This Week In Pizza: La Famiglia on Danforth

 

 

 

If you've read even just a few of these pizza reviews, I'm sure you must know by now how much I love my long intros... but there isn't a whole lot of buildup to this one. Rejoice!

In seriousness though, I'm couldn't even find out how long La Famiglia on Danforth has been around for... their website or the rest of the almighty internet providing zero information (although keep in mind, my research ability/willingness grades out optimistically to "Lazy"). This place could be celebrating fifty years tomorrow, or three. Who knows? They even have an extensive FAQ page on their site... and go figure it's dozens of questions about deliveries and 'how to pay' type stuff. Bah!   

So, the story of how this little pizza parlour came to be is entirely a mystery to my knowledge. Location? That's easy: a side-street corner in the middle of the uneventful stretch of East Danforth between Main Street and Woodbine (filled mostly with car dealerships and supermarkets, with the occasional random cafe or restaurant). Walking into their space in the middle of a weekday afternoon, you get the sense of a small, old European cafe or bar (complete with soccer match on a big screen). With only a few small tables inside, this is more of a take-away joint and they do offer slices... so I went for two different ones (coming in at around 12 bucks all together... although at first the fella forgot and only charged me for one... "six bucks for two slices? Best deal ever!")

 

 

No real description needed for what our first slice is here (obviously their vegan potato and pesto offering, duh). La Famiglia describes themselves as a New York style pie and they definitely get the prerequisite crispness down. It's a fairly thin crust and there's some happy crunch to the bottom of each bite, a nice foundation for the intense cheesiness of this pizza. Indeed, the cheese-to-everything-else ratio is rather askew here, especially the Hawaiian slice, but it is a quality mozzarella at least... a hint of butteriness lingering on the tongue. As for the rest... pineapple is pineapple and the ham, while lean and tasty, is a bit dry on the edges (as will happen to ham if sitting out for even a short while). 

 

 

Slice number two! Not exactly sure what you'd call this one, but the basics are: pepperoni, roasted red peppers, thinly shaved sausage, and a healthy dose of seasonings. It shares that same crispness as the Hawaiian but the flavours here are much more dynamic. You get a good balance of sweetness from the red peppers, which themselves are pleasantly soft and fresh-tasting... complimented by the sausage and pepperoni combo (not overly salty as well, thankfully). The thinly sliced/shredded sausage is a bit unusual as well, but that does keep it from overwhelming the other flavours with its fattiness as many chunkier bits of sausage can when on a pizza. You only get a hint of it this way, and it's interesting to see sausage in such a secondary role.   

I didn't get a lot of tomato sauce on either slice, which is not ideal for my particular tastes, and it is an overall hindrance to this pizza. When you do taste it, the flavour leans more on the herbal tomato sauce side rather than acidic, hearty or sweet. Alas, the lack of sauce does lead certain bites into the Dry Side of The Force, particularly once it cools down. Fortunately a thinner crust pie can get away with this much, much easier than others.

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Overall! For a basic, thin crust slice... this was pretty good. Emphasis on "basic": this is a shorter review than usual because La Famiglia on Danforth keeps things incredibly simple. Just straight-forward thin pizza with good quality care and ingredients, which shines through most with that irresistible crispness to each bite (the crust has it as well). The cheese is somewhat excessive but that's a very minor complaint, and if not for that lack of sauce presence I'd really call this a mostly unknown pizza gem in Toronto's east end. Regardless, it's simplicity doesn't necessarily equal "bad", not at all, and both slices hit the spot quite a bit. This gets a strong "B" grade from me... if you happen to be walking by and the slices look fresh from the oven, I doubt you'll be disappointed one bit.      

This Week In Pizza: Pie Bar

 

 

Not counting my dreadfully forgettable experience with a Loblaws pizza (you, dear reader, should forget it too), it had legitimately been over a month since trying a new pizza. Not just that, but any pizza. Unthinkable, right? I mean, I made a couple on pitas at home and also tried an okay one in St. Catharines (the photo came out blurry so guess it never happened)... but even then, these are about 3-4 pizza experiences for me in the span of six to seven weeks. Geez, no wonder I've had the Autumn Blues lately...

I'm just gonna blame that Loblaws "pizza" for all that and now move onto something better (hard not to be). Pie Bar! Reading that, your first question may very well be: "What-bar?" "Thai-bar?" "3.14-bar?" "Pry-bar? Get a... crowbar!"     

