Welcome to Diana Pizza

Question #1: What makes your pizza so much better?
This is a great question. For the simplest answer we can begin by comparing our pizza to almost every other pizza out there. Our pizza is better because we start with only the best quality of ingredients, and while many places repeat the quality mantra, we begin creating our superior, gourmet pizza from the crust up. Our crusts are only made with olive oil while other places use canola or vegetable oil and even lard. Olive oil is healthier and when you use it in pizza dough it gives the crust a great bread flavour. We also only use sea salt, in our dough and in our sauce while other places use table salt. Sea salt is a more natural salt, while table salt is sodium chloride, something many doctors and nurses tell us to cut down on. The sea salt we use is 90 times more expensive than cheap table salt, but we feel you’re worth it. Perhaps the best way to answer this question is to study the ingredients that are used to make a pizza.

Diana’s Definition of Gourmet Pizza:
Healthy food when made with best ingredients; low fat cheeses, lean meats, fresh veggies, sauce made from ripe red tomatoes grown in the sun belt, whole wheat crusts, white crusts made with premium unbleached flour. Most are made with enriched flour & canola oil. Some are made of lard. I recommend Olive oil because it’s more beneficial than canola or vegetable oils and it adds that great bread flavour.

Guaranteed Quality Spices vs. cheap spices
Many spices are grown in 3rd world countries where access to clean water and education about proper food handling are real issues. Villagers typically get paid by the pound so sticks, stones and other foreign matter that I don’t want to completely gross you out, but the truth it’s not just a big difference in prices on guaranteed quality spices versus cheap ones. There’s also a big difference in the amount of spice per gram. Choose a brand / company that work with villagers to insure maximum quality & pureness. When you use the best quality spices, recipes requires less quantity to create great and satisfying flavours. Plus you can be certain that your recipes will always turn out as intended, every time. We only purchase the best quality of spices at Diana’s Gourmet Pizzeria, yet the cost is only 1% of the total cost of the recipes. Most of the flavour is provided by the least expensive price per serving. When you buy the best spices, less is truly more.

Tomato bases
We start our award winning marinara recipe with grade ‘A’ premium quality crushed tomatoes that are bright red in the can, naturally sweet and full of lycopene which studies have shown prevents prostate cancer. There are grade ‘B’ through ‘D’ quality tomatoes available, which many pizza places use as a base for their sauce. Lower quality tomatoes are orange & sometimes even brown in the can. The increased acid makes them bitter to the taste, especially compared to the premium grade ‘A’ tomatoes. Many of these lower grades of canned tomatoes have plastic liners inside the tin cans because the acid from the tomatoes is so strong it will eat the tin and leach tin flavor into the tomatoes. Pizza places that use low quality tomatoes try to overcome the bitterness and orange colour by loading the sauce with sugar and red dyes to mimic a better quality tomato. I’ve tasted some pretty bad sauces, some that seem more like cheap ketchup than a pizza sauce.

Real cheese vs. fake cheese
A lot of places that sell pizza mix their real cheese with fake cheese. Non dairy products called ‘pizza mozza’ and ‘pizzarella’ are being used at many chains and low quality independents. Some of these fake cheeses are made from soy, others from oils. While I don’t have any issues with soy cheeses, in fact I’ve tried to source good quality ones for a segment of my customers, I do take issue with pizza places using these ingredients but not disclosing it to the public in an effort to keep their prices unrealistically low. Since the 1980’s two large pizzas with two toppings are often advertised for $19.99 (or less) and come with a free 2L? Everything and I do mean everything; minimum wages, dairy prices, wheat prices, fresh vegetables, top quality meats, real estate, and especially gas prices has gone up since then. The math for mainstream pizza has stayed the same. More and more savvy consumers are questioning how that’s possible.

Full fat cheese vs. low fat cheese
A lot of pizza places will use a full fat mozzarella, sometimes mixing it with low-fat or soy cheese. They do this because the full fat mozzarella adds a lot of flavour, many people find it palatable, but then don’t feel well afterwards. Typically, pizza places that use full fat are trying to add flavor to a cardboard tasting crust and low quality meats and vegetables. Personally, I can’t eat pizza made this way. Rather, I can eat it, but my body doesn’t digest it well unless I chase it down with a big bottle of the pink stuff. And that’s no way to eat, much less a way to live.

Enriched white flour vs. unbleached flour vs 100% Whole Wheat vs Whole Grain
Many pizza crust recipes are made with enriched white flour, which on the surface sounds like a good thing, but the fact is that it’s not. When your digestive system breaks down enriched white flour it because sugar, which gives you some energy, however doesn’t provide you with many nutrients, and also leaves you still feeling hungry. Try to avoid simple carbohydrates like enriched white flours and refined grains. North American diets are severely lacking in fiber. Fiber comes from whole wheat and whole grain breads. Fiber takes longer for your digestive system to break down and as a result leaves you feeling fuller longer. Also a source of complex carbohydrates (starches) and a major source of B vitamins, magnesium and many other minerals.

