When pizza shop owners dedicate twenty years to perfecting the perfect crust, and a few more years in ensuring the sauce tastes just so, you know you’re in for something special. Food Trends linked up with Mick and Sandi Stoyan of Mickey’s Pizza via Twitter, sampled the fare and was blown away. Here’s a Q&A with the dynamic duo of pizza and why their obsession has led to some of the best Canadian-Italian style pies in the GTA.
Food Trends (FT): Who is Mickey behind Mickey's Pizza?
Sandi Stoyan (SS): Mickey is actually our mascot. I invented her, and she is a little orphaned dragon from Italy. She lives with pizza maker Pappy. You can catch his version of the story on our website. In real life, Mick, however, is my husband and extreme pizza lover.
FT: WHY Pizza? Why does he love it so much?
SS: I've been asking him that question for close to thirty years. He once went on a roll where he ate pizza every day at least once, but usually two or three times, for over two years straight. He can't drive by any new pizza place without stopping to try it out. I'm thinking that maybe there's just something mentally wrong with the man.
FT: It took 20 years to perfect the pizza crust- is this a man obsessed or a perfectionist?
SS: He's been a man obsessed to create the pizza dough he's always wanted to eat. Our family has eaten pizza all over the world as this man has been on his quest for the best pizza on the planet. He couldn't find quite what he was searching for so he had to create it. My children and I were the guinea pigs every Saturday night for 20 years.
FT: Tell us about the quality of the ingredients you use. Why is this so important to you?
SS: We use the best quality ingredients we can while still keeping the pizza affordable for everyday people. There's always more expensive products to buy and exotic ingredients to add but what about the regular person who's sick of eating poor quality, chain pizza and doesn't want to spend a fortune to eat a good one? Let's give people quality without blowing their budget. So our pepperoni is made the old fashioned Italian way with no MSG or preservatives (9 brands to hunt that down!)
Our cheese is a blend of freshly grated Mozzarella (our rep told us that no other pizza place was using this high a quality, why were we? We said "Just sell us the cheese!"), cheddar, Asiago and bocconcini grated fresh here. Homemade meatballs barbecued here, chicken breasts barbecued here, we sauté our mushrooms and spinach, make our own sauce, make our own dough. Basically, we try very hard to keep things as pure and homemade as possible to maintain as much control over quality as we can.
FT: No frozen crust on the premises- you make it yourselves every day. Why?
SS: Great pizza begins with the crust. That's your base. If you begin with a pre-frozen bought dough you're creating your pizza from an inferior foundation. Usually this is followed by poor quality sauce, dried out pre-shredded cheese made from powdered milk and the cheapest toppings money can buy. We just can't do that. I always ask myself "If a place doesn't care about their dough, what else don't they care about?"
FT: You make your own sauce too?
SS: You bet. We found out that a lot of companies use a tin of pre-made pizza sauce or watered tomato paste watered thickened with pureed carrots. We felt that tomato sauce should be made with the best tomatoes you can find. Puree them, add a few little secrets and voila! Delicious full flavoured tomato sauce.
FT: Describe your pizza to those who have never had it yet.
SS: Pizza is all about balancing quality ingredients. The dough, the sauce, the cheese and the toppings all have to work in harmony. We do not make authentic Italian pizza (very light on cheese & toppings, mostly dough and sauce); we make authentic North American pizza (substantial meal) with the same attention to quality and craftsmanship.
FT: You said "this is how fast food pizza should taste." I'd say yours is almost a slow food fast food.
SS: In Italy, pizza is usually part of several courses for dinner and is not meant to be very filling. The North American market has turned pizza into a meal and made it more substantial. The problem is that as the pizza market has grown, the quest for a larger profit has decreased the quality of the product while also increasing the speed of creation to "fill the hole" in people's stomachs.
Technically, because we don't have a dining room, we fall into this category and are classified as "fast food take-away." Realistically, because it's such an interactive experience with us and our focus is on quality of the product and enjoying the whole experience I'd say we're more of a slow food fast food hybrid.
FT: You offer deep dish and Miami Style – describe them.
SS: Our Chicago style is a deep dish pizza has a moist, tender crust that's almost 3" tall! Not many offer deep dish pizzas but we do and we feel it gives our customers greater variety and something special not easily found anywhere else. Our Miami style is a thin pizza cooked on our Hickory Visual Oven – BBQ style – (the only one in Canada).
One of the beautiful things about the visual oven is that not only can you watch your own pizza cooking but you can also see other people's creations rotating in front of you as well, giving you future ideas! Whether you choose to have the deep dish or the thin crust your pizza is created right in front of you. You're part of the whole experience. If there's something you want or don't want we can do it for you immediately because you tell us what you want and we are your hands.
And isn't that the way it should be? You should be able to create and enjoy what you love. And that's what we want to do for people.
Mary Luz Mejia - Colombian-born and Canadian raised. After earning an honours History degree from Queen's University and a Journalism post-grad diploma ...
