The four pillars of having a good life is having four different types of great pizza. (Spencer Sterritt/NanaimoNewsNOW)

By NanaimoNewsNOW Staff

pizza supreme

Signature Dish: Mambo Pizza’s 18″ with Four Flavours

Aug 13, 2021 | 10:18 AM

NANAIMO — There’s enough flavours on the Mambo Pizza menu to sate you during any mood or food craving. You can even get your extra-large pizza split into four quarters if you’re indecisive.

The 18″ Mambo Pizza is legendary and regularly hailed as a reason to venture downtown. The slices are wide but still easy to grasp so you don’t have to worry about toppings going everywhere. Each slice is loaded with scintillating sauces and toppings to keep your tastebuds tapping.

When given the choice of what to highlight on the menu, Mambo Pizza owner Marc Andre Fillion said they couldn’t decide on just one flavour.

“The whole Mambo experience, our Signature Dish, is definitely an extra large pizza with four different kinds on it.”

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The four most popular flavours were put on grand display for Signature Dish.

The Pesto Popeye is an original vegetarian recipe with pesto sauce as a sauce base topped with zucchini, spinach and artichoke and covered with mozza and cheddar cheese.

The Overdose, perfect for an early morning after a night on the town, has tomato sauce, pepperoni, bacon, banana peppers and mozza with a feta kick.

The Kahuna Style is a “crazy Hawaiian style” pizza in the words of Fillion. The delicious Kahuna sauce is smothered with tomatoes, bacon, both green and red onion and a dash of pineapple covered in mozza and cheddar cheese.

“Everyone went crazy for the Kahuna. It tends to be the one people put on a quarter of their pizza. Six out of 10 extra larges have a quarter Kahuna on it.”

The newest option on the Mambo menu is the Donair, which uses sweet garlic donair sauce, beef and lamb meat underneath mozza with onions and tomatoes.

“They’re all excessive,” Fillion said. “They tend to get all the strong flavours of spice, sweet and salty. That’s what people are looking for when they get pizza, they’re going to get something that’s fun to eat.”

Fillion said when he started Mambo Pizza he wanted to focus on something everyone could enjoy.

“There’s a lot of toppings and everyone loves melted cheese and bread. Everyone’s looking for something that’s fun to eat and pizza’s that.”

There’s nearly 50 options on the Mambo menu but you won’t find distractions such as pastas or salads.

“We only make pizza, so we really need to wow people with our pizza because we don’t have salads, wings or pasta, so we really have to have every kind of flavour that pizza lovers are going to want.”

Mambo is a landmark of downtown Nanaimo and is consistently busy. That rush has only increased in the last year, especially after closing for a few weeks at the beginning of the pandemic.

“Since we’ve re-opened, because we did close for two weeks, the community response has been really good. We’re so thankful to Nanaimo for keeping us open and thriving. We’re way busier than we were before.”

A new location just up the street at the corner of Franklyn and Wallace is on the horizon for Mambo Pizza. Fillion said they’ve eyed expansion for some time to produce even more pizza and he’s excited to move into the new space hopefully by the end of the year.

The expansive Mambo Pizza menu can be found online.

They’re open from 11:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday to Thursday, 11:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. on Saturday and 4 p.m. to 9 p.m. on Sunday.

Both pickup and delivery options are available.

Signature Dish is brought to you by Island Savings – A Division of First West Credit Union, learn more at https://www.islandsavings.ca/.

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