Who makes the best Canadian pizza? I crisscrossed the country to find out

You can’t go wrong with pizza. From coast to coast to coast, in small towns and big cities alike, pizza brings people together. What started as a flatbread with tomato sauce, with or without cheese, brought to Canadian shores by Italian immigrants has become a staple. It all began with the Italians, but since Canada’s first pizzeria, Pizzeria Napoletana, opened in Montreal in 1948, countless communities have made pizza their own. The Greeks created regional styles with staying power in the Maritimes and the Prairies — not to mention what might be the most divisive pizza of all time, Hawaiian. Indian, Japanese, Thai and Vietnamese immigrants have merged flavours and techniques from their homelands to make something entirely new.

Canadians are among the world’s greatest pizza lovers, according to the Centro Studi Italia Canada. We wanted to know where the best pizzas are in Canada, so we asked our readers. As the results of Postmedia’s great Canadian pizza poll show, while people appreciate big chains such as Boston Pizza, Domino’s, Little Caesars, Panago, Pizza Hut and Pizza Pizza, our readers’ favourite spots are mostly independent pizzerias or locally owned small chains. Windsor is far and away the country’s top pizza destination at 35 per cent of responses, followed by Regina (11 per cent), Toronto (nine per cent), Montreal (eight per cent) and Edmonton (five per cent), rounding out the top five.

Armed with our poll results, I embarked on a summer pizza project and headed to Canada’s top two destinations, Windsor and Regina, to taste what makes them so special.

Depending on where you live in the country, Detroit-style pizza may have more resonance — and it makes sense. Some of the world’s largest pizza chains started in Michigan, including Little Caesars and Domino’s. As it turns out, the cross-border cities of Detroit and Windsor have more in common than their ties to the automotive industry. Windsor is a serious pizza town, and Windsorites aren’t shy about telling you what they think about their favourite pie.

To say Windsor has cut its own pizza path feels like an understatement. Windsor pies are totally different from thick, rectangular Detroit-style pan pizzas. They’re topped with zesty tomato sauce, locally made mozzarella from Galati Cheese, canned mushrooms (they don’t burn) and shredded pepperoni (for more even distribution), and have a cornmeal-dusted crust (thinner than a Sicilian, focaccia-like crust but thicker than a New York slice) cooked on a stone deck. The Super is the city’s pizza of choice, typically featuring shredded pepperoni, bacon, canned mushrooms and green peppers, with the toppings on top so they crisp up.

Raised on the West Coast, I was unaware of this regional style before watching Windsor-born, Toronto-based George Kalivas’ documentary tribute, The Pizza City You’ve Never Heard Of (2022). What I experienced in Windsor made me a believer.

On the train to Windsor, it occurred to me that there must be something in the water in Essex County. The attendant announced our second-to-last stop: Chatham, where the late Sotirios “Sam” Panopoulos, a Greek immigrant from the village of Vourvoura, created none other than the Hawaiian pizza, Canada’s greatest pizza invention, according to our poll.

Once I arrive in Windsor, the Detroit skyline looms large, impossibly close, across the river. Driving through South Windsor, I see the names that have popped up again and again in the great Canadian pizza poll. There’s Armando’s! There’s Naples! When I catch a glimpse of Capri, I spot Arcata (home of retired owner Bob Abumeeiz’s shawarma pizza) right across the street. Windsor has the most pizzerias per capita in the country, according to Kalivas’ documentary. I’m prepared for a passion for pizza, but Windsor exceeds my expectations.

At Antonino’s Original Pizza on Howard Avenue, I spent some time in the kitchen shaping dough with general manager Tony Mannina, kitchen staff Alexa Egglezo and pizza maker Zahra Sayed Abdul Basir. It was the afternoon, and aside from a few people walking in for a pizza lunch, this was their prep time before the dinner rush. Egglezo showed me how much dough to portion, weighing each piece on a digital scale. Basir demonstrated how to form dough into tight balls, gently dragging it on the bench to create a smooth surface. Mannina helped me level up my shaping technique by rotating the dough while smoothing and pinching the top with my thumb until the seam was closed. As we shaped, we put each ball on an oiled tray for a long proof. Mannina credits “aging” the dough for giving Antonino’s crust its “smooth, easy bite.”

