This Week In Pizza: Pizza On Fire

 

 

I ventured out into Scarborough to Pizza On Fire the very same day I tried the dreadful Pizza Fiamma, and I'm happy to say this was a far more positive experience. Granted that's certainly a low bar, but this was truly the mirror universe version of that level of customer service. Or rather... Fiamma was the mirror universe version because that was really bad and this was... damn it I'm crossing the streams of my Star Trek analogies aaaaahhhhh!!!

Friendliness and complimentary garlic dips (cheers) will only get you so far if your pizza is meh, and while I do like a good bribe (who doesn't, honestly) I care too much about quality pizza (and my audience of course!) to straight up lie about something that isn't worth trying.

That doesn't apply here though, because smiles and kindness aside, Pizza On Fire is legitimately good. Very good. It's certainly one of the more unassuming pizza joints I've encountered: tucked away in the back of a maze-like plaza on the northwest corner of Ellesmere and Kennedy, the inside is likewise a boxy cozy counterspace with enough room for a couple of small tables and a fridge full of soda. 

My order was a bit of a nostalgia play on the 2-4-1 pizzas my dad would always get us once a month: a pepperoni and pineapple pie (with modern me substituting sausage for the pepperoni). The toppings are the weakest link of the Pizza on Fire pizza here... pineapple is pineapple and the sausage had more of a generic chorizo taste to it. Plenty juicy enough, but very minimal flavour beyond the fattiness.

Fortunately, the rest of this pizza was simply marvelous... the mix of texture especially. The dough and crust reminds of an excellent pastry: light, buttery, still a nice bready flavour and it almost melts in the mouth. 

That, combined with the heavy cheese (and this is a very cheesy pie), this pizza feels a lot like what Pizza Hut wishes it could be. This is on the oilier side with a light crust and very cheesy/heavy texture, but it never tastes overtly of grease or aggressively artificial like Pizza Hut does. There's just more taste and balance going on here, those flavours linger longer, it's cooked just right (Hut has always been overcooked anytime I've tried them), and while these aren't the fanciest of ingredients this certainly doesn't seem to be a place cheaping out on what they do have, quantity-wise. The finishing tiny sprinkle of herbs (probably parsley, there wasn't a whole lot they added beyond aesthetics) was a nice touch as well. 

Honestly, I just loved the varying textures of this pizza. Gooey in spots, lightly crispy in others, enjoyable to eat in essentially every bite. Incredibly impressed and while they are located nowhere near anything (aside from the soon-to-be discarded Ellesmere SRT station), Pizza On Fire really is worth the journey... or at least a delivery should you be in whatever range they offer. This is an easy "B+" score from me. A (genuinely hidden) gem.      

 

 

 

    

This Week In Pizza: Oswald's

 

 

Not too long ago I made one of my rare trips into the downtown core of Toronto (naturally the TTC is an impressive mess right now, even by that consistently low standard) and the thought occurred to me that on my way back, I could easily check out a new pizza on my forever increasing Endless List of Places To Try. 

Oswald's is a place I'd discovered the existence of via Instagram, and as an establishment doing a Detroit style pizza but offering slices of said style... I was immediately intrigued. Places like Descendant or Slowhand are damn bloody good, but if you want a chance to try multiple offerings on their menu you really need to go with a few other people so to trade slices with each other (or just spend eighty bucks on three whole pizzas to yourself... not my style but that's more of a money thing than an ambition one). 

It'd been quite a few years since I'd been inside the Chef's Hall on Richmond near York street... in fact the last time was probably to try the pizza at The Good Son stand (it was truly excellent and they've since moved out for their own sit-down type of restaurant... good on them). If you're unaware, Chef's Hall is essentially a food hall with about 8-10 food stands that offer many different genres of cuisine. There's communal seating everywhere and it's open to anyone, not sectioned off by the various establishments. It's like a mall food court, except fancier, cleaner, more comfortable chairs, actual natural light, smells less like grease and you can order booze if you so desire. 

Anyhow, Oswald's appears to be the pizza option for Chef's Hall at the moment. I arrived within the last hour the hall is open (they close at 9pm) and I am certainly aware that a pizza slice is rarely its freshest so close to the closing bell. The two slices I ordered were the Truffle Shuffle (great name) and the Mac Daddy (meh). 

 

 

Starting with the Mac Daddy...no surprise this is indeed another pizza take on the famous McDonald's Big Mac. Maker Pizza made a name for themselves half a decade ago doing this very thing, and their pizza crust has the crucial sesame seeds also. Still, an unoriginal idea doesn't necessarily mean the pizza itself will be uninspired. 

