I've been to Windsor more times than I can count. I've heard a few people from Windsor tell me over the years they have great pizza in Windsor. No one really explained what was so special about Windsor pizza.
The Pizza City You've Never Heard Of is Windsor, just south of Detroit tucked away in a pocket in southwestern Ontario.
George Kalivas has a career in the world of music in Toronto but misses Windsor pizza. So along with director Tristan Laughton and Kalivas as writer, narrator, and host, the film sets out to tell us what makes Windsor pizza so distinct.
The intriguing comparison is New Haven, CT in the United States, a city that has an established pizza identity in a smaller town. Kalivas conveys that Windsor has unique pizza traditions.
- flour crust with cornmeal on the bottom
- sweet sauce using sweeter tomatoes such as San Marzano or tomatoes from California
- Galati cheese company making high fat mozzarella that is stringy when you pull out a slice
- shredded pepperoni
- canned mushrooms
As someone who makes a lot of homemade pizza, your humble narrator sauteed mushrooms before putting them on the pizza. Kalivas and his experts point out that canned mushrooms are used because they never burn, unlike raw mushrooms.
The shredded pepperoni approach is that you get pepperoni in every bite.
Kalivas starts out at his favourite Windsor Pizzeria. As he takes us to several other places, such as Arcata Pizzeria and Capri Pizzeria (across the street from each other), and Antonino's Pizza, they point out that while the pizzas are similar, people have their favourites from generations back in time.
The documentary traces the story of Windsor pizza back to Volcano in 1957 and how every pizzeria can tie their pizza back to the pizza at Volcano.
One other element of Windsor pizza is the rather large number of toppings. The large super has a lot of toppings though Kalinas does not explain as to what ingredients should go on a large super or whether different pizzerias have unique versions of large super.
For example, Capri defines a super pizza as having "mozzarella, shredded pepperoni, bacon, mushrooms, and green peppers."
The documentary bounces to different part of the cities but does spend quite a bit of time on East Erie Street, which is the Little Italy section in Windsor.
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Your humble narrator has an intolerance of mozzarella cheese so pizza isn't high on the call list of potential dinner options. Some New Haven places have a tomato pie type option with Parmesan instead of mozzarella. Indulging in mozzarella produces headaches, so I could try this out for myself.
The super pizza, even with the shredded pepperoni, sounds good. Watching the documentary does make you want to try the pizza.
Kalivas takes us to a lot of pizza choices in a relatively small town. He even interviews Peter Vitti, co-owner of Spago (not that Spago), even though they don't do Windsor style pizza. The film is about Windsor pizza and also about Windsor and food obsession.
Having a pizza obsession in Canada is a bit intriguing because pizza is expensive in Canada. Americans think of pizza as being cheap. This is an expensive obsession in Canada, mostly because of the Canadian cheese being more expensive than cheaper cheese from the United States.
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The pace of the film is strong. The presentation is very straight forward. They resist the temptation to bash other types of pizza; the film exists to tell you how good the pizza is in Windsor and why the pizza is unique.
The Pizza City You've Never Heard Of runs 51 minutes. The film ran on the Absolutely Canadian series that airs on CBC television.
video credit: YouTube/Lrg Super
photo credit: The Pizza City You've Never Heard Of