Joe Ciaravino, president of Antonino’s, got an early start in Windsor’s pizza business. His late father, Antonino “Tony” Ciaravino, who emigrated from Sicily, was one of the city’s pizza pioneers. According to local legend, Volcano is where Windsor-style pizza began. Cousins Gino Manza and Frank Gualtieri opened the Italian diner in 1957 and delivered pizza with their fleet of Volkswagen Beetles. In 1959, Tony bought a little diner in front of the Statler Motel, which became the first pizzeria in South Windsor (the sixth in the city as a whole), Capri. After he sold Capri Pizzeria to Barkamyan “Bob” Kalaydjian in 1972, Tony and his wife, Vita Ciaravino, went on to establish Arcata Pizzeria, another Windsor institution that is still going strong.

At one point, the original Naples Pizza sat beside Arcata, across the street from Capri. “It was like the Holy Trinity of pizza,” Joe recalls. Out of curiosity, he once made a comparison. “I got a pizza from each one at the same time and put them side by side. I said, ‘They should all be the same, right?’ And they weren’t. They were all different.”

Joe grew up in the apartment above Arcata, which shared a phone number with the pizzeria. The restaurant wasn’t open for lunch, but if customers called, Tony and Vita would go downstairs and make them a pizza. One of Joe’s jobs was to turn on the ovens before he left for school so they had plenty of time to heat up. It wasn’t until after he finished his MBA that he saw the potential in pizza and, in 1999, opened the first Antonino’s with his late mother. Vita expected things to be done “the old way,” Joe recalls. Growing up, another of his jobs was slicing the pepperoni, which the kitchen staff would then cut into matchsticks. When they switched to a shredding plate, his mother wasn’t a fan because “it wasn’t perfect.”

At the first of five locations in Essex County, Joe and I talked over one of Antonino’s incredible pizzas. Half was an Original Super — sausage, bacon, canned mushrooms and green peppers — a Windsor favourite that more than lives up to its name. (“If the mushroom’s fresh, it’s not a Super,” says Joe.) The other half is his creation, the salty-smoky-sweet Angry Hawaiian — ham, pineapple, hot peppers and double bacon — one of Antonino’s most popular pies.

According to our pizza poll, Antonino’s is the top Windsor pizzeria — followed by Capri, Naples, Armando’s and Arcata — and I immediately understand why. The ratio of cheese to sauce to toppings to crust is perfect. And then there’s the interplay of the toppings themselves, with a meticulous dice on the green pepper so that, just like the shredded pepperoni, every bite is balanced.

As one poll respondent said, “My family lives in an area that had four pizzerias within four blocks for almost a year. One night we decided to do a blind taste test of all four places and rate them according to crust, sauce, toppings and overall eating. Antonino’s was at the top. They are consistently good and have been a great addition to the community. My kids love that they can walk over for a slice whenever they want.”

Antonino’s has hosted bus tours, morning show hosts and even a mayor from Detroit. “I’m happy with our place in our little corner of the world. If we could expand a little bit across the river, that would be awesome. I don’t know if I ever thought it would actually get as big as it has for Antonino’s, but I’m happy it has.”

Windsor native Josh Pedersen, an architecture student at Lawrence Technological University in Southfield, Michigan, has delivered pizza part-time for Capri’s LaSalle location for two years. He appreciates the pride that Windsor’s pizzerias have in what they do. “There are so many different family-owned restaurant businesses throughout the area. Everybody has their own take (on pizza), but for the most part, everyone can agree that there is no bad option, which is pretty cool.”

Pedersen opts for shredded pepperoni without fail on his pizza — “So each bite, you’re getting a little bit of pepperoni” — sometimes with hot peppers, sometimes with bacon, ham and Italian sausage. He says that Windsorites are passionate about their pizza and “love to argue about it.”