Here? Well... it's very okay. Tasty in a couple ways, but kind of a minor let down. They nail the Big Mac sauce (definitely left that mayo out in the sun!) and the lettuce is nice, fresh and crisp... probably better than any shredded lettuce you'd find at 99 percent of McDonald's. The full pickle slices are a nice touch also. As for the overall flavour though... this kind of resembles what throwing a Big Mac into a blender and then topping it on a cheese pizza would be like. There isn't much substance beyond that surface taste, it's very one-dimensional (so they definitely nailed the McDonald's flavour.... zing!)

The ground beef on the slice itself doesn't add much of a presence (there isn't a whole lot of it anyway) and definitely lends more into the "drunk at 3am food purchase" vibe of the enterprise, whether that's intentional here or not. A fun curiosity but not very remarkable as a pizza. I'll get more into how well they execute the Detroit style pie when discussing the next slice... which is now!

 

        

This is the Truffle Shuffle, another white pizza but with mushrooms, truffle oil, plenty of cheese and topped with arugula and a sauce drizzle. Definitely the one I was most excited about... Descendant's "Truff-Guy" was an epiphany the very first time I tried it (pizza can taste like this????) and going back way before that... back over a decade ago when I worked there, Pizzeria Libretto had a white mushroom pizza with four different cheeses, one of them a melty blue, that opened my eyes as well. 

Oswald's here... falls way way short of any of those. Where the Mac Daddy was enjoyable in its lane but slightly disappointing, this was like asking a girl out and first date discovering she proudly collects frog bones or something. Nice to meet ya but we are not right for each other.

This ain't how you do it, folks. Maybe some people out there reading this will enjoy it more than I, but my stomach felt a little off after this one. Time to talk about good Detroit style pizza: a big key is that soft bready/cheesy texture in the center, and then the thin layer of crispy-almost-burnt cheese along the edges. The contrast, when done right, is sublime. Oswald's got one right: that center is entirely fine, a nice soft bite, the cheese isn't too hard or tough and it has a nice feeling in the mouth. Perfectly enjoyable. The bread doesn't have anything interesting about it (unlike Slowhand's San Francisco sourdough approach or Descendant's focaccia) but it works and is overall good. 

The edges though... on both pies? Very stale. Sure, I got there later in the day and all, so these slices simply sitting there for a while could've been a factor in that... but I've also reheated other Detroit styles the next day and even then they never were this rubbery. Even those super crispy looking bits... not a whole lot of flavour beyond "burnt", and at a certain point that's not a "made it eight hours ago" kind of thing (also hopefully that wasn't the case either because "eight hours ago" is a different kind of unpleasantness).

Speaking of unpleasantness... this slice. Okay well, some of it is fine. The arugula is a fine touch, adding some spicy green to the affair, and this slice is sufficiently cheesy and creamy in that center. As for the rest? No sir. You barely get a taste of mushrooms or of truffle (did it shuffle away?) and that lack of richness leaves the resulting creaminess way too strong here. Even if that were all, this would still be okay-ish... except for that drizzle. Ughhhh that drizzle. See... it's just regular mayonnaise. Not a truffle aioli or a homemade sauce (and if it actually is, it's the blandest of those I've ever encountered)... just from the jar ol' Heineman's or whatever mayo. Trust me, I know what regular mayo tastes like, and this be it. Just no. I didn't think a simple drizzle of something could turn a mediocre pizza into a bad one, and yet here we are. 

Overall... yeah I cannot recommend Oswald's. It's also expensive (both slices were eight bucks each), not particularly filling, and for the quality you're getting? Pass. This is far from bad, but it's just not particularly interesting beyond that surface level taste. It's unfair to keep using this comparison (even if they have set the Toronto standard for this), but Descendant, Slowhand, 8Mile even... there's something way more vibrant in the flavours they create. A taste that pleasantly lingers in the mouth for a long moment. Here, the style is appealing but the taste fades fast and you're left searching for anything resembling that vibrancy. I'd probably give the Big Mac slice a B- and the "Truffle" one a C--... it works out to something like a "C++". Even had the slices been fresher this couldn't have been anything higher than a B--. Sadly a disappointment.   

This Week In Pizza: Pizza Fiamma

 

 

Been a while since I let my gremlins loose, you know.

Yeah. Back in the early days of my initial Pizza Quest of 2018... I was trying several different pizzas a week... and so was quick to sting any spot that fell short of my standards. For example, at the time I gave 2-4-1 an "F". An F! And while 2-4-1 is hardly good... it's not close to even being the worst pizza chain in Toronto, never mind deserving of such a brutal score. 

The world has changed of course, as have I... and most places I've checked out and reviewed recently have been because of praise. Either from friends with trustworthy tastes, via something appealing that pops up on my media feed, or just general acclaim in food circles. In a way, these pizza reviews have become predictable because it's going to be a place I've heard positive things about, and odds are my impressions will likewise be overall positive. The level of how much I like it is really the variable. 

