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New wood oven pizza restaurant brings the taste of Naples to Downtown Guelph (9 photos)

Certified by Vera Pizza Napoletana, Piatto Pizzeria + Enoteca is the real deal

You can now enjoy a taste of Naples in Guelph. 

“We want true authentic Neapolitan pizza and we want people to be able to enjoy it without the airfare and the jetlag,” said Jay Vallis who officially opened Piatto Pizzeria + Enoteca in Downtown Guelph at 153 Wyndham St. N. this week.

It's located at the very top of Wyndham in the historic Wellington Hotel building.

Guelph is Piatto’s eighth location in Canada and certified by Vera Pizza Napoletana (VPN) which means a team from Naples comes down to the restaurant with their checklists to make sure the pizzeria lives up to its name and delivers authentic Neapolitan pizza. 

Every pizza at Piatto must be 11 inches and made with tippo 00 flour, sea salt, fresh yeast and water at 79 C. The dough has to proof for at least 24 hours and must be stretched on Carrara marble and cooked at 900 C for 90 seconds or less. All flour and tomatoes come from Naples. 

San Marzano tomatoes must be crushed by hand and the tomato sauce can be only applied in a clockwise rotation. 

“Because it’s cooked in 90 seconds, it is a little bit softer and a little bit doughier. It’s so thin in the middle. You have to have a half-inch rim around the pizza before you cook it so then it pops to between a half-inch and an inch,” said Vallis, operations manager of the branches across Canada. 

“You want a little bit of a crunch on the patino which is your crust but then once you get inside, you want to be able to see the gluten structure,” said Vallis. “We wanted to be as traditional as possible.”

Piatto has been a real family business for the Vallis family who hail from Newfoundland, and it all began with her father Brian in 2010. 

While living and working in England over a decade ago, Brian would frequent VPN pizzerias with his best friend from Naples. 

“When he came back to Newfoundland, he couldn’t get good pizza anywhere and if he did, he found there wasn’t great wine selection and he always would go somewhere else for dessert and coffee,” said Vallis. 

“So one day he said to my mom, ‘I’m going to open a pizzeria.’”

With no experience in the food industry and a background in accounting and radio, Brian travelled to Naples at the age of 57 to attend Vera Pizza Napoletana, an internationally recognized association where he learned the ins and outs of traditional Neapolitan food. 

In 2010, Brian opened his first restaurant in St. John’s with the help of his daughter Kate, who took care of marketing, and his wife who took care of inventory. 

Shortly after, Jay was pulled into the business and she left her career as a journalist to help the family business grow along with her mother and sister as an operations manager. 

“I moved to Halifax in 2012 to open our second location and about four weeks ago, I relocated to Guelph,” said Vallis. Since then, the family opened restaurants in Charlottetown, North River, Cavendish, Cambridge and another in St. Johns for a total of eight in 10 years. 

With years of experience working in bars, Vallis helped her father design the inside of the restaurants. 

"We were so dorky. We would get our painter’s tape and tape everything, where the bar was going to be,” said JVallisay. The family also took five chefs with them to Naples so they can get a real feel of the food. 

“The Guelph location is actually the first location I opened without Brian,” said Vallis adding that she has been incredibly grateful for her operations director Duncan Baird. 

Guelph’s location in the Wellington building which was built in 1877 aims to bring a heritage feel to the restaurant. She said the buildings in each city are unique to their neighbourhood. 

“There are certain aspects that we look for. We want the restaurants to feel like a pizzeria but we never wanted to feel like a chain,” said Vallis. 

“Everyone one of the Piattos will have the oven as the focal point. We all have marble countertops for the bars, we have hand-pulled Victoria Arduino coffee machines which are very rare.”

She said the success of the restaurant is because of the collaborative effort put in by each member of the family.

“I just have a really good team around me so it makes a huge difference,” said Vallis. 

“We all love what we do. Every day we come in and we’re excited about it.”

She said she looks forward to bringing a taste of Naples in a beautiful building and great location. 

“It just seems like we have a great community here and the more people we can bring downtown to support all local businesses, the better it is for everybody,” said Vallis. 

While COVID-19 delayed the opening of the restaurant, Piatto is ready to serve its customers both indoors and outdoors with socially distances tables, outside patios, hand sanitization sets and menus with QR codes. 

Piatto is open on Tuesdays to Thursdays from 11:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. and on Fridays and Saturdays from 11:30 a.m. to 10 p.m.


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Anam Khan

About the Author: Anam Khan

Anam Khan is a journalist who covers numerous beats in Guelph and Wellington County that include politics, crime, features, environment and social justice
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