Can you name the maker of the cheese on your pizza? In our great Canadian pizza poll, fans of Windsor-style pizza named the specific cheese brand more than a dozen times: locally produced Galati, which has been making cheese since 1967 using milk sourced from dairies less than a two-hour drive from the factory. One poll respondent called Galati “far superior to other cheese brands,” and another mentioned the fact that it’s a local product as a draw.

Headquartered in Windsor, Galati is the only cheese manufacturer in Southwestern Ontario and distributes products to London, Sarnia and Michigan. The whole-milk Uniondale mozzarella that almost all of Windsor’s pizzerias use has been a well-known product since the 1960s, says manager Peter Piazza. “It’s hard to change somebody. Once they’ve tried it once, they stay with it.”

When I tell Piazza that readers mentioned Galati by name in our poll, he says he’s amazed by how much people appreciate their cheese. “It really is an honour because we make the cheese, but the pizzerias are the ones making the pizza, and they’re putting a great product out,” says Piazza. He echoes Pedersen’s sentiment: “It’s hard to get a bad pizza in Windsor. It really is.”

Piazza started working for Galati Cheese in 1981 when there were around 20 pizzerias in the city. Today, he estimates there are roughly 200, and Galati supplies almost all of them, plus the Levantine spots specializing in cheese-topped flatbreads such as manakish. Business grows every year, and Galati is expanding into other areas, including Niagara Falls and Toronto. When Piazza joined Galati, he worked with the parents who established Windsor’s multi-generational pizzerias, and now he works with their children.

“Pretty soon, I’ll be dealing with the grandchildren. Maybe not — hopefully not,” says Piazza with a laugh. “But the key thing is we’re not national chains. They’re all independent. Armando’s has 10 locations, and Capri has 10 (plus a kiosk at St. Clair College), but they’re still independent … They control everything, so they’re not cutting corners.”

Come to mention it, I didn’t see a single large chain the whole time I was in Windsor. They’re there, but the city clearly supports its locally owned pizzerias. It’s a competitive market, say siblings Kevork Kalaydjian and Suzanne Kalaydjian, who own Capri Pizzeria with Jim Koumoutsidis. The customers set the standards. “Our competitors make great pizza as well, and that’s why they’re still in business after 50 years. So, it raises the bar,” says Suzanne. “The standards are very high, so it keeps everyone on their toes, and it’s driven by the market.”

Kevork agrees with his sister. “It’s the customer base. They know what they want, and they know when you don’t hit the mark. So, I think it’s Windsor that drives the Windsor-style pizza. It’s not the pizzeria.”

Suzanne points out that the bond people feel with their favourite pizzeria comes down to what they grew up eating. The pizza they remember from childhood becomes the slice they crave, and it’s the expats who have moved elsewhere in Canada or around the world who have become Windsor-style’s greatest promoters.

In 2021, chefs Gaetano Pugliese and Rene Chauvin opened a Windsor-style pizzeria in Toronto, Ambassador Pizza Co., but they weren’t the first to take it outside the city. All of the pizzerias I visited have customers who have gone to great lengths to get a Windsor-style slice. At least every other day at Capri, a customer requests a par-cooked, fully cooked or frozen pizza to travel with or send. As Suzanne Gaudette Way posted to the Facebook Group, If You Grew Up In Windsor, ON You Remember, “I’ve had pizza in 65+ different cities and never as good as Windsor Pizza. I’ve had to make it myself for real satisfaction. Now, in Nashville, Michigan Pizza is available, but it’s still not Windsor Pizza.”

Dean Litster (a.k.a. Professor Zaaa) owns two Essex County Armando’s pizzerias in Amherstburg and Leamington, and is among Windsor-style pizza’s proudest ambassadors. He started working at Armando’s almost 25 years ago, at 15 years old, and today, he’s an award-winning pizza chef. After a career in broadcasting failed to materialize, Litster dedicated his career to becoming the best he could be at pizza. “I dove in head first and wanted to be over-the-top crazy about pizza … I have a pizza tattoo on my face. Everything in my life comes from pizza.”

