Caliente Pizza & Draft House offers taste of camping with S'mores pizza

Pittsburghers who associate S’mores with camping, but haven’t been able to sit around the campfire this summer, can still get their S’mores fix at a local pizza restaurant.

Caliente Pizza & Draft House, with locations in Aspinwall, Bloomfield, Hampton, Monroeville and Mt. Lebanon, has invented a gourmet S’mores pizza. While dessert pizzas are nothing new, this may be taking it to the extreme.

The idea was inspired by Caliente owner Nick Bogacz’s own family camping experiences.

“My family really enjoys camping and we always cook S’mores on the campfire,” said Bogacz. “We love S’mores and we love pizza and I thought, ‘wouldn’t it be great to put the two together? Could we make this into a pizza?’ ”

Bogacz brought the idea to Caliente’s regional chef Eric Von Hansen.

“Eric can take any idea and transform it so when I brought it to him, he elaborated on it.”

S’mores are traditionally made with toasted marshmallows and melted chocolate sandwiched between two graham crackers. Well, like all pizzas, the ingredients for this one start with dough. But you can throw out the graham crackers.

“We put graham crackers on it initially, but it made it too heavy so I started playing around and throwing ideas at the wall,” said Von Hansen. “I decided to start with Nutella Hazelnut Spread and put it on our signature dough with marshmallows on top and then we put it in the oven and finish it with powdered sugar and chocolate sauce. It’s a nice complement to our food.”

Von Hansen said the response has been positive with regular customers ordering it for dessert.

“I think what really appeals to people is the oooey, gooey marshmallow. It takes you back to when you were a child and camped out in the backyard.”

Bogacz said Caliente has always tried to have a signature dessert item and the S’mores pizza seems to be it.

“In the beginning we had frozen cakes and it just didn’t fit our brand,” said Bogacz. “We wanted something homemade. We knew this would work because it was something we were creating and making with ingredients in-house and it was nothing frozen. We wanted to have something that was our own.”

Von Hansen said the S’mores pizza is available year-round and you can even drink beer with it.

“Any nice IPA goes well with the marshmallows and the Nutella,” said Von Hansen.

You might even say, “That’s S’more!”