Next we can examine the quality of meats that are used in the most popular toppings found on pizza.

Pepperoni: This is by far the #1 topping of choice in North America and there are various grades of quality out there. At Diana’s, we use a premium dry cured pepperoni, comprising of a mixture of 50% beef and 50% pork, our cost is over $4/pound. There are pepperonis out there that are $0.56/pound, and I don’t want to gross you out, but suffice to say we all know how cheap hot dogs are made, it’s not much different. I wouldn’t feed these pepperonis to my cats, much less my dogs whom I’ve even seen eat some pretty gross stuff.

Chicken: There’s 100% white meat, and there’s dark meat, then there’s mixtures of each. At Diana’s, we only use the top quality 100% breast meat chicken, which has gone through an extensive scanning process to ensure all the bones have been removed.

Beef: Here’s a fact for you. We were shocked to find that the leading ‘beef topping’ used at many pizza places does not contain any beef. Way, way down on the ingredients list, past the yellow dye #68, past the fillers and by-products, you’ll find ‘beef flavouring’. At Diana’s, we start with 100% lean ground beef, then we cook it and drain the fat off, then it’s ready to use. All of our beef is truly real beef, there are no ‘beef toppings’ allowed at Diana’s.

Question #2: Why aren’t you 2 for 1?
We’d like to refer you to the first question, but if you’re still not satisfied all we can say is this: We don’t get ‘2 for 1’ cases of cheese, nor ‘2 for 1’ cases pepperoni, chicken, lean beef, crushed tomatoes, Roma tomatoes, peppers, onions, etc, etc, etc. We also don’t get ‘2 for 1’ staff members (I do believe that’s illegal in this country), nor are our utilities billed at a ‘2 for 1’ rate, nor does our landlord, (as wonderful as he is) give us ‘2 for 1’ on the rent.

Question #3: Why aren’t you a Dine in restaurant?
From our humble beginnings over 10 years ago we’ve always been strictly pick up & delivery pizzeria. Our fiercely loyal regulars and word of mouth along with numerous awards and multiple appearances in the local press has grown our business to incredible heights. We outgrew our first location almost 3 years ago and moved into our bigger, better, ultimate kick butt pizzeria on St. Anne’s road just a few months ago. We debated long & hard over adding a Dine in section, however we realized how we became so successful and decided to stick to our roots, it’s what we know best. You may see a Dine in Diana’s Gourmet Pizzeria yet, but ultimately we’d expect to do it just as well as our present operation, and that doesn’t happen overnight.

Question #4: What’s the best pizza you make?
This is also an excellent question, however practically impossible to have a one-size-fits-all answer. One of the things I love most about pizza is that it can accommodate any preferences you may have. I love veggies, the more the better. But my husband Pierre will only eat certain ones, and never in more than 2 on a pizza. Some of my male staff will never eat a vegetable, whether it’s on a free sample staff pizza or not. But they can each tell you what they love on their pizzas. Thin crust, whole wheat crust, or our award winning Moosehead beer crust, your preferences will determine what your best pizza is. Don’t be shy to ask the staff what their favourite is, and if you’ve always wanted to try spinach, or Capicolla, don’t hesitate to ask what it pairs up nicely with. Even if my staff member hasn’t had that particular topping, they’ve taken orders with it, and they can suggest what other regulars have enjoyed. The other thing that I love about pizza is that the possibilities are endless. Change a sauce, or cheese, add hot peppers and it’s a completely different flavour explosion. Ask about our featured ‘Taste of the Month’, it’s a not-on-the-menu pizza that we’ll make just for the featured month. We’ll bring in a specialty cheese, or a sauce, or a new crust or even a new topping. Some of our Tastes of the Month have gone on to win awards; you just never know what sensation we’ll create in our kitchen.

Question #5: Do you charge for delivery?
Yes we do. Unlike most pizza places, we pay our drivers an hourly wage, which is at least minimum wage ($8.50/hour in Manitoba) and in addition we also pay them a per delivery fee. The hourly wage is mandatory by Provincial labour laws because our drivers also help out in the store. The delivery fee (paid by you, the customer) is meant to offset the cost of gas, insurance and maintenance incurred by the drivers for their vehicles. Almost all other pizza places either pay their drivers a per delivery fee OR an hourly wage, but not both.

Question #6: Do you deliver city wide?
Currently we do not. We are in the South end of the city, (South St. Vital) and we guarantee the quality of our product. The nature of a pizza is that it cools off quickly, and once you drive it across town, even in a delivery bag, it’s no longer our best. We do have many regulars outside of our delivery area and we find that our Take’n’Bake pizzas are perfect for travel, and they cook it up hot & fresh when they get home. That said, we are growing our company through franchises and expect to have more stores to service the demand in other areas within the next 12 months.