In 2019, Litster was named Canadian Pizza Chef of the Year, and in 2019 and 2014, his Windsor-style placed in the top five for the best pizza in the world at the International Pizza Expo in Las Vegas. This year, he’s on a list of 201 international pizza chefs nominated for The Best Chef’s list of Top 100 pizza makers, along with fellow Canadians Ryan Baddeley of Pizzeria Badiali in Toronto and Thomas Schneider of Tommy’s Pizzeria in Winnipeg.

The passion Windsorites have for pizza has helped Litster in his career. Living in a city saturated with great pizza, he tries to stand out by putting a spin on the foundations, incorporating food trends from across North America and the world into Windsor-style pizza and branching out by doing Detroit-style on Sundays with a different menu every month. Litster features experimental pizzas alongside classics such as the Super at his Armando’s locations, including a ricotta-piped pie with three kinds of pepperoni (Windsor-style shredded, round and crispy chips), pickle pizza with thinly sliced dills, bacon and housemade ranch, and the Simcoe Smokehouse, topped with 18-hour smoked pulled pork.

“I’m thankful I live in this pizza town because it allows me to have this platform to create cool stuff with people who trust what I’m doing and gives me the opportunity to live outside the box a little bit,” says Litster. “And it’s the customers that drive that because they’re showing me, ‘We want to keep seeing new things.’”

Armando Gerardi opened the first Armando’s location in 1967 in a six-table dining room. There are now 10 locations in Essex County. Like the other Windsor pizzerias I visited, their customers span the generations. Some have been coming since the beginning, the “diehard traditionalists” attached to the Windsor classics. “There are parts of the business that will never shift, and that’s fine because that’s what makes our regional style so solid … But there’s now a new generation, my age is slightly younger, where we’re open to that same traditional crust and recipe and all those base foundations, but with a new twist on it. That’s where I’m coming in.”

Litster wants to help put Windsor on the map with other great pizza cities, such as New York and Chicago. “Windsor has a regional style. We can place No. 3 in the world in a traditional division against other pizza makers from across the world showcasing their styles of pizza. We deserve a seat at that table of regional styles of pizza. We put it out there — put it on the line.”

When I asked Litster how he would describe the pizza scene in Canada, he mentioned borrowed American styles, Neapolitan and wood-fired, artisan-style pizza. As for another distinct Canadian style from the Prairies, he isn’t that familiar. “I know they like to put cheese on top of the toppings, which I find very peculiar. But who am I to say anything? Because they would look at me like, ‘You shred your pepperoni and eat canned mushrooms?!’”

Canada’s second-best pizza destination, according to our pizza poll, may seem unlikely to some. I wasn’t familiar with Regina-style pizza until relatively recently — and like Windsor-style, I hadn’t tasted it until I went there this summer. Even some Reginans aren’t aware that they’re sitting on something unique: a round, piled-high pan pizza with a thicker crust, toppings entirely concealed by a layer of caramelized cheese, cut into squares. As one of my sister’s friend’s cousins said, “I just thought that was normal pizza.”

In Regina, all-dressed is king — but it’s a different definition than in Montreal. An old-school Montreal all-dressed pizza is topped with sliced pepperoni, green peppers and mushrooms. At Houston Pizza, where it all started in Regina, they add nine toppings in the following order: mushroom, pepperoni, sausage, salami, onion, ham, back bacon, green pepper and pineapple. Pizza makers in both cities top their all-dressed pies with a blanket of lightly browned, melted mozzarella. The city’s pizza makers tell me that Regina’s square cut is about practicality. Since an all-dressed pizza can be a couple of inches thick, a triangular slice of a large or extra-large pie would be unwieldy. Some Reginans use forks and knives, others eat them with their hands like a sandwich.

