While waiting for my fried chicken from Pelicana to be ready, I decided to wander around my old haunting grounds of Yonge and Bloor to kill some time. These wanderings led me inside the Manulife Centre (a favourite winter-time shortcut in junior high) and immediately my impatient hungry stomach reminded me of a place on my pizza list to try: Eataly.
To avoid precise details, Eataly is essentially a gigantic Italian food mall... they have a cafe, specialty grocery store (with seafood, butcher, cheese counter etc), a huge catering kitchen, a brewpub outpost by the excellent Indie Ale House (which was super tempting to indulge in) and of course, a pizza counter.
It's also very easy to get lost inside of this place. There are three floors filled with tonnes of anything and everything, while the pizza slice I was seeking happened to be on the very top floor tucked in the corner. Eventually, after a few escalator rides, I found the right counter (among the dozens) I was looking for... resulting in the slice you see above.
This has to be the most expensive slice of pizza I've ever purchased. Yikes. With tax it came around to nine bucks, which is pretty damn sobering I gotta say. Fer-cryin-out-loud, I know a gem of a spot near Runnymede and St. Clair where you can still get an entire medium sized pizza for cheaper than this little slice. Still, if the pizza itself is truly excellent... it's worth it, right? Well...
Eataly Toronto has commissioned a company called Rossopomodoro to spearhead their pizza operation. Rossopomodoro is an Italian restaurant chain/brand which, while successful with locations throughout Europe, isn't exactly a small organization of pizza consultants (and in fact they've been bought out by an English equity firm).
This shines through a bit with the slice you see here. There are some very nice flavours working separately here, but none of it is quite harmonious enough for this to reach the true high echelon of pizza quality that the (absurd) price suggests. The bread is the greatest weakness... it's fairly stiff and beyond a slight hint of wheatiness, there isn't really anything to it. When dipped in hummus it tasted great, but that happens to be Sunflower Kitchen hummus (the best) from my fridge so Eataly doesn't get points for that.
The rest of the elements here are definitely good, although lacking in quantity. The sausage is flavourful and juicy, the dollops of mozzarella (likely Bufala mozza) are soft and buttery, there's a wicked tangy sweetness with some caramelized onions (the website says this slice has mushrooms but there's no damn way that's accurate) and the tomato sauce tastes like it was made with high quality stuff. There just isn't enough of any of this, especially the sauce (you barely notice it) and when you have a slice of pizza like this where the crust is almost a third of the product... well I spent three bucks on boring bread.
This pizza has enough positives working for it (the onion/sausage combo especially) that it gets awarded a 'B'. At the steep price of nine bucks for a slice though... I wouldn't recommend it to anybody except the Bay Streeters nearby who can afford such nonsense. When I tried Buca back in the original Pizza Quest, I lamented the steep price of that pie also (and that was in 2018 dollars)... but at least Buca gave me an exceptional pizza that was worthy of savouring every bite. This Eataly pizza is merely solidly good but with a couple moderate warts, which leaves it well below the bar in terms of how much it costs. Even in a financial vacuum, the best flavours aren't lasting enough to tempt a second visit.
A REMINDER... THE GRADING SCALE!
A (One of the very best you'll ever have)
A- (Mind-meltingly good)
A-- (Super Stellar)
B++ (Stellar, but Lacking the extra "oomph" for an 'A')
B+ (Great)
B (Pretty Good)
B- (Good... imbalanced but still possibly worth a visit)
B-- (Solid)
C++ (Moderately Enjoyable)
C+ (Okay, Has Its Appealing Charms)
C (Decent but Flawed)
C- (Flawed)
C-- (Very Flawed)
D++ (Tastes Like Pizza At Least)
D+ (Resembles Pizza At Least)
D (Looks Like Pizza At Least)
D- (Calls Itself Pizza At Least)
D-- (Calls Itself Pizza And Is Lying)
F (That Sewer Juice Is Starting To Look Appetizing)
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