Pizza Arca, New Hamburg, Ontario

A road trip always means a culinary adventure because you never know what you will discover. Many smaller communities scattered through-out Ontario have some of the best home style cooked foods you will ever taste and that is due the fact it cooked very much like you would cook at home. The food is fresh, cooked to order and usually a good value for your restaurant food dollar. The food is not fast food the service tends to be quite good, well worth the little extra time it takes to be served. Slowing down to the speed of life and enjoying a bit of face to face conversation while waiting for your food to be served is a great way to unwind from the fast paced lifestyle many of us lead.

Pizza Arca

New Hamburg is a smaller community located on Hwy 7 about 25 km east of Stratford, Ontario. Stratford is home to the Stratford Shakespeare Festival and the esteemed Stratford Chefs School featured on Food Network Canada's Chef's School. The area in general is one of the oldest in Ontario so features beautiful, old archecture and picturesque smaller communities where it is easy to find several restaurants featuring good, old fashion home cooked meals. Don't let that fool you though as there are also several fine dining establishments such as Rundles Restaurant (average cost per person $110) in Stratford and Puddicombe House (average cost per person $60) in New Hamburg.
Pizza Arca is located at 98 Peel Street in New Hamburg, Ontario. If you are in the New Hamburg area this is definitely the place to buy pizza! This is a small pizzeria located in a small building that was a former private bank. Much of the exterior and interior details from the original use have been retained. Pizza Arca specializes in take-out only gourmet pizzas. You can call ahead with your order so your pizzas are ready when you arrive for pick-up or you can order then browse around the quaint little town while you wait for your pizza order.

Gourmet Pizzas

On this particular road trip the kids picked up 5 large gourmet pizzas at a cost of about $65 so averaging $16.25 per pizza. Pictured are the pizzas: Hawaiian (1), Cheese (2), Pepperoni (3), Mediterranean (4). The crust was regular, nicely crisped. The tomato based sauce had a rich, nicely seasoned flavour. The Hawaiian pizza was topped with ham, pineapple and mozzarella cheese. The Cheese pizza was sauce and mozzarella cheese only. The Pepperoni pizza also had mushrooms. The Mediterranean was my favourite with black and green olives, bacon, red onion, mozzarella and Feta cheeses. [edited] Not pictured is the Arca Special. (Please see comments).