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“Every one thought I was crazy to open at this corner. Metcalfe and Gilmour?”

It will sound odd today, but pizza was relatively new to Ottawa in 1967, so they put the actual pie-making on the Metcalfe corner with big windows, so locals could see the flipping dough, steaming ovens, and witness the pizza miracle firsthand.

The Colonnade secret? The best dough, says Dahdouh, a secret-ingredient tomato sauce, and a custom-made cheese from a place called Oak Grove, in New Hamburg, Ont., that costs about $15 a kilo and covers some 350 pizzas every day.

(To this day, says Dahdouh, only two or three people at the downtown location — all family — know how to make the sauce and dough.)

He says they were so particular about the brick cheese that they flew up an agent from Oak Grove to perfect the variety to withstand 10 or 12 minutes in a 450-degree oven — the Colonnade has seven — without getting oily.

In 50 years, of course there are stories. Kim Campbell, for instance, lived on the fifth floor right next door. It was not rare for Dahdouh to deliver a hot pie to the apartment door of the future prime minister.

Pierre Trudeau, he says, came screaming down Gilmour the wrong way one day, with a little kid named Justin in the front seat of a ragtop Mercedes. Dahdouh went to scold him until he established who it was. A note of apology later arrived from the PMO, he says, and he’s still cursing himself for misplacing it.

There are now five other Colonnades in town but these are franchises, under the wing of son Peter, says Dahdouh, who still comes in every day, but only for a handful of hours (though all day Friday).

“If I can’t come downtown and spend time with customers, I feel lost.”

Of hobbies, he says he has none. In an era when restaurants change like the seasons, Dahdouh points to a winning formula, which has withstood half a century of city-building and changing tastes.

“The secret is right there. Serve the best product. People know it. You get lucky. Don’t change it. Don’t fool around with it. Be reasonable with your prices.”

To contact Kelly Egan, please call 613-726-5896 or emailkegan@postmedia.com

Twitter.com/kellyegancolumn