonians would do some reconnaissance. The contest would be judged by the grandkids, scoring on the tried-and-true one-to-10 scale on crust, sauce, cheese pizza, the shop's signature pizza and overall quality. I reserved a sixth category for myself: cost.

We wouldn't say we'd failed as scouts, but we only checked out two pizza parlours we'd never been to before. I won't name them. They didn't make the final cut. One's crust was too doughy. The other turned out to be a chain.

The five we tested: Bruno's, Cowabunga, Roma, Shorty's and Valentino's. We didn't include Garth because we wanted to discover new joints. When we first moved to the Mountain, we had stumbled on Bruno's, loved the Afghan-family-owned institution, but, for some reason, hadn't gone back since. Bruno's made the cut, confirming it was as good as our memory said it was (see: nostalgic). Roma? Talk about institutions. Cowabunga because it was new (2019), close, plus my Snoopy 2022 wall calendar for June showed the iconic pup surfing and shouting Cowabunga!" (The page adorned our front door for the two weeks of the kids' stay.) Shorty's rated highly on social media, and Valentino's because we wanted at least one classy joint.

All five scored highest for their signature pizzas, all of which involved meat (except for the Roma slab). We had shawarma pizza, spicy sausage, a lasagna"-style pizza with garlic ricotta and another that featured popcorn chicken, pineapple and roasted peanuts. Given the pile-on of ingredients, it was sometimes hard to judge the sauce. The true test of a pizzeria's quality, it turns out, is its simplest pie: cheese. If you mess up a cheese pizza, you shouldn't even be allowed near its frozen distant relative.

I must be giving the impression we ate calorie-laden pizza all week. Not so. We had salads with almost every meal, hot dogs with pico de gallo, a black bean and tortilla casserole, butter chicken my granddaughter helped me make, tuna salad pita sandwiches and my contest-winning ramen. Plus my wife loaded us up with carbs, baking eight different dessert and breakfast items. Lots of leftovers.

Am I leaving out who won the pizza contest? No.

We all did.

Raymond Beauchemin is a Torstar editor who loves pizza. rbeauchemin@thestar.ca