Joe and his mother Vita at the first Antonino’s (2003)
Consistency Key to the Perfect Pie at Antonino’s Original Pizza
Before there was Windsor-style pizza’s famous shredded pepperoni, there were hand-cut pepperoni strips.
That’s how Joe Ciaravino’s foray into the family pizza business began, and a cherished memory that always makes him chuckle.
“When I was a kid—and I remember this vividly because it was my job—each pepperoni stick was sliced lengthwise on a deli slicer. The long slices were meticulously stacked and then these perfect pepperoni stacks were cut into little strips—all by hand. I can’t believe we did that,” he laughs, “but that’s how we did it back then, and that’s how my mom wanted us to do it when we first started here.”
While the manual labour didn’t last long (“I had to fight my mom tooth and nail to use the shredder,” jokes Ciaravino), the importance of meticulous preparation and a commitment to consistency are standards he has carried with him over the past twenty-six years since founding his own slice of Windsor’s storied pizza history, Antonino’s Original Pizza.
As the son of Windsor-style pizza pioneers reminisces about his childhood growing up in a pizzeria and the last three decades of carrying on his parents’ legacy, he reflects on what makes the city’s style of pizza so special and, in particular, what has garnered Antonino’s such a strong following in a region with more pizzerias per capita than anywhere else in Canada.
From a small South Windsor takeout spot to now five locations across Essex County, Ciaravino says it’s been a combination of establishing exacting standards, relentless quality control, and authentic marketing rooted in real personal stories that has led to Antonino’s becoming a household name. That, and perfecting his father’s original recipes for the quintessential Windsor-style pie.
Antonino Ciaravino (left) and his Zio Alfio (Circa 1972)
“Before my father (Antonino) fell ill, he had the recipes all in his head,” shares Ciaravino. “When he got sick, my mom (Vita) wrote them down.”
It was finding that decades old, hand scribbled note, haphazardly written in Italian on a weathered piece of three-hole punched paper, and encouragement from family and friends that pushed Joe to finally open his own place in 1999 as a tribute to his late father, Antonino “Tony” Ciaravino.
“Without my mom’s help I wouldn’t have been able to do it,” he shares. “She worked side-by-side with my dad all those years and so she was able to help me recreate everything, even as her own health was declining.”
Ciaravino recalls the sauce recipe indicating a spoon of something and asking his mother if it was a teaspoon or a tablespoon.
“She goes, no, it’s the round green soup spoons that we used to give out with takeout orders,” he laughs. “And the cups referred to in the recipes were actually the old red and white striped take-out soda fountain cups. Thank God she never threw anything away—we found them in an old suitcase she had stored in the basement for over 35-years—otherwise we wouldn’t have been able to replicate the recipes.”
Antonino and Vita Ciaravino in front of their original diner/pizzeria in Windsor, ON (Circa 1959)
Ciaravino has shared many of these endearing moments in some of Antonino’s marketing campaigns throughout the years, which he credits for helping propel the pizza chain to success. After all, who can’t relate to cherished family recipes that include steps like “enough flour as needed” and “add to taste”?
Despite the recipes’ very informal origins, Ciaravino says he was able to get it down to an almost exact science, thanks in part to rigorous testing and well, actual science.
“I went to a lot of seminars on food chemistry and talked to food chemists,” he recalls. “I was fascinated by the Lallemand’s yeast presentation on the chemistry of yeast and the flour industry chemist’s explanation of how gluten structure develops in dough. I learned a lot.”
He says all the education and testing has helped his team deliver a more consistent product, which has made it easier to replicate across locations.
Antonino’s Original Pizza Inc. President, Joe Ciaravino working in the family pizzeria at age 13 (1978)
“Something as simple as the temperature of the water coming out of the tap can affect the finished temperature of the dough.”
Time and temperature aren’t the only details that are monitored. It’s everything from the quality of spices to the weight of a 20 kilogram bag of flour used to make one full batch of dough.
“A 20 kilogram bag of flour very seldom weighs exactly 20 kilograms,” states Ciaravino, matter-of-factly.
Also, the right sauce to cheese to topping ratios are vital to maintaining that familiar Antonino’s taste, and it’s something that is tested often.
“We have exact specs for our pizzas,” he says. “We periodically test our pizza makers by having them make a pizza on a scale just to recalibrate, so they know if they’re going too heavy or too light.”
“Frankly, our pizza tastes best when the ratio of sauce to cheese to pepperoni and other toppings are in the right proportion,” he adds. “If anything is off, it’s a different product.”
They also sample pizzas from each of their locations side by side in blind taste tests.
“I think we do a better job of consistency than anyone else. We work very hard at it. That’s what’s important to me.”
Ciaravino says it’s also important to him to use local, best-in-market Canadian-made ingredients, which is evident in Antonino’s latest creation, The Angry Canadian™.
A response to the recent cross-border tariff talks and a spin on their ultra-popular Angry Hawaiian™, The Angry Canadian™ features locally made Uniondale Mozzarella from Galati Cheese, Olymel smoked bacon (Brampton, ON), pepperoni made by Salamina Foods (Laval, QC), fresh mushrooms from Highline Mushrooms in Kingsville, and hot peppers from Lakeside Packing in Harrow.
The idea came from an out-of-town friend of Ciaravino’s while the two of them caught up over an Angry Hawaiian™ and Sicilian Cannoli.
“We were talking about what’s going on with the tariffs and about how Canadians were angry and how we’re starting to see this surge of national pride,” he recounts. “And while Richard’s eating a slice of Angry Hawaiian™, he says, ‘Hey, when are you going to come up with an Angry Canadian?’”
“It was genius!” Ciaravino exclaims, raising his hands in the air.
“Within a week and a half, we had it launched, and it’s been a tremendous hit for us. We sold approximately 250 in the first two weeks.”
And those Angry Canadian™ toppings? All carefully tested and measured, of course. For Ciaravino, there’s no other way to do things.
“It’s really hard to standardize excellence,” says Ciaravino. “We try and we may not always succeed, but I think we get it right more often than not.”
As we finish our interview, Ciaravino gets up to greet a family sitting down to enjoy their supper in the dining room of Antonino’s South Windsor flagship store. As it turns out, the former Windsor residents are visiting from Niagara Falls and had to make time to stop in for their favourite Windsor pizza.
“Is it as good as you remember?” he smiles.
Of course it is. He knows it is…right down to the shredded (no longer hand cut) pepperoni.
