Shokas Pizza Co.

A Shokago deep dish is built upside down. The deep crust gets a layer of mozzarella on the bottom, the toppings stack through the middle, the house pizza sauce goes over the top, and parmesan finishes it — the reverse of the order a thin-crust pie expects. It is the dish Shokas Pizza Co. is built to be known for, and the one that separates this Sherwood Village kitchen from the rest of Sarnia's pizza counters. Everything else on the menu reads as an argument that the inversion was not a gimmick.

The signature pizzas make the case for the rest of it. Chicken Mediterranean layers chicken, feta, red onion, garlic tomatoes, black olives, balsamic glaze, and oregano over a light tomato base — the brightest order on a menu that otherwise leans rich. Sweet Chili Chicken piles on mushrooms, red peppers, broccoli, and grated carrot; Sweet BBQ comes with chicken or steak, caramelized onion, and red peppers; the Margherita stays spare with bocconcini, cherry tomatoes, and fresh basil. For tables that would rather drive the order themselves, build-your-own pies run from nine to eighteen inches, with stuffed-crust add-ons and a long topping list. The sauces are made in house, which is the detail that keeps a build-your-own program from tasting like everyone else's.

The rest of the menu refuses to coast on the pies. The pasta reaches well past red sauce: Braised Beef Ravioli arrives seven pieces deep in a Shiraz demi-cream with caramelized mushrooms and cherry tomatoes; Butternut Squash Ravioli comes eight pieces in a brown-sugar-and-sage cream finished with spinach and carrot; Tagliatelle with Chorizo runs spicy, with caper berries, olives, and a plum-tomato-basil sauce cut by chile oil. Creamy Chicken Linguine works in bacon and asparagus under a parmesan cream, and the Chicken Parmesan keeps a breaded-and-baked classic on hand for the table that wants one. Calzones get brushed with garlic oil and asiago before they bake, and the oven-baked wings come tossed or sauced on the side across eight choices, from honey garlic to lemon pepper. This is a kitchen that wants the diner who came for pizza to notice there was a reason to read further.

The supporting cast is built for sharing. Starters run from breadsticks brushed with garlic oil and parmesan to eight-ounce battered mushroom caps and deep-fried pickles. The Greek salad is the standard build — romaine, Kalamata olives, feta, and a house Greek dressing — sized to land in the middle of a table rather than in front of one person. Dessert keeps two chocolate options on hand, including a flourless triple-chocolate cake marked gluten free, which is often the only safe finish on a menu this carbohydrate-forward.

That breadth pays off in how Shokas actually gets used. The two-pizza deals — matched pairs at every size — are the practical answer when a table can't agree, and the classic large combo bundles a large pizza with ten wings and a garden salad into a single order built for a group. Breadsticks and a four-pack of pop slot on as an add-on for the night that needs rounding out. Shokas runs on the phone rather than the reservation book: there is no online booking, just a call-to-order line, with takeout and delivery carrying much of the week. It is a six-day kitchen, closed Mondays, leaning on the weeknight pickup more than the lingering table.

Since opening on Murphy Road in 2015, Shokas has settled into the role a neighbourhood pizza kitchen plays best — the reliable answer on a Friday, the order a family repeats without rethinking it, the kind of place that quietly does more than its sign promises. The deep dish is the first thing people learn about it. The Shiraz demi-cream on the ravioli is the kind of thing they find out later, usually by accident, when someone orders past the pizza and the rest of the table wishes they had.