As owners consider retirement, Dartmouth pizzeria still offers a slice of fading N.S. culinary tradition
Pizza Tonight's Nadia and Jim Tohme credit customer loyalty - and real bacon - for 35 years of success.
Walking into Pizza Tonight reminds me of escaping the tyranny of high school cafeteria lunches when I was 17 years old.
This is a pizzeria reminiscent of the teenage diet in small-town Nova Scotia circa 1997, when we dined at places like Pizza Tonight for a slice of the good life.
Owners Nadia and Jim Tohme joined the wave of immigrants who came to Nova Scotia in the 1980s during the Lebanese Civil War. They found a home and a life selling pizza in Dartmouth. After 35 years, Nadia says they are ready to sell the business, but she’s having a hard time letting go of their connection to the neighbourhood.
“Our success comes from our community,” Nadia says. “They became like our families.”
After she prepares a pot of strong Lebanese coffee, she invites me to sit for a cup of the stove-top, espresso-style brew.
“We don’t sell it but all our customers, they try it,” she says.
There aren’t too many places like Pizza Tonight anymore. Their pie is so heavy with cheese and toppings you should stop yourself at one slice, but you force-feed yourself a second. My pizza and garlic fingers both have real bacon, a rarity in the modern pizza landscape where cost trumps product. You can’t compete with a $5 pie from Little Caesar’s when families, pressed for time and oppressed by bills, need to get food in front of the kids — unless you care enough to reward customers for their loyalty.
The care and customer service need to be as real as the bacon, Nadia says.
“The customers, they help us to make the recipe perfect,” she says.
She and Jim arrived in Nova Scotia from Lebanon in 1988. They opened their first store in 1990 and Pizza Tonight in 1991. Nadia says they didn’t know how to make pizza when they started. Their customers helped them with their patience and feedback while they found their way, she says. They prepare their food the same way they built their business; from scratch.
The pizza is dense. The soft, thick dough is the kind that made Lebanese pizza famous for my generation, the same culinary tradition that gave Halifax its official food: The donair.
Nadia says there’s always room in the market for good pizza, but the secret ingredient for success seems to be a lot of hard work. For 35 years, she says they’ve only taken one morning off a week.
“Monday — when my children, they were small, just to have time to sit down with them.”
She and Jim still open the restaurant at 4:00 p.m., even on their “day off.” Nadia says when she wakes up, she comes to the store to feel at home, and the locals are as loyal to the brand as Nadia and Jim are to their business.
“When they come home from Alberta they call from the airport to order,” says Steve Townsend, who drives delivery for Pizza Tonight. “These guys are an institution.”
Jim is busy cooking while I’m at the store. I order the “Big Twin Pizzas” special: A sixteen-inch pizza and a 16-inch garlic fingers for $40. You can upgrade the garlic fingers to a second pizza for an extra $5. I order my pizza with the works and get a large serving of bacon on both, but half the garlic fingers are bacon free — the original recipe celebrated in Pizza Tonight’s online reviews.
My family puts a healthy dent in the food, but the two pizzas feed four adults and four children at an average of $5 per person with enough leftovers for one or two lunchboxes. Everyone is happy with the product. The kids, who are still afraid of everything except cheese, pick off some toppings, but the food makes the rest of us nostalgic for a style that’s changing. This isn’t the kind of gourmet pizza that’s en vogue with the stone oven, traditional, thin crust crowd. This is the Lebanese-style soft-crust pizza that Nova Scotians of my generation grew up with.
The same quality goes into everything on the menu, says Jim.
“Try one thing, I promise you come back for it again,” he says.
They learned about their customers’ lives over the years, Jim says. When they rented movies (before streaming, when a family would watch Back to the Future with their pizza on Friday night) they collected addresses and phone numbers.
“We’re like bartenders, we know everything about our customers,” Jim says.
Nadia and Jim are both in their 60s and looking to sell their business, like a lot of the Lebanese families who helped define the taste of pizza for decades in Nova Scotia. Nadia says the culture of the neighbourhood is changing with the food, and none of her children are interested in the business.
“I wish they can take over,” she says. “They have their own life.”
There is one glimmer of hope.
“My granddaughter,” Nadia says. “She says if I stay in the business, she will take over.”
Nadia says it would be nice to pass on the legacy, but when she and Jim find the right buyer, they are ready to sell. She says she will miss the community, but it’s time to slow down.
“When I have a coffee, I don’t want to rush. I just want to enjoy life a little bit.”