If Harmeet and Christel Walia don’t make it in the pizza business, it will not be for lack of trying, nor lack of innovation.
You have to admire their gumption.
The 31-year-olds met in Alabama when Christel was at bible college. Harmeet grew up in the GTA and when the two got married and came back here, they wanted to pursue their dream of providing foster care.
They run a foster home for Peel’s Children Centre in the Mavis-Queensway area. As if that isn’t enough to keep them busy, they decided to jump into the pizza business a couple of years ago, buying a fading pizzeria in an out-of-the-way plaza on the South Service Rd. at Vanier Dr.
It’s that odd plaza that was hidden behind a wall for many years. Part of the wall has now been removed but it is still a commercial enterprise that appears to have turned its back on the world.
The Walias set up shop as Peroni’s Pizzeria. Christel already knew the business from slugging away in a pizza parlour in Oakville when she first came to Canada.
So, how to put a little pizza joint on the big map?
Well, first the Walias got themselves on Restaurant Makeover on The Food Network. It was nine days of incredible stress, recalls Christel with a laugh as she sits in front of a wall of tomato sauce cans that were part of the décor the show provided – but worth it. The show is still running and bringing in curious customers.
Now Christel has come up with a new wrinkle that is good news for the growing numbers of people who suffer from some form of celiac disease, a form of gluten intolerance that means many people can’t eat bread products.
Peroni’s has become the first pizzeria in Mississauga to make its product with organic spelt crust. Spelt is an ancient grain (three times as expensive as wheat) that is allowing many folks to eat pizza for the first time in years.
One of them is Monica Nickle, who can walk to Peroni’s from her home in Lorne Park. In a short mid-afternoon break from her seven-month-old twins, Nickle explained that she used to drive to Toronto to get pizza on spelt crust, which was often dry and tasteless.
When her husband came home with spelt pizza the first night Peroni’s made it available, Nickle couldn’t believe her taste buds. “It was the best pizza I’d had since I moved to Toronto,” she enthused.
The secret, according to Christel is a mistake she made when she added too much water to the light spelt flour, and it came out a whole lot tastier.
Christel has been interested in healthy eating for quite a while, given her own stomach issues, which she endured for many years. A book called Eat Right For Your (Blood) Type by Dr. Peter D’Adamo got her own system straightened out and now she wants to do the same for others. “We want to produce something that people can enjoy eating and that will go through their system in peace,” she laughs.
Pizza isn’t exactly health food but, “just because it’s pizza, it doesn’t mean it’s not healthy.” She’s even thinking of providing soy cheese in future.
The quality of the product — and the service — is at the basis of every retail success, argues Walia. That’s why Peroni’s uses home-made dough, high quality Stanislaus tomato sauce, has a slightly higher cost and why it has a limited delivery area (Winston Churchill- Lake Ontario-Hurontario St.-Dundas St.) to get it there hot and fast.
And, oh yeah, that woman at your door with the pizza boxes is as likely as not to be Christel herself.
For more information visit www.peronispizzeria.com. or call 905-891-0022.