Like Windsor, Reginans also support their locally owned, multi-generational family pizzerias. Western Pizza was our readers’ favourite Regina spot, followed by Houston Pizza and Juliana Pizza. And, as in Windsor, it’s all interconnected. Leaving my first stop, Western Pizza’s director of operations, Spiro Bonis, son of founder Jim Bonis, told me I would be meeting his cousins later that afternoon — Houston Pizza’s director of operations, Spero Milios, on his mom’s side, and president Jim Kolitsas on his dad’s — and that evening, I would be stopping by his good friend Peter Yannitsos’ spot, Juliana Pizza.

Still, there is one key difference between Windsor and Regina besides the style itself. Italian immigrants created a distinct regional pie in Windsor, and Regina owes its pizza to the Greeks.

Spiro’s father, Jim Bonis, left Andros for Canada in 1966. After moving back and forth between Montreal and Regina, he settled in Regina, where he worked for his cousins, the Kolitsas brothers, at Houston Pizza. In 1976, he opened his own place, Western Pizza. Like many other owners who took over the business from their parents, Spiro started folding pizza boxes when he was a young boy, standing on a milk crate, and helped his grandpa grate cheese. He worked at Western Pizza throughout high school and university. After graduating with a degree in business administration, Spiro started opening more stores and franchising. Western Pizza now has 19 locations across Saskatchewan and Alberta, plus a concession stand at Regina’s Mosaic Stadium. “We’re going on 50 years,” says Spiro. They still use his dad’s sauce recipe — “a little bit sweet, a little bit spicy.”

A substantial pizza suits life on the Prairies, says Spiro, who believes the Regina-style originated as a distinctive expression of place. “Regina was a farming community, originally, and still is. A big part of this is agriculture, and it’s cold here in the winter, so people need something hearty, something with substance. So, we load up our pizzas with fresh toppings, and then we cover it all with cheese, and it’s almost more like a sandwich,” says Spiro, laughing. “You have your cheese on top, your crust on the bottom. And you don’t find that in many places. Even Saskatoon’s a little bit different. You won’t find it. It’s more down here in southern Saskatchewan.”

Pizza is part of home, says Spiro, which is abundantly clear during the holidays and long weekends. Whenever people return to Regina to visit family and friends, the first order of business is often to pick up a pizza. Western has shipped par-cooked, frozen pizzas throughout North America and as far as South Korea. As in Windsor, the word is getting out on Regina-style pizza thanks to the many expats throughout Canada, says Spiro.

The Kolitsas brothers (George, Gus, John and Tony) opened the first Houston Pizza on Hill Avenue in 1970, where they created what would become known as Regina-style. Or, more accurately, president Jim Kolitsas argues, “Houston-style.” Jim recalls talking with ad companies about how to promote their “Regina-style” pizza. “I was horrified because I just thought of ourselves as pizza,” he says. “I don’t like the label. And I always tell Spero (Milios), ‘It’s not Regina pizza. It’s Houston-style pizza,’ because we did start it all.”

As with many food inventions, there’s no clear origin story for Regina-style pizza. “Every time I ask, I never get a straight answer,” says Jim, sitting in a booth at the original Houston location on Hill Avenue that his dad, John, started with his brothers.

“The way I describe it is, if you were going to make a pizza at home, that’s how we make it. With the amount of toppings,” says Jim. “You’re not going to count the pieces. You’re just going to put them on. You’re not going to weigh the cheese. You’re just going to put it on.”

Milios adds: “Like if your Greek grandmother was making it for you, ‘No, no. Eat more. Here, take some more,’ because that’s showing love and abundance.”

The key to Regina-style pizza has always been quality and abundance — piling the pizza with the best ingredients you can find, highlights Milios, who was a franchisee before he became the director of operations. His father’s first job after emigrating from Greece in 1976 was at the original Houston Pizza location. “Quality was the first thing mentioned all the time.”

When Jim bought his first location in 1996, leaving his career as a corporate accountant in Calgary, he realized Houston Pizza was a farm-to-fork restaurant. They source their meat, souvlaki and signature items locally, and make all their sauces, dips and dressings in-house. The salami on their all-dressed pizza is studded with Saskatchewan mustard seeds.

