Dom’s Pizza delivers a slice of passion
Published:Thursday | January 23, 2025 | 5:04 PMO brian Wynter/Gleaner Writer - -
For Dominic Pearson, Dom’s Pizza is a labour of love rather than merely a business. And, as a full-time employee and head of New Business (Sales) at Roast Meats, Pearson uses his passion and culinary skills to craft pizzas that are anything but typical. Spotted at the New Wave Block Party on Sunday, Pearson brought tantalising assortment of pizzas at the recently held New Wave Block Party.
“This is really just a hobby for me. I do pop-ups and catering occasionally. When I’m doing an event, I announce it on Instagram, and people can come, order, and experience something different,” Pearson told Food.
Pearson began making pizza to satisfy his craving for more traditional thin-crust options, which were hard to find in Jamaica. His journey started in 2011, experimenting with pizza stones and home ovens, but it wasn’t until the COVID-19 lockdowns in 2019 and 2020 that his hobby truly gained momentum.
“During the lockdown when we were all stuck at home, I saw everybody on the internet like, ‘oh, we’re making bread and we’re doing this or that’. So I was like, oh, I make pizza so let me make some pizza for the hell of it,” he said.
“In the first month of lockdown, I made about 30 pizzas, more than I had made in the previous five years combined. I just kept improving by repetition. Eventually,
I started offering pizza kits for people to make at home and later invested in a portable outdoor oven to take the heat out of my kitchen,” Pearson recalled while laughing.
Dom’s Pizza took off from there. Pearson then started hosting pop-ups and catering to private events after receiving encouragement from friends and Instagram followers. His distinctive method, which combined regional ingredients like Scotch bonnet with traditional Italian methods, immediately won him a devoted following.
For New Wave Block Party, Pearson rolled out the night’s menu, featuring his famous Spicy Pizza, which had cheese, jalapeños, hot honey, Roast Meats salami, and nduja, a spreadable Italian salami with Scotch bonnet.
The Rosa, a bold combination of parmesan, olive oil, red onions, pistachios, and rosemary, offered a unique choice for adventurous palates. No pizza menu would be complete without the classic margherita, featuring fresh mozzarella, basil, and olive oil. To cater to a diverse audience, Pearson collaborated with Chef Maya Jackson from Ocho Rios to create a vegan pizza using homemade vegan cheese.
Pearson’s love of quality and creativity is what sets Dom’s Pizza apart. In addition to showcasing his technical proficiency, his pizzas use premium ingredients from his day job at Roast Meats. He clarifies, “I use those products in whatever I’m doing. It’s a fantastic way to introduce people to flavours they might not otherwise know.”
Favourites of the crowd? According to Pearson, “The Spicy Pizza is unquestionably the most popular, followed by the Pistachio Rosa and then the Margarita.”
He declares, “I am really looking forward to doing more of these pop up events where I get to interact with different types of people and just getting more people to try my style of pizza. So for 2025, I am hoping to do more of these types of events where people can just come and purchase a pizza and where variety is a little more available.”