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.
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