Great food can be found in the most unexpected of places. In fact, that almost seems like a rule; the less auspicious the venue, the better the food is.
Stoked Artisan Pizza is the very epitome of this. The restaurant is practically non-existent—a simple canvas pop-up shelter—and their location varies on a daily basis, from one southern New Brunswick farmers’ market to another. Despite these unlikely conditions, they’re turning out what may be the best pizzas in the province.
The background.
The husband and wife duo of Frouke de Poel and Jos de Graaf moved to Canada in 2016, first immigrating from the Netherlands to Ontario. A year later, however, the pair found themselves moving to New Brunswick.
“We both found that Ontario reminded us too much of the Netherlands. Way too rush rush. People there suggested that New Brunswick would fit our mindset and lifestyle better. So, we thought let’s give it a try,” says Frouke, “and we fell in love as soon as we crossed the border with Quebec.”
The two came perfectly equipped to work in the food industry, having picked up plenty of experience in both Canada and the Netherlands. Jos has two culinary degrees and has worked in kitchens for more than a decade, and Frouke is a trained barista who has worked for a coffee roaster and in independent coffee shops.
When they arrived in New Brunswick, they quickly discovered a market for themselves. Obviously, it was going to be food-based, but they found an appeal and practicality in working on a small scale with locally sourced ingredients. They also wanted to do something a little bit different with an emphasis on quality and a huge demand.
Handcrafted artisanal pizza being served up at farmers’ markets ticked off all the right boxes. It was a perfect fit, especially considering that they describe their skillset—despite their Dutch heritage—as a marriage that represents the beautiful Italian way of life: “simple, yet full of flavour, quality ingredients, and less is more!”
When Frouke and Jos launched Stoked Artisan Pizza on July 1st of this year, it turned out to be an instant success.
What to expect.
This brings us to the pizza itself, or at least the style of it. This isn’t just pizza, this is pizza. This is pizza as the Italians intended pizza to be: Neapolitan style.
Now, to be clear, there is pizza and there is pizza. One is a big ol’ greasy slice that can be found on most street corners and lingering in your arteries for years to come, and the other is an art form that is literally protected by the Associazione Vera Pizza Napoletana in much the same way that champagne only comes from the Champagne region of France (everything else is simply ‘sparkling tomato bread’). Both are delicious, but the devil is in the details.
This is the sort of pizza that people get obsessed over. From technique to ingredients—never mind being a card-carrying member of the AVPN—there are a lot of ways to get it wrong and more than a few ways to craft something passable. When it’s done right, though, it is downright magical, and Stoked Artisan Pizza is, undoubtedly, getting it right.
Neapolitan-style pizza is more a quality-over-quantity experience. Don’t expect something 15-inches around, heaped up with the works. The texture is just as much a crucial part of this as its flavour, and Neapolitan pizzas tend to run on the side of thinner and smaller.
As Fourka and Jos said, the key is largely in the simplicity. This isn’t necessarily the standard tri-coloured arrangement of a Margherita—this is Neapolitan-style pizza, after all, with still plenty of toppings to choose from—but a matter of getting the basics just right and putting the emphasis on a few select ingredients.
Most aficionados, Frouke and Jos included, will tell you that it all comes down to the dough.
“The dough is the most important part of it: a thin crust, crispy on the outside, soft and pillowy on the inside,” says Frouke. “It’s important for the flavour of the dough to have time to develop and be well balanced. My husband starts the process of making the dough for the weekend markets on Tuesday!
“Of course, it’s also very important to have quality fresh toppings for the pizza.”
Something old. Something new.
According to Frouke, their pepperoni pizza is, by far, their most popular, and I can’t disagree, having now gone back myself several times for another fix. It’s like finding your favourite flavour of ice cream and deciding to stick with it for the rest of your life. There might be other, better flavours out there, but is it really worth the risk?
Leaning into their desire for locally sourced ingredients, they source their pepperoni from Elke’s BBQ in nearby Lower Cambridge. It fits deliciously on an already perfectly balanced triumvirate of cheese, sauce and dough. This is practically a religious experience that changed my mind completely about Neapolitan pizzas after a lifetime of subpar disappointments.
On the far end of the adventurous pizza spectrum, Stoked Pizza has one topped with smoked salmon, complete with red onion and capers. It’s a little out of the ordinary, but it’s well suited to local tastes and perfectly salty in unexpected ways. It’s wonderful for when you want to step a little outside of your comfort zone, even it really just means combining two of your favourite foods. It definitely works.
The rest of their standard fare includes the almighty and ubiquitous Margherita, an option we think of as the Canadian Jr. (ham, mushroom, and onion) and, for the vegetably-inclined, mushrooms (locally sourced) with garlic scape pesto, and a spinach pizza (with mushrooms and onions). It may not be a massive menu, but they seem to have honed in on a few specialties that are bound to please.
The experience.
Given that Stoked Artisan Pizza can be found almost exclusively at open-air farmers’ markets, the general ambiance is whatever you can make of it. They’re pulling off miracles using two small gas-powered ovens that can cook your pizza in record time, but given the high demand, you can expect a wait of 20-25 minutes. Their top record is turning out 80 pizzas inside of 2.5 hours, putting most pizza spots to shame.
The wait is usually just enough time to quickly tour the rest of the market, without stopping for more than a casual glance at any vendor stalls, before your name is called. It’s quick and simple and subject to the weather, and it’s sort of an ideal compromise to going out for dinner at the moment—or it’s a ready-made picnic, depending on how you want to look at it.
In any case, the idea of really going out for pizza and staying out has proven to be a popular one—so much so, that there’s usually a constant rush of orders coming in and pizzas flying out of the ovens.
“We have been blown away by the reactions and compliments we have received, really incredible! We definitely did not anticipate being as busy as we have been,” says Frouke. “We just wanted to do something fun and exciting really and we got that and much more.”
Where to find them.
Normally, this isn’t the tricky part. Usually, there’s a static location putting the ‘place’ in ‘pizza place.’ The bad news is that you may have to go looking for Stoked Artisan Pizza, but the good news is that they might be coming to you—depending on the day of the week. For the rest of the season, Stoked can be found at The Lupine Market in Hampton (Fridays), the Kingston Farmers Market (Saturdays), and the Quispamsis Farmers Market (Sundays), with hours of operation being posted regularly to their Instagram.
Jos and Frouke also have hopes to expand their business soon. While there aren’t any immediate plans for a brick-and-mortar pizza shop, they do hope to begin catering for events, and they’ll be tackling their first wedding soon. However, they say that once the cold weather hits, they’ll be back to their day jobs until the groundhog sees his shadow.