The first-ever Pizza Wars are on this week in Niverville.

Executive Director of the Chamber of Commerce, Bre-Ann Boulet says the inspiration for the event came about after a recent Niverville Town Council Strategic Planning Meeting.

"Our Mayor, Myron Dyck came up with the idea to lean into our pizza reputation and to make it a celebration of pizza in this town, and so, that's where it started. And here we are, this is our first week and we look forward to doing this again.”

Boulet talks about the 5 participating Niverville restaurants during a Pizza Wars town tour earlier this week.

“So, we started today off at Domino's Pizza. They are new to town and have been getting a great reception. They are also donating a dollar for each pizza to a non-profit charity in Niverville which is awesome. We love the community aspect and the community engagement from our businesses.”

Domino's Pizza stuffed oven-baked breadsticks stuffed with white cheddar, mozzarella cheese and loaded with tender slices of Philly steak, onions, green peppers and mushrooms and more.

 

“Then we headed over to Chicken Chef, where Laura and her team did a great job of putting a special creative pizza together. It was absolutely phenomenal."

Chicken Chef - Chef's "Honey Blaze" Pizza is a flavorful fusion of sweet and tangy. It's got a homemade dough, signature pizza sauce, creamy goat cheese, melted mozza cheese, salami slices, topped with crispy banana peppers and drizzled with hot honey. 

 

"And then we moved on to Hespeler's Cookhouse and Tavern, which was great there too. We had the chef personally make it, and it was absolutely delicious, did not disappoint.”

Hespeler's - FFG (Fantastic Fig and Goat) is a flatbread with a creamy balsamic sauce topped with goat and mozza cheese with sliced figs, walnuts, topped with spring mix greens and a balsamic glaze.

 

“Then we headed to Santa Lucia, and they really leaned into the town aspect of the Niverville MJHL Nighthawks team with their “Nest” pizza, and that was just so creative and delicious."

Santa Lucia - "The Nighthawk" comes with their famous BBQ sauce, boneless dry ribs chopped up and tossed with lemon pepper. There's pineapple, homemade electric honey drizzle and more boneless dry ribs sprinkled on top.  

 

"And now here we are at Pizza Pizza. So, a really great uptake so far."

Pizza Pizza - Gourmet thin creamy mushroom Florentine with spinach, and six-cheese blend on their signature creamy garlic base. 

Boulet says everyone has done a great job with their Pizza Wars presentations, "In fact, some of the other restaurants who weren't able to participate this year, have already let us know they’re really interested in participating next year.”

She admits that Pizza Wars is a promotion to showcase Niverville’s restaurants, but it was also intended to build the whole community.

“It’s National Pizza Month, so we decided to play on that a little bit, but we also wanted to coincide the Pizza Wars with our town community garage sale that happened this past weekend. We knew we were going to have a lot of people in town, and it did not disappoint. We also wanted to provide a little bit of extra something for people to look forward to.”

The originator of this idea, Mayor Myron Dyck shares his excitement about Pizza Wars. "While some other communities have done Burger Wars or things like that, I know we've had several pizza eateries come to town over the years, and some people kind of half suggested that with the amount of pizza per capita that we have here, perhaps we should change our name from Niverville to Pizzaville.”

Dyck continues, “We think this is a great opportunity to showcase what we have. And I just wanted to take the time to encourage people, whether residents from our community to get out to these fine eateries, as well as people that are not from Niverville, who haven't been here recently, but you know, that’s a lot going on here, why not come check out the pizza for sure, and just take a chance to, you know, drive around and see what else is going on in the community. We'd love to have you here.”

Boulet says the event has been getting a lot of feedback as Niverville and area residents visit the five restaurants participating in Pizza Wars. "There have already been a lot of votes for people’s favorite pizza.”

She adds one can vote by visiting the Niverville Chamber’s social media pages where they have a QR code. “You can also e-mail the chamber directly and all people who submit a vote get entered into a draw to get some gift cards to all these fabulous restaurants, and we love that, and obviously we love anytime we have a chance to go out and eat as much pizza as we can."

Niverville's Pizza Wars continues until Friday, May 10.