Whole lotta dough Shelly’s welcomes La Pizza Week with a hefty bannock-taco pie By: David Sanderson Posted: 7:00 PM CDT Monday, May. 8, 2023

Remember the big pizza pie that singer Dean Martin went on about in the 1950s hit That’s Amore?

Well, when it comes to magnitude, it’s a safe bet Martin’s ‘za had nothing on what they’ve been serving up at Shelly’s Indigenous Bistro during La Pizza Week, a cross-country celebration of all things doughy that kicked off last Monday, and runs until May 14.

Vince Bignell is the owner of Shelly’s, which opened in mid-April at 1364 Main St., the former home of Bulldog Pizza. Bignell is a member of Mathias Colomb First Nation, and is a firm believer in the saying “size matters.” That explains why his La Pizza Week entry, a 15-inch taco pizza on a bannock crust, measures close to four centimetres thick in the middle, and tips the scales at a shade under five pounds. It’s loaded with beef, tomato, green pepper, salsa, sour cream and — the pizza-de-résistance — crushed Doritos.

During his first week of operation, he was offering bannock tacos as a lunch special. Then Catherine Li, whom he describes as his friend, mentor and partner, asked him to make her the biggest bannock taco he could.

The end result looked more like a pizza than a taco, he says, seated next to Li at one of two tables situated inside the largely takeout locale.

“Because he was still getting his feet under him, he didn’t sign up for (La Pizza Week) until the very last day (April 27),” Li chimes in. “When they asked what he was planning to do, a bannock taco pizza seemed like an ideal choice.”

In addition to pizza, Shelly’s Indigenous Bistro serves burgers, wings, wraps and an intriguing concoction billed as kubasa fried rice. It is Bignell’s first foray as a restaurateur. Truth be told, it wasn’t until five years ago that the 39-year-old discovered he was a natural in the kitchen.

Bignell, who moved to Winnipeg from Thompson at age 17, describes himself as a plain eater, early on.

“Pizza Pops, poutine, spaghetti… all carbs, pretty much,” he says, sporting a black chef’s jacket and matching chef beanie. After landing an entry-level position at a North Kildonan café, where he was eventually granted the opportunity to develop recipes of his own, he fell in love with cooking and the benefits it provided.

“Vince got into cooking because of me. As a part of intergenerational trauma, he was able to find healing through food, as well as figure out a lot about himself as a person,” says Li, who isn’t actively involved at Shelly’s, but has been known to roll up her sleeves to help the six-person staff, almost all of whom are Indigenous. (“That’s Naya, we call her the bannock queen,” she says, nodding at a woman fastidiously flattening a mound of batter with a stainless steel rolling pin.)

COVID-19 wasn’t kind to Bignell. Last fall, he was working at a café that closed its doors, following a tumultuous two-and-a-half years. He was still trying to figure out his next steps when the owners of Bulldog Pizza, whom he’d met previously, reached out a few weeks before Christmas. They weren’t going to be renewing their lease. They wondered if he was interested in the soon-to-be-vacant spot.

Bignell took possession of the premises at the start of the year. A slew of renovations followed, such as removing a stage area, and converting the bar-and-restaurant side of things into “more of a commissary,” which will allow him to offer large-scale catering, a longtime goal of his.

While he was waiting for all that to be completed, he kept busy by first settling on a menu.

People from the immediate neighbourhood were already accustomed to heading there for pizza.

He felt he’d be remiss if he didn’t follow suit. (Exhibit A: the North Ender, a 15-inch behemoth topped with bologna, pepperoni, beef, diced kubasa and onions.)

His mom was the inspiration for the bannock crust. After suffering an aneurysm, she became ultra-sensitive to yeast, so much so that she couldn’t even be in a house where it was fermenting. He still enjoyed eating pizza when she came to visit, so he substituted bannock for a more conventional crust; friends and other family members who sampled it said repeatedly, “Vince, this is too good to keep to yourself.”

Secondly, he needed to come up with a tag for the biz. Li explains that Shelly, the name above the door, is a 91-year-old woman they were introduced to about five years ago, when they were both struggling with, “not addictions, but definitely unhealthy habits.”

“She really helped straighten us out, by making us focus on things like self-development,” Li says, with Bignell nodding his head in agreement. “Neither one of us grew up knowing our grandparents, and she became our nana… our honourary godmother.”

“She’s also a bit of a foodie and makes jokes like how at her age, there’s no sex, there’s only food,” Bignell adds with a chuckle.

“She really enjoys Asian cuisine, and she inspired me to learn how to do things like butter chicken, as well as a Thai peanut sauce I plan to use in daily specials, like Thai peanut pork.”

Shelly’s Indigenous Bistro hasn’t even celebrated its one-month anniversary yet, but Bignell is already planning for what lies ahead. He intends to partner with Ready, Set, Go! Work Program, a non-profit organization that assists Indigenous and marginalized people who are seeking employment.

Also, because he hates seeing food go to waste, he has begun working with charities in the area to provide them with whatever is left over at the end of the day.

One more thing: understanding that a pizza weighing roughly the same as a gallon of ice cream is probably too daunting for some diners, Bignell is shopping around for an industrial roller that should thin things out a bit.

“People always make the comment, ‘Wow, that’s one thick pizza,’ when they spot us boxing up their order.

“That’s when I tell them if they think it’s thick now, they should have seen what I was making for my mom when I started experimenting with bannock crusts. Now those were thick,” he says, holding his thumb and index fingers 10 centimetres apart.

david.sanderson@freepress.mb.ca