Spotlight on Dat’z Italian wood-fired pizza

Picture of Dat’z Italian’s N’awlins Muffaletta pizza, courtesy of Dat’z Italian.

Shelly Forte has always loved to cook, but owning a mobile pizza company was never what she imagined.

Maybe it was in the cards, though, when she met Joe, her second husband. Their first date was at a pizza place.

“We loved traveling to all the festivals and hearing the music,” Joe says. “One way we could experience all that and bring people food was through this mobile wood-fired pizza idea I had.”

Shelly and Joe have now been married four years. Just last year, they started their own business—Dat’z Italian, an authentic wood-fired pizza mobile service based in their hometown of Walker that’s available for catering, festivals and private events.

Thanks to some word of mouth and regular appearances at the Hammond Farmers Market, Dat’z Italian is picking up more business. A few weekends ago, Baton Rougeans got a taste of the pizzas at the annual Fest for All celebration downtown.

“When we started, we were pretty much taking anything we could to get our name out,” Joe says. “After we hooked up with the Hammond Farmers Market, we’ve had more and more followers that would come just for our pizza. Then, we started getting more invites to attend festivals.”

Through working with farmers market vendors, Shelly started thinking about different toppings rather than the usual pepperoni, tomatoes and cheese. Dat’z Italian’s offerings include a Muffaletta pizza, kale and italian sausage and the ever-popular Dat’z a Sunrise, a breakfast pizza with a sunny-side-up egg and your choice of meat on a bed of spinach, pesto and mozzarella.

“I want this to be more than just traditional pizza,” she says. “I come from a family who are very good cooks. My mother is a gourmet cook, and my grandmother is full-blooded Italian.”

The pizzas are 10-12 inches and are done in about 90 seconds. With the use of the oven, the flavors of the fresh-made ingredients are locked into the pizza.

“This is the original way,” she says. “We’ve only been married for four years, but he had this dream. His vision was to do pizza. His dream became my dream. We’re our own bosses, answering to ourselves and the community and the people who love what we’re doing.”

As for that pizza place that was the spot of their first date?

“Oh, I can’t remember what it was,” Joe says, laughing. “It’s not as good as ours.”

For more information on Dat’z Italian, click here or call 397-2174.