Just Pizza
♦ 1629 Kingsway, Vancouver
♦ Follow Steven Che’s Instagram for his pop-up dining event news

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Chef Steven Che loves working with sourdough, and recently opened Just Pizza, which offers not only typical toppings like margherita, pepperoni, and even pineapple and ham, but more adventurous ones too such as chicken tikka masala, cumin lamb, and Filipino breakfast which he says is very popular with a runny egg in the middle.

It’s not his first foray into pizza – he opened Wild Flour Pizza Co in Burnaby in April 2022 and before that worked at Scratch Kitchen in North Vancouver.

The Macau-born Che is in his early 30s and doesn’t just make sourdough pizzas, but also fine dining dishes, having interned three Michelin-starred Maaemo in Oslo, Norway early in his career.

“Working there was the most I ever learned… [It] was one of those restaurants that was like a zero-compromise kind of restaurant where they had unlimited labour, meaning they had people just lined up to work for free [as an intern],” Che explained in an interview with the South China Morning Post last year. 


At Maaemo he started in the hardest section – pastry, but soon became good at it, and later worked in garnish, meat and fish.

It was here that Che learned about telling stories through food and that is what he strives to do in his own elaborate pop-ups he’s presented in Vancouver.

He has created reimagined Chinese dishes that are memories from his childhood, like Dungeness crab congee with Red Fife sourdough miso, lap yuk ragout and leek oil, sourdough scallion pancake with beef tongue, and persimmon with toasted soy, black sesame and century-old egg.

“It really is just an expression of who I am. And it’s like each dish is rooted in memory, and something I love,” he says