Same great pizza, new location

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This article was published 06/11/2017 (3122 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Steffen Zinn, of Starbuck, is bringing his made-from-scratch pizzas featuring local ingredients to a new crowd.

Zinn, 37, and partner Quin Ferguson, 29, recently opened the Red Ember Common restaurant in The Forks Market. It features 18 seats around a marble counter and the showpiece is a large gleaming Forza Forni pizza oven imported from Naples, Italy.

“It’s the first one in Canada. I saw it at the Las Vegas Pizza Expo,” Zinn said.

The electric oven is capable of baking 10 11-to-12-inch pizzas at once, but Zinn said the maximum number is usually six as the baking time is just 90 seconds.

“We usually can’t take orders quite that fast,” he laughed.

Zinn, an experienced chef, has operated the Red Ember food truck for the past five years, serving pizzas cooked in a wood-fired, custom built oven to customers at St. Norbert Farmers Market on Wednesdays and Saturdays and the lunch crowd on Broadway on weekdays.

“Wedding catering has also become a big thing for us,” he said. He, Ferguson and the Red Ember staff served up pizza to between 45 and 200 people at each of 13 weddings this year. They are already fully booked for catering in July and August 2018.

Zinn said they are willing to travel to any location within about a two-hour drive of Winnipeg as long as the customer pays the mileage cost.

As in the food truck, Red Ember’s Forks location features pizzas made with dough containing organic flour milled at Prairie Flour Mills in Elie. The pork used for toppings comes from Berkshire pigs raised by Zinn’s mother Monika and brother Andreas at Zinn Farms near Springstein. Other ingredients such as honey used in the Hot & Honey pizza come from local growers such as Phil’s Honey in Starbuck.

Zinn said he purchased the hundreds of tomatoes that he’s cooked up into 8,000 pounds of tomato sauce from St. Norbert Market vendors.

He also managed to source San Marzano tomatoes for Red Ember’s authentic Margherita pizza.
He plans to start curing meats in the kitchen at his new location in the next few months.

The food truck is usually on the road from the end of April to Thanksgiving weekend, and Zinn said he’d thought about opening a stationary location for a few years.

“It was always part of the business plan to open a bricks and mortar location.”

When The Forks put a call out for local restauranteurs to open up food outlets at the remodelled Forks Commons, Zinn thought it would be a good opportunity for his business.

“They were looking for proven local businesses,” he said.

Zinn believes that The Forks business will allow him and Ferguson to develop a larger customer base as well as serve out-of-town visitors.

The Forks location is licensed to serve beer and wine. The menu includes eight types of pizza, as well as meatballs and salads.

Zinn said the luncheon crowd seems to favour pizzas but those who come for dinner will order a drink and salad along with their pizza.

He’s excited about an upcoming appearance by celebrity pizza chef Franco Pepe from Naples. Pepe will be cooking at Red Ember on Sat., Nov. 18 from 2 to 4 p.m. at a wine pairing event.

For more information about the luncheon, see http://www.theforks.com/events/calendar-of-events#event_2518_20171118_

The Red Ember’s Facebook page can be found at https://www.facebook.com/The-Red-Ember-110251605812471/