This one, though. Fiamma. This was refreshing. At least, refreshing from a reviewer's perspective. As an experience? God no.

I was on my way to a softball game in a heavy rain, coming down from trying Pizza On Fire (review coming soon!), but knew I still had enough time to try Pizza Fiamma at Lawrence and Victoria Park. I'd never heard of the place before until a Reddit commenter on one of my reviews strongly suggested I check them out, praising them as his/her new favourite in the entire city. Lofty heights indeed, and intriguing enough to catch my attention. Toronto is littered with hidden pizza gems, after all, and it would take even me a lifetime to seek out them all. 

The interior of the place was weirdly spotless, with goofy facades on the perfectly painted walls of a pleasant cartoon chef in sketch form happily making a pie. Seemed like it had been recently renovated or something as there wasn't a lot of character about the joint, everything looked too fresh... like a pizza place coldly designed in a lab. Still, I'm in a good mood at this point... who wouldn't be when they're ordering a damn pizza. I go for a small one topping (bacon) and ask for the crushed garlic, listed as one of the 'free toppings' on the menu as an addition. Dude behind the counter bluntly tells me: "That's mixed into the sauce".

Yeeeeeah. That's a problem. Aside from whatever interaction we had (and there's more of that later)... uhhhhh so if that's actually true, lots of people have food allergies. Soooo... maybe mention that on the menu? (it was nowhere to be seen, I looked). I mean... for instance a good friend of mine can potentially die if tomatoes come anywhere near him. You're gonna just rudely brush it off with "oh it's not a free topping, garlic is in the sauce"... like huh? Would you have mentioned it if I hadn't asked and had a garlic allergy? I hope you were just being lazy, a terrible host or lying instead of criminally negligent. For the record, there definitely was not garlic in that sauce... so draw your own conclusion.   

It doesn't matter since this sauce had nothing resembling interesting flavour. None of this pizza did. Instead, that sauce actually had a gross sweetness to it, like almost sugary, with a similar texture to those cheap pizza sauce squeeze bottles you see at grocery stores. Just awful stuff, man. The rest of the pizza was so painfully generic and overcooked that it's a waste of time to even dive into it. This is an easy "D++" on quality alone... and yet there's more. 

Let the record show: I tried to be optimistic about this. I tried. Bad service, the place was a sleek ghost town... I've gone to dreadful vibes like this before and emerged with a stellar pizza regardless. Bad days exist (I know em well). But at the end of the day, you're running/for a business. Even in those lower moments... especially in a customer service industry... you gotta at least give a microbe of effort. Or, bare minimum... not make a random customer (myself) feel so unwanted that I'm happily trashing your weak-ass product to an audience. And yeah, sorry Fiamma but... you earned this! This pizza was far from worth defending. I mean, I literally accidentally dropped most of it on my way home... and didn't even care! And this is me we're talking about... the dude whose lower circle of hell probably involves dropping a pizza for all eternity. You have to do something extremely special for me to feel nothing when that happens. 

I've never felt so unwelcome waiting for a pizza in my whole damn life... and trust me, there have been many opportunities. After my order was complete (and I tipped, I always do)... Dude told me "Go wait". How pleasant. When my pizza arrived... I was still somewhat hopeful and thanked him earnestly. No response. No acknowledgement. Just a quick turn around, like I was another one of the perpetually empty chairs. Nice. You're doing great work keeping your furniture untouched by other human beings.  

Back to the actual pizza for a moment. Imagine you move to a small town, there's a pizza joint closeby and the night you move in you get a big pie for you and your sweetheart. The moment is memorable of course but the pizza itself is so forgettable that within weeks of your new digs you've found better options and never go back. That's probably the best possible scenario I could imagine Fiamma pizza in. 

Benefit of the doubt, maybe this was them on an off day? Maybe their ingredients weren't quite ready? Maybe the dude working was on his last day? Maybah fuck it. Excuses here are pointless and this place is not worth seeking those whatsoever. I'm still confused by the person who recommended this to me... was there a change in ownership since that comment? Was it the actual owner trying to fool me and promote the business on a public platform? 

Is it because it's very cheap? That would explain why the Google scores are positive. Don't be fooled. This is nothing special, unless you consider mediocrity special... and frankly it would just be an instantly forgettable pie if the dude who served me had given any kind of vibe beyond "I wish you didn't exist". Thanks. Totally worth the journey. It's a D++ pizza but with that extra bit of service seasoning.... this gets that rare "F" from me. And unlike 2-4-1, actually earned and deserves it. Never go here. Ever. Going hungry is preferable.  

 

  

This Week in Pizza: Burattino Brick Oven Pizza

 

 

Absent for a time? Most definitely and quite frequently... but in these parts, the pizza reviews never fully die...

