Roberto Pizza Romana: Artisan pizza with pizzaz in Old Chelsea, Que.

That's amore at Roberto Pizza Romana A business inspired by romance and pizza made with love, it's an authentic slice of Italy in the Gatineau Hills. CTV's Joel Haslam reports.

When you first enter their charming Old Chelsea Pizzeria, you’ll likely ask owners Roberto Catervi and Geneviève Parent a question they’ve heard many times before.

“Where are the pizzas? Those are not pizzas,” says Roberto with a laugh, repeating a refrain of his early customers.

“In the beginning they were looking for the pepperoni and cheese and Hawaiian pizza,” smiles Geneviève.

“They say ‘don’t you have normal pizzas?’” recalls Roberto, with a wide grin.

“I would just laugh and say, ‘no, we don’t have normal pizzas’.”

But they do have more than a dozen varieties of pizza squares. Each is lovingly made with a light and delicious sourdough crust, topped with local, farm-fresh ingredients.

It’s pizza that takes your imagination and taste buds to places never travelled before.

“We want to bring them to Italy without travelling as far,” says Geneviève.

“The first week it was crazy. We had customers coming for lunch and then coming back with other customers for dinner and saying ‘you have to try this’,” Roberto laughs.

“They would come three times in a week, two times a day.”

“So, people really enjoy it. They think it’s a piece of art. It’s something unique that you can’t find, other than in Italy,” Geneviève smiles.

Naturally, the pizza place customers love is rooted in romance.

It’s a love story beginning in Rome, when then 26-year-old Geneviève was travelling solo and fancied some fine dining at a popular restaurant.

“I fell in love with the first bite,” Geneviève recalls.

She fell in love with the food, and the Michelin Star chef who had created it.

“She came in alone and she ordered the tasting menu,” recalls Roberto.

But Geneviève was taking an unusually long time to eat her first course.

“She took forty-five minutes. And I remember asking the server if there was something wrong. I didn’t know if she liked it,” says Roberto.

Geneviève, a ‘foodie’ working in a fine dining restaurant in Chelsea, Que. at the time, was simply savouring every morsel of her meal.

And she was making plans.

“I was texting my girlfriends here in Canada and saying I don’t care how old he is, what he looks like, if this chef is single, he’s coming back to Canada,” laughs Geneviève.

So delighted with the meal, Geneviève sent the chef a glass of wine to say thank you, a common practice in the restaurant industry.

“I said ‘I’m almost done my shift, so we’ll drink it together’,” says Roberto.

The couple shared wine and conversation. The next day, they toured Rome together.

Two weeks later, Roberto came to Canada to visit.

“It was the big seduction,’ says a laughing Geneviève.

“The restaurant where I was working welcomed him with open arms, we toured the area, went out for nice dinners, did some camping and fell in love,” she says.

“It was just perfect,” says Roberto.

Roberto moved to Canada the following January.

“If he stayed at minus 28 in January, and didn’t jump on the next flight back, then I knew it was for real,” says Geneviève.

The following November, the couple was married.

“Everything happens for a reason,” smiles Geneviève.

Take their business, for example. It was opened in the middle of the pandemic, when in-house dining wasn’t allowed.

“We started thinking about something that could still be high-end but could work well delivered, or picked up and eaten as a takeaway,” says Roberto.

That’s when we came up with Pizza Romana. It’s a style of pizza that’s perfect to be reheated at home, and perfect to be delivered. “You can purchase it cold and heat it up any time, whenever you are ready to eat it,” says Roberto.

“I wanted people to be able to taste different ingredients and I wanted to play a little more with ingredients than you do with a normal pizza, “says Roberto.

Most of those fresh ingredients are grown on local farms in the area. The menu changes depending on the harvest.

“On a regular day we have about twelve flavours and in the summer, it explodes,” says Geneviève.

A customer favourite at the restaurant is a potato and truffle pizza.

“This is one of our best sellers. People say, ‘potato on a pizza?’ They try it and their minds are blown,” says Geneviève.

And Roberto Pizza Romana looks as delicious as it tastes.

“We try to approach it in an artistic way. We always say you eat with your eyes before you eat with your mouth. You don’t order our pizza from a menu. You order it from a display, so if it doesn’t look good, you’re not going to order it.”

Roberto and Geneviève also bake a variety of delicious sourdough breads, hand-crafted with Quebec flour.

“We’re working with a 13-year-old sourdough starter that Roberto brought here from Italy, so that really adds to the taste,” Geneviève says with a smile.

And for those with a taste for something sweet, Roberto Pizza Romana offers a delicious variety of Italian desserts, from bomboloni (Italian doughnuts) to cannoli and tiramisu.

“We soak the left-over sourdough breadcrumbs in coffee and use that as a base in the tiramisu. Something grandma does over in Italy,” smiles Roberto.

Soon the Roberto Pizza Romana family will be expanding. The couple’s first child is due to arrive any day now.

“We’re expecting a baby sooner than later, a spring baby, so we’re very excited about that,” says a smiling Geneviève.

They’re excited about family and their future, grateful for a delicious slice of life in the picturesque Gatineau Hills.

“We had so much encouragement from the people in this village since we opened. I think we underestimated how much success this place could have in Chelsea,” smiles Roberto.

“We really feel the community values here in Chelsea and we love it, so we’re going to be here for a while.”

Roberto Pizza Romana is located at 241 chem. Old Chelsea in Chelsea, Que. It is open Thursday through Sunday from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. [phone]

Instagram: @robertopizzaromanachelsea

Facebook: Roberto Pizza Romana