It couldn't have been easy to open a food concept during the COVID-19 pandemic... although pizza certainly might be the type of food immune to such a plight. Bello (among a few others in Toronto) would be an example of this, opening sometime in early 2021 in the back of a cafe on the foot-traffic heavy stretch of Bloor West Village near Runnymede station.
Bello had been on my list pretty much since I first read about them last Spring, and despite going to Runnymede station almost every Saturday in the Spring, Summer and early Autumn... until this past weekend I'd never gotten around to trying them. I honestly kept forgetting they existed!
Well, I rectified that mental oversight and finally gave them a long overdue visit. As mentioned, the place has a slick cafe immediately in the front, which surprised me at first and made me wonder for a second if I'd somehow wandered into the wrong place (I'd slept three hours in four days at this moment). I even needed help finding where the menu was posted. All the pizza stuff is in the very back... and after a lot of deliberation I selected their 'Chorizo' pizza... a white pie with mozzarella, fior di latte, scallions, chorizo (marinated/cooked in some kind of garlicy chimichurri type thing) gorgonzola and rapini.
They bake their pizzas at high heat in a gas powered oven, resulting in a ready time not quite like the "90 seconds or less" you see with wood fired ovens... but the pie you see above was all boxed up and waiting when I returned ten minutes later. After finding a spot in a nearby park where the bees weren't assaulting me (seriously... bees in October?), I was able to dig into this terrific smelling Bello pie.
Well... the smell matches the taste... the shoe indeed fits. This is exceptional pizza... soft, cheesy, loaded with varying tastes and flavours... with the perfect texture balance of char and pillowy dough. All of this melts in the mouth like an oozing of joy for the tongue, the sharper flavours (scallion, rapini) perfectly complimenting the creamy, cheesy foundation.
As you can see above, it's on the thinner side as far as pizzas go... but it optimizes that minimal space. The bottom dough is delightfully soft (you can see how it bends on my fingertips), with a enjoyable blended taste of baked bread and butter. There's a hint of Alfredo sauce in the creamy cheese foundation as well (the tiniest bit of crushed black pepper)... it's an incredibly rich, yet accessible base and taste balance for the assertive flavours on top.
The toppings themselves... they sting. But in a good way! Perhaps not for everyone (we are talking about me here... my solution for if something has too much garlic is to add more garlic) but these sharp flavours compliment the rich creaminess precisely. Oftentimes while eating this, I forgot there was gorgonzola on here until that intense earthy cheese attacked and petrified my tongue. Gorgonzola truly is the Medusa of cheeses... ah? Ah?
Probably my only complaint about this pizza at all is the excessive amount of those onions on here... it does on occasion dominate the flavour on particular bites. The chorizo isn't a consistent presence either, but when it appears the best configuration (the Voltron if you will) of this pizza is unleashed. You get all the rich creaminess, the stinging elements of the scallions and the delicate dough... with an incredibly delicious morsel of juicy, peppery pork. Just exceptional stuff.
Bello pizza isn't exactly cheap (this pizza was 26 dollars without tax and tip), but to their credit this is a larger pie than a usual standard wood-fired oven product (Bello on their website promotes it as a 14 inch pizza). It's still a bit pricey, and while that will likely prohibit me from trying them on a frequent basis when in the area (which is frequently in the summer months)... there is no denying what a marvelous treat eating this high quality pie truly was. I will definitely go back at some point and also recommend trying them if you haven't. It's an 'A-' grade for me, but it's very very close to an 'A' and regardless of those semantics this is probably one of the best ten pizzas I've had in Toronto.
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