The Kolitsas brothers came to Canada from Andros with very little after the Second World War. They wanted their pizza to be different from the beginning. One way they differentiated themselves was by blanketing the toppings with cheese. “The cheese-on-top thing is what I love about it,” says Milios. And it all comes down to taste. Anyone can pile luncheon meats on a thick pizza, he adds. Some of their favourite pizzas have just one topping, though even their one-topping pies are more plentiful than most.

Houston Pizza has five Regina locations plus outposts in Fort Qu’Appelle, Moose Jaw and Swift Current. Their Kelowna, B.C., and Medicine Hat, Alta. locations closed during the pandemic, but they’re planning to expand out-of-province again with their sights set on Calgary and Winnipeg. As in Windsor, expats craving the taste of home are driving the demand, with orders coming in from California, Florida, Pennsylvania, Texas (a Houstonian stumbled upon them online and has become a regular customer) and Australia.

“We’ve seen a lot of competitors come and go, and we keep getting stronger over the years,” says Jim. “So, I think we must be doing something right.”

All Regina pizza makers I spoke with mentioned value as a priority. When I asked Yannitsos, co-owner of Juliana Pizza, what he strives for in his pies, he answered without hesitation: “These days, value. Especially with prices going up, we try to keep our prices down as much as we can, but we definitely add a lot of toppings and a lot of cheese. We use good-quality meat, good-quality cheese, fresh vegetables. We make the dough and sauce in-house. So, just trying to offer somebody the best value you can find out there.”

Yannitsos grew up in the restaurant industry, helping out at his parents’ diner-style pizza place. He and his business partner, Paul Howie, bought Juliana Pizza in 2005 from close family friends when Yannitsos was just 26. Established in 1972, Juliana Pizza is another long-standing purveyor of Regina’s signature style. Yannitsos says they’ve always considered it a small neighbourhood restaurant. Unlike our poll’s other two top favourites, it has never franchised. Despite keeping a lower profile, the name has grown throughout the city.

“For us, it’s more like serve the neighbourhood (and) the neighbourhood serves you. So, every day, that’s what we continue doing. We don’t try to think too big or anything. Just worry about our little corner of the world here and try to serve the best pizza we can.”

Yannitsos thinks Regina-style pizza has had such staying power in the city because of the comfort food factor. Life can be hard on the Prairies, he says, and a thick slice of all-dressed pizza satisfies. He’s travelled a lot, and when he does, he always tries the local pizza and has found that nothing compares to home.

Similar to Windsor, Regina has a high bar for pizza. It’s not just the style that makes Regina a pizza town — it’s the quality that Reginans expect, says Yannitsos. “Be simple with it and execute it well. And that’s what this is. It’s not gourmet French cuisine, high-end stuff like that. It’s just pizza. Let’s keep it simple. Let’s make it tasty. Good toppings and good cheese, and you’re going to be all right. You’ll have a hard time finding a bad pizza in Regina.”

When I ask Yannitsos what he wishes more Canadians knew about Regina-style pizza, he says he likes that it’s largely unknown. When people from out of town come in to pick up an all-dressed pizza and strain under the weight of the box, or order a large for two people when it could easily feed four, he recognizes that they don’t quite know what they’re getting into. “It’s so unique to us that it would be nice for people outside of the city to know. I hope if they come, they try it. But it’s uniquely Regina, and I don’t necessarily want this to go everywhere,” says Yannitsos, laughing.

I didn’t know what to expect before I tried Regina-style pizza. I grew up ordering pizza from a Greek-owned pizzeria, but Regina-style pies are much more substantial. I loved the Western and Juliana all-dressed pizzas I tried — especially the blanket of perfectly caramelized cheese — and my first bite of Houston’s spinach and feta, which I picked up on my way to the airport, made me feel like I’d made an excellent life choice. Houston Pizza catered Snoop Dogg’s Cali to Canada tour stop in Saskatoon in June. Snoop Dogg is apparently “a big fan” of their spinach and feta, which influenced my decision. It was the first time I’d taken an entire pizza through airport security, and I’m happy to report that it was without incident. When I arrived at Toronto Pearson International Airport on my way home, a security guard called out, “Enjoy your pizza, miss!” And so I did.

