Hearthstone Pizza

Pizza is honest food: dough, sauce, cheese, and heat, done right or done wrong with nowhere to hide. Hearthstone Pizza is an independent restaurant at 25-2755 Lougheed Highway in Port Coquitlam, out on the stretch of the highway that carries commuters between Coquitlam, PoCo, and Pitt Meadows every day. That corridor is lined with strip plazas and stand-alone shops, the kind of places that live on repeat customers from the blocks around them rather than on destination traffic.

Port Coquitlam suits this kind of place. The city of about 62,500 keeps its main-street feel on Shaughnessy Street, the heritage strip that serves as the old downtown, while the highway edges do the everyday commercial work. On grey, rainy evenings, which is most evenings from October through March, a local pizza shop is the easiest answer to the supper question. Order ahead when you can, ask how the kitchen handles a rush, and give it grace during a downpour; the Pacific Northwest teaches everyone to plan around the weather, including the person tossing your dough. Ask whether the dough is made in-house and how long it proofs; those two answers say a lot about a pizzeria's priorities.