We're back to look at a Californian pizza import that has been open in the Junction neighbourhood of Toronto for about a couple of years now. Burratino began in the mid 2010s as a pizza joint in the San Pedro area of southern greater Los Angeles, founded by a Korean-born immigrant from Uzbekistan (he claims to have never even tried pizza until making one while applying for a pizzeria job). Much like Dave's Hot Chicken (similarly of an LA origin), Burratino quickly became such a success that additional locations opened within a few years... leading to one landing here in Toronto in 2021. 

The Junction area is adjacent to my old apartment in Toronto and likewise close to where I play baseball on Saturdays (a former teammate has even been telling me to try Burattino since they opened). Unfortunately, it's been over ten years ago since I lived there... I'm now on the complete opposite side of town and summer Saturdays are really the only time I'm anywhere near that area. Needless to say, I'd been putting this one off for some time. 

But no longer. On one of those very same baseball Saturdays, I gave myself a sliver of extra time to call in an order so to pick it up on my way to the park from the subway station. Once picking it up, I sat in a nearby parkette at Clendenan and Dundas West to take a photo, eat a couple of pre-game slices... when something rather funny happened. 

The instant I opened the box, a dude (and he was a "dude" in every definition) carrying a six-pack immediately started chatting me up about the pizza. He found out I was doing a review and offered to video record me taking the first bite ("not my style" I replied and chuckled). He inquired what platform I shared these reviews on (the answer being a written medium also surprised/confused him) and well, to wrap up the story of this encounter... I ended up trading him one of my slices for one of his beers (his idea, for the record!). It was a Kronenbourg Blanc, so you can decide who got the better end of that bargain. 

Lets discuss the other end of the bargain. Burratino is perhaps most known in pizza circles for their utilization of black garlic on one of their signature pies... certainly intriguing to the likes of garlic-loving me. If you're unfamiliar (I certainly was foggy on it), black garlic is just regular garlic aged several weeks at a particular level of humidity and temperature (typically 60-80 degrees Celsius, according to Wikipedia). 

I of course ordered this black garlic (and pepperoni) pizza, with a creamy white garlic dip you see on the side. Rather than as chopped bits or cloves, the black garlic is mixed/spread into the tomato sauce of the pie, lending its unusual flavour rather evenly into every bite. Speaking of that unusual flavour: it really isn't very similar to normal garlic at all... there's more of a jam/pastey texture to it, the sharp garlicky sting is entirely gone, and the taste at first reminded me of an earthier type of pesto, with a tiny bit of sweet bitterness. Very interesting stuff, and the flavour still has a bit of a pleasant lingering "roasted garlic" feel in the back of the mouth. Took some getting used to, but I definitely approve.  

Now for the pizza itself: beyond the headliner ingredient, this is a standard pepperoni pie... and done so excellently. Particularly the dough and texture: the crust is on the thinner side and indeed has some pleasant crunch to it, but the rest of each slice is entirely soft, there isn't a whole lot of gooeyness nor is there an excess of chewiness either. Very good balance. This is good pepperoni also... not A+ level stuff but flavourful enough, salty and greasy enough to be what you'd expect. There is also a damn lot of it (they sell T-shirts advertising this, so glad to see it is legit) and it's perfectly cooked to be crispy on the edges, greasy/soft in the center. 

Despite the black garlic effect mixed into it (and there was a lot, as the picture above shows), the tomato sauce is still an occasional presence, mixes nicely with that garlic and gives a nice little tap-on-the-shoulder when prominent. The cheese is the most unremarkable element here: nothing particularly wrong, probably overshadowed in this unusual pizza but I honestly can't recall anything notable about it.

Overall! Burratino is pretty darn good, even beyond the black garlic gimmick. Strong foundation and it's just an enjoyable pizza to eat thanks to that balance, differing textures, appealing flavour quality and an extremely tasty thin crust (you actually wish there was more of it). The creamy garlic dip was good also... not as assertive as the black garlic and far more on the "creamy" than "garlicky" side. Possibly best used as a chicken wing dip, to be completely honest. The biggest downside is the price: a medium eight slice pie will run you over at least twenty-five buckaroos and they don't offer slices, so this is far from a budget pick. Still, highly recommend trying them at least once. They get a "B++" grade from me, placing them somewhere in the Top 25 or 30 active best places in Toronto.  

 

....and because it's been a while.... The West Collier Street Pizza Grading Scale!*  

 

*I also would like to add... basically anything in the B+ range and above would be a place I highly recommend people seek out to try.

 

A (One of the very best you'll ever have)

A- (Mind-meltingly good)

A-- (Super Stellar)

B++ (Stellar, but lacking the seamless "oomph" for an 'A')

B+ (Great)

B (Pretty Good)

B- (Good... imbalanced but still possibly worth a visit)

B-- (Solid)

C++ (Mostly Enjoyable)

C+ (Okay, has some charm and is still pizza)

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)