I completed my culinary arts certificate at George Brown College, and Toronto-based chef and instructor Ema Costantini‘s six-week pizza class was one of my favourite courses. Three years later, Costantini’s slow-rise New York-style pizza dough is still my default. I was curious about what my Italy-born, pizza-loving instructor would think of Canadian regional styles.

“It’s amazing how pizza is the most international food, and it’s food that makes everybody happy. When you say, ‘pizza,’ everybody has a smile on their face. And so, it’s not surprising that everyone’s trying to do their own version and their own adaptation to make it work with what people like and what’s available in the different places. It’s actually quite fun to see what people have come up with around the world because there’s not just Canadian pizza, but there’s Indian pizza and Brazilian pizza. Everybody calls it their own, and it’s fun and fine. It all evolved from that famous, original napoletana pizza style, and then everyone did whatever they wanted with it and adapted it to ingredients they had,” says Costantini.

When I ask Costantini what she thinks is behind the passion for pizza in cities like Windsor and Regina, she points out how the simplicity of Italian-style pizza welcomes adaptation. The starting point, thin-crust pizza napoletana, is quite bare. As the Kolitsas brothers did in Regina, the crusts got thicker to hold more sauce, cheese and toppings, and in the process, they created something new. “We Italians, we eat a lot of carbs. And in North America, there isn’t this big carb culture. There’s actually more of a carb phobia. It’s more about the meat, and it’s more about the abundance,” Costantini says. Pizza is a blank canvas ripe for customization — and a familiar one at that, since flatbreads are staples of many cuisines.

Globe Trotting Gourmet: Edith Adams’ Foreign Cook Book (Vancouver Sun, circa 1949) is among the earliest mentions of pizza in the University of Guelph’s cookbook collection — which, at 20,000 items and counting, is one of the largest in North America. “Pizza (pronounced peet-za) is an Italian pie with a savoury filling usually made of sausage or anchovies and cheese,” writes Adams — the pseudonym of Marianne Linnell, who oversaw the Edith Adams Cottage, the Vancouver Sun’s test kitchen and demonstration centre from February 1947 to the 1960s.

The fact that Adams provides the pronunciation says a lot about pizza’s place in Canadian culture at the time. Outside of the Italian community, it was an emerging food fad in 1949. Pizzeria Napoletana, Canada’s first, had opened in Montreal just a year prior. Even though pizza had come to Canada with Italian immigrants in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it stayed localized, says Rebecca Beausaert, adjunct professor in the University of Guelph’s history department and co-director of What Canada Ate, a digital archive of around 400 cookbooks and culinary ephemera. Seeing pizza in a cookbook would have been novel. “A lot of non-Italian North Americans didn’t trust Italian food for a long time.”

Canadians who were part of the Italian campaign during the Second World War developed a taste for the foods they enjoyed there, and an increase in postwar international travel added to pizza’s appeal. “It’s not a coincidence that we see that first pizzeria in Montreal in 1948 pretty soon after the Second World War ends, and then that recipe for pizza in that cookbook on What Canada Ate,” adds Beausaert.

Linda Girolamo grew up at Pizzeria Napoletana in Montreal’s Italian quarter. Her father, Rocco Girolamo, bought the historic pizzeria in 1980. When she was nine, Linda started washing dishes with her older sister, and she continued working there on weekends and during summers. Then, as a law student, Linda changed course to pursue pizza and, today, manages operations. “Pizza is my passion. I love what I do and the people, too. I love to be around people. I’m a people person. I like to share when I discover something new. Every year, in September, I go to Italy. I see my suppliers there. I pick up the stuff. I see new things. I try to stay up to date.”