If you're still reading after those attempts at something resembling joke-like product, yes indeed there is a place in Toronto called Pie Bar and indeed they are an establishment with both a bar and a pizza oven (with a pizzaiolo even). They'd been on my list of places to try for quite sometime, but more so as a curiosity than a place I'd heard much hype about. Some quick inside baseball: when discovering a new pizza joint I always check their average Google review rating (and quantity of reviews, of course). It's not really a conscious screening process on anything below 4, which is probably not worth the time trying anyway (almost all independent pizza joints are comfortably above). There are several McDonald's locations I bet that average higher than 4/5 stars, and well... I guess those must have the secret real recipes, not the Krusty Brand imitation gruel-I mean regular McD's fare.

I only mention this Google review thing because Pie Bar, coming in exactly at 4.0/5, has one of the lowest scores I ever reviewed. Well, that I've seriously reviewed anyhow... when I reviewed Little Caesar's it's not like I went halfway to Hamilton just to find the one with the highest Google rating. Anyhow, this 4.0/5 of Pie Bar always struck me as odd. The menu seemed decent, the location exceptional, and the name... easy to make half-assed jokes about! More than a few places I've tried have had much higher average scores, only for me to discover nothing to enjoy. 

Getting into it... Pie Bar is located in a place called the Queens Quay Terminal. It's a low-rise condominium overlooking the lake in downtown Toronto, with a sort of large public lobby area on the ground floor connected to a bunch of... things? There's a grocery store, a chain pub location, some kind of fried chicken sit down/take out... considering there is a collection of plastic bench tables for communal seating, this is almost like a minimized mall food court. Only sleeker and with that unmistakable fancy condo smell! Actually, compared to a big mall bombarding you with noise and stimulation... the quietness and simplicity of this was very preferable.

I was leaving work at BMO Field (TFC were baaaaaaad this year, man) and called in my order ahead: their pesto Margherita pizza (already unusual and intriguing) and some wild-boar bacon as my own chosen addition to it. "It'll be ready in ten minutes!" said they over the phone. Uh-oh. Naturally, I got a bit confused finding exactly where Pie Bar actually is (probably not the first person) but eventually I made it while the pizza was still fresh and heygeezdudeenoughhurryupandtalkaboutthestupidpizzaalready!

 

 

Important to note that Pie Bar uses a wood burning oven (you know the ones) and so this does qualify as a wood-fired pizza. You definitely get the flexible, droopiness aspect of that: trying to eat a slice of this without even folding it a little is an excellent method of accelerating laundry day. 

There's rather a lot going on with this pizza. Plenty of good, plenty strange, and one major flaw. Starting with the flaw: the dough/crust just has nothing going on. No real char or fresh bready taste here, a crust on the chewier side... for a pizza that is on the underdone side (which I like), there should be way more softness on the edges to this. Like baked bread after a couple days, it's firmed up.

Onto the good! The composition is excellent. I haven't had a pure Margherita pizza in forever (they're endlessly delicious but also not... exciting to me?) and the skilled execution here was a pleasant reminder how delightful the basics can be. Something about that extra soft, subtle sharp, buttery bufala mozzarella (and this was definitely bufala, you can tell by how it melts) meeting leafy basil and tomato sauce together in one bite... I mean there's a reason it's a classic standing the long tests of time. The Beatles of pizza configuration. 

Continuing that flimsy musical analogy, the pesto (their menu) and bacon (mine) additions would be like... later era Beatles? It's unmistakably them, but now there's more? Some of their very best stuff is in that period, but Pie Bar is far, far from the Abbey Road of pizzas. In theory, I'm still confident that adding wild-boar bacon to this was an inspired choice... but it contributed to the strangeness. This bacon itself was tasty, very fatty and thickly sliced, reasonably plentiful, and sneakily salty (to the point I had salt-lips for several minutes after). Compared to regular bacon, flavour-wise there wasn't much difference (the pork flavour lingered slightly longer) but this was a very tender, larger cut that texture-wise, fat and all, really found a nice role within this pie.

