PORT HOOD: Pizza making, for Christian Hicks, is a way of taking homegrown ingredients and transforming them into something that highlights his heritage and his family name, not to mention allows him to work shoulder-to-shoulder with his significant other.
“I see this as more than a pizzeria,” Hicks said, chatting with The Reporter outside the doors of Pizzeria Ascente. “It’s a way of celebrating local food that comes from the island and tapping into the local food systems that we have here. That’s the exciting part. We have so much great stuff on this island, so many great things being produced here.”
The pizzeria is a food trailer located at 204 Shore Road; a lot located about 1.4 kilometers from Route 19 (Port Hood side). Ordinarily, the food trailer’s parking area is crowded with vehicles, making the eatery hard to miss.
When speaking to The Reporter, Hicks was joined by his business partner and wife, Gerri MacDonald. Chef Hicks calls the shots in the kitchen, and MacDonald takes care of all the other moving parts required to make the business work.
The couple met in Abu Dhabi several years ago, where both were working as educators.
MacDonald is from Port Hood, and Chef Christian is originally from Michigan. His family also lived in Ontario, in years gone by. Italian cookery is something that comes naturally to the chef, considering his heritage.
Originally, his family name was Ascente.
“Naming the pizzeria is a way to bring the family name back,” he said, noting that his great great-grandfather was a Sicilian immigrant, Alfonzo Ascente. Finding employment was easier with an English-sounding name, so the family became Hicks.
One thing that never changed for the family was the smell of great food wafting from their kitchen.
“My great grand-mother – I use a lot of her tricks,” Hicks said. “For instance, I put whole carrots in my sauce when I boil it to extract the sugar. That’s something that was passed onto me, and it makes a way better sauce. I don’t put any sugar in any of my sauces.”
Hicks is Italian on his dad’s side, but he noted his mom is a great cook too. It would have been hard for him not to pick up some skills, he said, considering the cooking with which he grew up.
The Pizzeria Ascente menu offers traditional favourites, but also available are flavour combinations rarely seen locally. One of the chef’s personal favourites is a red onion pistachio pizza that, he noted, is getting great reviews.
“It’s got the sweetness of the red onion, but the ground pistachio adds a richness to it,” he said. “It’s a rich and sweet flavour. The fatty oil from the nut replaces the fatty oil that meat would ordinarily provide.”
While the eatery is doing great business, it’s just one part of what Hicks and MacDonald are up to. The couple owns a 20-acre parcel of land where Hicks is overseeing his own culinary mushroom farm. Growing his own ingredients, he said, is a bonus in a number of ways.
“Not only does it have a smaller carbon footprint, but it’s just fresher and better – more nutrient rich,” he said. “When we moved back two years ago, I had just taken two courses from Cornell Small Farms online, and that led me into mycology. I’m growing four or five varieties of mushrooms now.
“I was always interested in growing things, farming, and cooking was a prerequisite. We were all expected to cook. We grew up in that culture.”
Hicks has a support system of 15 or so farms from which he buys local ingredients.
The Cape Breton Partnership helped him craft a business plan that included outreach to local producers, and the Cape Breton Food Hub has proven invaluable, he said.
Once that business plan was fleshed out, Hicks approached CBCD InRich to see what assists were in place to help small business. The InRich board voted unanimously to greenlight Hicks for the CBDC First-Time Entrepreneur Loan program, which provided the seed money to get things moving.
“I’m bowled over by the community resources that are out there for people like myself,” he said.
The pizzeria will remain open to October. There’s a possibility the trailer will be open for pop-up days during the winter. Hicks and MacDonald are open to catering events too.
In the meantime, Pizzeria Ascente is open Wednesday to Sunday from 11 am – 2 pm (counter service for slices) and from 5 pm to 9 pm (pre-ordered pie pick-ups). The orders have to be placed the day of pick-up, and that can be done by calling the pizzeria at 902-984-1124.
MacDonald said she was very pleased with the response she and her husband are getting. Since opening, the pizzeria was sold out multiple times, showing what kind of demand is out there for quality slices. She said she and Hicks truly appreciate the community support, and she invites people who haven’t yet stopped in to do so.
“People are welcome to pop in or call us,” she said. “But dropping by is best.
“It’s always nice to have a chat.”