The crust’s a must For newcomer pizza purveyors, it’s all about crafting solid foundations — in more ways than one By: David Sanderson Posted: 2:00 AM CDT Saturday, Sep. 5, 2026

A recent poll conducted by an Internet-based market-research firm determined that close to 20 per cent of people eschew their leftover pizza crust.

Some argued that the residual crust lacks flavour. Others submitted that it’s too hard or crunchy to enjoy sans toppings. Given that information, what are we to make of Crusty Craft Pizza, a five-month-old takeout spot whose owners are so confident in their European-style pizza crust that they’ve chosen to highlight it in their business moniker?

Whenever somebody informs them they don’t like pizza crust, their response is, well, they haven’t tried theirs, says Oleksii Samokvhal, who together with his wife, Iryna Mehedyn, opened Crusty Craft Pizza in early April, at 1311 Day St. in Transcona.

“It’s thin in the middle, with raised edges we hand-form ourselves,” says Mehedyn, a native of Ukraine who, like her Kyiv-born husband, relocated to Winnipeg to escape the conflict in their home country.

“At some of the bigger (pizza) chains, I wouldn’t want to eat their crust, either, but ours is more bread-like — you can practically have it on its own,” adds Samokvhal. “And because it’s so different from what you typically see in Winnipeg, we thought why not put ‘crust’ in our name?”

Samokvhal was working as a lawyer in Kyiv, when Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022. The then 22-year-old moved to Winnipeg in the fall of that year and met Mehedyn a few weeks later. They were staying at the same Polo Park-area hotel, he explains, and one afternoon, during a meet-and-greet session with other Ukrainian refugees, he was relieved to hear her announce, “My name is Iryna, I’m from Ternopil and I’m turning 19 years old.”

“Of course I thought she was pretty, but I also thought she looked kind of young. So when she said her age I was like, great, in that case maybe I could ask her out,” he says, reaching for her hand.

The two ended up hitting it off. They continued to date after departing the hotel — she to a residence on Keenleyside Street where she lived with her mother, brother and sister, and he to a place in North Kildonan. Samokvhal’s original plan was to continue his law career. He discovered it would be a lengthy process if he wanted to practise in Canada, however, so in order to make ends meet, he caught on as an Uber driver.

Meanwhile, Mehedyn successfully applied at a St. Vital daycare centre, a job she held onto until they welcomed a daughter, Maia, in December 2024, by which juncture they’d purchased a home in Transcona’s Devonshire Park neighbourhood.

In April 2025, Mehedyn began dieting in order to lose weight gained during her pregnancy. Samokvhal admits to having put on a few pounds, as well, and he supported his wife by following suit. By the six-week mark, they’d collectively shed close to 40 pounds, an accomplishment they mutually agreed was deserving of a “cheat” reward.

One of the many things Samokvhal and Mehedyn have in common is a love of cooking. Pizza made from scratch had long been one of their specialties and that’s precisely what they prepared to toast their combined weight loss.

“We did it on the barbecue using a stone and it turned out so well, we invited some friends and family members over a week later, to have it again,” Samokvhal says. “Everybody was saying the same thing: how our pizza was better than most restaurants, and that we should be selling it. Iryna and I discussed it, deciding if pizza was something we actually wanted to do, we should probably learn from the best.”

Around this time last year, they caught a flight to Naples, Italy, where Mehedyn’s aunt had been living since the early 2000s. They spent four weeks in the southern Italian city meeting restaurant owners and studying the ins and outs of Neapolitan pizza: from dough fermentation to manual stretching to baking times.

The experience was definitely memorable, Mehedyn says with a chuckle. She recalls the two of them endlessly posing questions in Ukrainian, which her aunt translated to Italian, to pose to individual pizzaiolos on their behalf. Her aunt then translated the answers back to them, which they’d jot down before firing off yet another query.

It took some doing upon their return to Winnipeg, but the couple ultimately found a location for their fledgling venture — a for-sale pizza joint on Day Street, a mere six-minute drive from their front door. (Samokvhal credits a pair of fellow Ukrainians, the husband-and-wife team behind the Exchange District sushi restaurant Ocean Bites, for guiding him and his wife through the business-plan phase, and assisting them with acquiring the necessary permits.)

They received the keys in February of this year, and spent the following two months renovating the space. If they weren’t painting walls or erecting shelves, they were devising a menu wholly focused on European-style pies boasting fresh mozzarella cheese, as well as premium toppings such as prosciutto cotto, Calabrese salami and smoked salmon.

“I’m not going to lie. We got a few complaints early on from people calling for a basic pepperoni pizza, which we don’t offer,” says Mehedyn, a “huge” fan of the reality cooking show, Masterchef Ukraine, which has been airing since 2011.

“Or perogy pizza, like you see somewhere like Boston Pizza,” Samokvhal interjects. “I guess because we’re Ukrainian they thought that’s something we’d have, only I explained even in Kyiv there is no such thing. That’s purely a Canadian invention.” (They do have a “tropical” pie on the menu, except their rendition replaces ham with roasted chicken, and features Alfredo sauce along with the requisite pineapple.)

Crusty Craft Pizza, which also serves wings, salads and soups, currently has a staff of 10, all of whom are Ukrainian refugees. The same as the owners, everybody has family members living in Ukraine, and they follow events in their homeland with trepidation.

“Personally, my parents are still in Kyiv — I probably talk to them five times a week — but what they keep telling me is they want to stay,” Samokvhal says. “Iryna has cousins there, too, and we think about them all the time, praying that they’re doing as well as can be expected, given the circumstances.”

In regard to themselves, they concur that they couldn’t be happier building a new life together in Canada.

“For Ukrainians, Canada is the best place to be other than home,” Samokvhal says, flashing his left sleeve to show off a red maple leaf affixed to his white Mondetta pullover. “In Germany, you will never be German. In Poland, you will never be Polish. But in Canada, you can definitely be Canadian.”

Finally, they smile when asked if they can believe their luck, given the fact it’s highly unlikely they would have met one another — Ternopil is roughly 400 kilometres west of Kyiv — if they’d remained in Ukraine.

“There’s a saying back home called dolia, which basically means if something is meant to be, it’s going to happen,” Mehedyn says, spelling the word out with a pen on a piece of scrap paper. “So to answer your question, we firmly believe it’s fate — dolia — that brought us together here in Winnipeg.”

(Crusty Craft Pizza is open from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m., Tuesday to Sunday.)

david.sanderson@freepress.mb.ca