Pizza fight

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So... the last few weeks have seen a few "battles" from The Great Pizza Bake Off  - where a few chefs and food writers pair up and pitch their special pizza recipes against each other.  The actually cooking is then done by the team at Mercato, and diners "vote" for them by ordering the one which appeals to them the most.

And now it was Da Jam's turn as he goes up against Chef Butterfingers Satoru Mukogawa, who was filmed dropping half his pizza while presenting it at the restaurant on Monday.  I wasn't able to join the publicity festivities on Monday, so I decided to rope in Fergie and try it out for lunch today.

Of course the two of us would order both pizzas and decide for ourselves which one tasted better.  We know both of the creators behind the pies, so there should be no favoritism here...

Bacon jam pizza : bacon jam, farm egg, wild mushrooms - BUT OF COURSE it has jam on it!!!  This recipe is from a guy named DA JAM, after all...

So we've got a farm egg in the middle with semi-runny yolk, a bunch of mushrooms, chunks of Italian sausage, a little basil, and of course Da Jam's famous bacon jam.  As Fergie remarked, Da Jam has very smartly put together a collection of ingredients which have been proven to work well together.  A very familiar and comforting combination of flavors, and really tough not to like this.

Mentaiko seafood pizza: seafood, nori dried seaweed, mentaiko chili cod roe - shaaaaaa!!!!  No surprise that this came from a Japanese chef...

Underneath the thin shreds of nori (海苔), we've got chunks of squid, octopus, as well as mentaiko (明太子) sauce on the pizza dough.  Very tasty, and I liked the spicy kick from the mentaiko.  But I also tasted a little hint of bitterness on the finish.

In the end, both Fergie and I had to give Da Jam a slight edge.  Chef Butterfingers' pizza simply got a little too soggy from the mentaiko sauce, and we'll come straight out and say that we really, really liked the bacon jam.

I was too full from the delicious pizzas to have room for dessert, but someone else clearly wanted something sweet badly enough...