In the beginning, Pizzeria Napoletana offered only two types: pizza Margherita and pizza marinara. Seventy-six years later, with 41 pizzas on the menu, the Margherita is still the top seller (Tutta bella, with pepperoni and mushroom, is No. 2.). The pizzeria was a community hub where new arrivals gathered, two doors down from an association that helped Italians immigrate to Canada and find places to stay and work. “It was the only place they could eat something that resembled what they ate in Italy in their hometown.” It wasn’t until 1990 that Pizzeria Napoletana started offering individual pizzas, like in Italy. “We were the first ones to do that, too.”

Thirty years ago, the pizza in Montreal wasn’t what it is today, says Linda. There are countless choices and influences from around the world. “Pizza has become the food of the people. I don’t think there’s a place on Earth where they don’t know what a pizza is. So, they’re going to interpret it their way. They’re going to put their personal spin on it. And why not?” She’s had pizza in South America, Spain, Portugal and the United States, “but we’re very lucky in Montreal.”

Pizza started with Italian arrivals but spread to other immigrant groups — notably, the Greeks. In 1962, Sotirios “Sam” Panopoulos famously — and controversially — invented Hawaiian pizza in Chatham, Ont. That same year, George Kouyas and his brother Demetre “Jim” Kouyas opened Sam’s Pizza in Stellarton, Nova Scotia, where they created Pictou County “brown sauce” from a Peloponnesian village in Glastra, Greece. And, of course, the Kolitsas brothers from Andros created Regina-style pizza at Houston Pizza in 1970.

There’s the unmistakable influence of American pizza on Canadian makers, too. From the New York-style slices served at Toronto’s Pizzeria Badiali and the Brooklyn-style pies at Vancouver’s AJ’s Brooklyn Pizza Joint to the Detroit-style on the menu at Tommy’s Pizzeria in Winnipeg, Descendant in Toronto and Welldun in Montreal, countless Canadian pizza makers riff on styles from south of the border.

Other communities have put their own spin on pizza in the intervening decades. In 1993, Kaoru Ohsada created sushi pizza at Nami in Toronto. Soi Snacks, a restaurant in Markham, Ont., makes Thai pizzas topped with green curry, khao soi, pad Thai, satay, tom yum and more. Vietnamese pizza-makers Vien Huynh and Lieu Huynh’s garlic-and-basil-infused oil has earned Toronto’s Fresca Pizza and Pasta many devoted fans. Indian-style pizza has conquered the country, with pizzerias such as Pizza Fiamma expanding in cities such as Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal, Regina, Winnipeg and Halifax, featuring the flavours of the subcontinent in butter chicken and shahi paneer pizzas.

“Pizza’s evolution in Canada mimics the ebbs and flows in immigration practices. As pizza became more multicultural, it reflected how the Canadian social fabric was becoming more multicultural,” says the University of Guelph’s Beausaert.

Even the ever-controversial Hawaiian pizza merges immigrant influences. As Panopoulos told the BBC in 2017, mainstream Canadian food was plain in the 1960s and there weren’t many restaurants. “The only thing you could find then sweet-and-sour was Chinese, nothing else.” He and his brothers served Chinese food alongside breakfasts, burgers, fries and pizza at Satellite and initially tossed canned pineapple onto a pizza for the fun of it. “So, there’s Asian influence on this Hawaiian pizza that a Greek immigrant came up with, which seems so Canadian to me,” says Beausaert with a laugh.

Pizza is ever-evolving. The originator of Regina-style, Houston Pizza, has added butter chicken, Thai chicken and chicken Kyiv pies to the menu. Arcata, our readers’ fifth favourite Windsor pizzeria, combined two of the city’s top foods in its shawarma pizza. One thing that’s clear from our poll is that regional styles resonate with the people in their communities. Canned mushrooms may elicit raised eyebrows elsewhere in the country, but in Windsor, they make sense. A hearty, piled-high Prairie pie binds a hardy people. The only way to experience Canadian pizza is with an open mind, knowing the slice you grew up with will always be home.