The pesto... well its all over this, as the photo shows. And as a pesto it's quite decent... much heavier on the basil and pine nut flavour blend over any hint of garlic or pepper. But I think it's another weak link here, and that's more on Pie Bar thinking this pesto would work on a Margherita rather than I adding bacon onto this thing. Talking flavour, adding a basil-heavy pesto onto a pizza that already has basil on it... well guess what, your pizza is really gonna taste a lot like basil. Which if you really like basil... knock yourself out! I'm one to talk... I'll order a pizza with nothing but cheese and garlic, get a garlic dip on the side, and then lament there isn't more garlic. But objectively, as a menu item with this particular pesto spread about, it's a bit much for the average taste bud. I didn't mind the constant semi-sweet leafyness... but it's spread out so evenly that when it bleeds into every bite, it compromises the other flavours.

Another issue: the blending of the oiliness. This happened on a few particular bites but was noticeable enough... the residual oils of the melted cheese, the olive oil in the pesto, and the grease oozing from the large fatty bits of bacon... all merging together and fighting for control in your mouth. Like tasting three oily things at once and they layer on your tongue. Not unpleasant by any means, but it was far more notable by its oddness rather than a positive taste. 

A more potent tomato sauce probably could've bumped this pizza up significantly... given it a bit more balance rather than letting these many various flavours clash for attention on occasion. There is plenty of tomato sauce, which is a positive on the more straight-up Margherita tasting bites. The sauce itself? Very light beyond a faint sweetness. Something more robust, with a hint more zing could've really added something to this: a balancing counterpoint to a grounded, oily pesto. It's a merely good tomato sauce but is just missing something to really elevate it.

 

Overall! Pie Bar is good, but not 'really good' because despite some strong quality and execution, certain elements don't quite mesh. It's a very mediocre pizza crust (and well-below average by wood-fired pie standards) and the oiliness of the pie confuses when it tastes like three different oils at once. Smaller dollops of pesto, rather than spreading it about, would've likely balanced this better. Still, they do more things right than wrong... the quality of ingredients in the cheese, basil, bacon, and sauce are all very much there. It seems the high price (this was about 27 bucks) reflects that quality, and while I'm happy to pay for a place that uses the true good stuff... this has too many weaknesses for me to truly recommend it. Perhaps this explains the lackluster Google score as well: a premium price for a merely good pizza... I can see that annoying some people. 

Pie Bar is a surprisingly weird one I'll throw in the "B" grade range. I enjoyed it, but they're distant from being a must try.                                     

This Week In Pizza: Loblaws

 

 

 

We've been on a winning streak lately with pizzas... time to punch downward a little bit.

Might have gone too far in that direction, maaaaaaybe just a bit. Hoo boy. I've considered doing a special review one day of well known frozen pizzas and pitting them against each other... and now I suppose I have to (despite this one technically not being frozen upon purchase).

There's not much to dive into here beyond that this is some damn weak stuff. It looks decent, sure, how could a pie loaded with this many meats not be... and those meats are indeed the only redeeming element here. The pepperoni is generic and greasy, but the sausage chunks actually have some modest pepperiness to them and that is indeed real bacon hidden in there (and somewhat juicy, though it dried out badly on the reheat). 

The rest of this? Bad. Bad! The cheese has this gooey, plasticy taste that reminds me of processed cheese (which I've never been a fan of anyhow). It melts well, but it tastes like nothing even resembling mozzarella or any kind of cheese. Same with the tomato sauce... there just isn't anything flavour-wise, no acidity or sweetness, no sting... it's just kind of there (and there definitely are some large pockets of it). Existing only as tomato-like texture, because it's a "pizza", obviously.

I suppose I shouldn't have been expecting much, but even my low-ish expectations suspected something in the "C" range. Instead? This is some Pizza Pizza level stuff. Cardboard flavours, fake cheese, uninspired tomato sauce, bizarre crust (much like a frozen one with its lack of breadiness and awkward stale crunch)... like Pizza Pizza you only get some pleasant taste from them meats adorning the top, and it can semi-satisfy when fresh... but beyond that? Super weak, and not a whole lot else going for it.

Fortunately I got this pizza for a half off price, which still added up to around five bucks and if another similar opportunity came along? I wouldn't bother. It's not completely horrible or offensive (it only offends by its blandness) but the lack of flavour and weird textures make it all a waste of precious pizza time. Firmly a "D-". There are surely better pizzas available in the supermarket, frozen or otherwise.