Windsor pizza aficionado says you can't take pizza lists 'to heart'

A high-profile travel magazine has put together a list of the top cities for pizza, but none of them started with the letter W.

In other words, Windsor, Ont., didn't make the cut.

The list that Condé Nast Traveler put together included 14 cities in total. Half are in the United States, six are in Italy and just one is in Canada.

That lone Canadian city? Edmonton.

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How much stock should be put into a list like this is hard to say, but one man with a detailed knowledge of Windsor's pizza scene says what really matters is one's personal taste.

Beau Bernard grew up in Windsor, but later moved out west.

But the type of pizza he ate in his formative years is the one he likes the best.

"Being born and raised in Windsor, we were raised on the Windsor-style pizza, so we grew to love it," he told CBC News on Thursday, when reached by telephone in Calgary.

Better than what is in Italy?

That is still the case even after he and his fiancée took a month-long trip to Italy, sampling many types of pizza there.

"We ate pizza in Florence, Italy, and Rome and in Venice, and we've had pizza all over Italy and upon returning from Italy, we went to Windsor to visit our family and stayed there," said Bernard.

And "after eating pizza in Italy for a month, Windsor was still, by far, our favourite pizza," he added.

Bernard now is a co-owner of the Windsor Pizza Co. in Calgary, which makes pizzas in the style that is popular in his hometown.

"We're getting great responses from people from Calgary who have never had a Windsor-style pizza who are having it out here," Bernard said.

The pizzas coming out of his restaurant's kitchen are made with hand-tossed dough. Bernard said the crust is crispy on the outside and it falls somewhere between a thin and a thick type of crust.

They use a mix of cheeses — some from Alberta and some from Windsor's Galati Cheese Company. They put shredded toppings on top of the cheese on their pizzas.

Bernard said his customers also can choose to have canned mushrooms on their pizza, which is "a big Windsor thing," but not something that is otherwise popular in Calgary.

The way he sees it, it all comes down to what somebody likes on their pizza — and whatever appears on a given list, Bernard said you can't necessarily "take it too much to heart."