Devon Thor, founder of Victoria’s sourdough pizza pop-up Vagabond Pies, has worked in the restaurant industry for essentially her whole working life, from bartending to front of house, to making her way to the kitchen, where she fell in love with sourdough. Then, she started asking herself, “How do I make sourdough, but not at 4 in the morning? And I was like, oh my god, pizza.”
She became “absolutely obsessed” with pizza she says, and followed the passion from there, including going to Vancouver Island University for their Professional Baking and Pastry Arts program. When she moved to Victoria at the beginning of the pandemic, she had to pivot plans and started making frozen pizza first and selling it on a retail level, and then holding a pizza residency every Friday at a cafe in James Bay, building a following there.
These days, you can find her gourmet pies at pop-up pizza nights at Picnic Coffee on Fort Street. The pies range from the traditional (pepperoni and cheese) to plant-based (she has lots of experience making vegan pizzas) to gourmet (kimchi and spicy pork; roasted squash and leek).
They also feature locally grown ingredients sourced from the South Island FarmHub, including apples, potatoes, spinach, mushrooms, leeks, and more.
“I always wanted to keep South Island FarmHub in the back of my mind and wanted to make [the pies] as local as possible,” she says. “The quality is absolutely incomparable to what you get from enormous scale, out-of-season, out-of-country producers,” she says.
If you’d like to try a Vagabond pizza, follow them on Instagram @vagabondpies to catch their next pop-up!
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