It's an interesting question, when having reviewed a pizza place before... how long is a necessary length of time until a revisit is prudent? At least two thirds of places on my big list are places I've only tried once (and more than half of those I don't require or desire a second visit) and the fact of the matter is: places can change. Certain chefs or pizzaiolos come and go, recipes get revamped, a mini-chain expands and the quality diminishes, new ownership mixes things up... or hell our own tastes as pizza enjoyers shifts as well.
In my experience trying places multiple times, almost always the secondary/later evaluations tend to be lesser to some degree. Or in the case of my true favourites (Descendant, Defina) my high levels of expectation have been happily maintained. My point is, aside from getting Pizza Nova on a good day (and those good days have been real rare the past several years)... I can't exactly recall a recent notable pizza that has been even better on my second try.
I wrote about Somun Superstar back in 2020 when (like most of us) I had nothing to do... so I tried a bunch of restaurants closeby to me (takeout at the time, of course). Somun Superstar is a Bosnian joint that specializes in their baked somun bread, essentially the Balkan version of flatbread or pita. When first opening in 2019 they specialized in cevapcici sandwiches with their baked-in-house breads. The pandemic hit and, considering they already had a large oven, decided to start offering pizzas on Friday and Saturday nights. This caught my attention, and led to the article linked above.
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Well, if you skipped the link, spoiler on that article: it was overall a very good pizza, elevated by its exceptional dough (shocker) and texture, with the rest of the elements doing a serviceable job. I do recall that they didn't cut their pizzas at the time, so I think I brought a knife and fork with me when eating it in a nearby park.
Coming back now over three years later, was quite interesting. I admit I still have not tried their sandwiches yet, despite their location sitting about six blocks from my house (it requires trekking up a monstrous hill, okay?) Somewhat recently they ditched the "Friday or Saturday" pizza night thing, and now offer pizza every evening of the week they're open. It's still a limited window: you can only order a pizza after 4pm and the place closes as early as 8 some nights.
Anyhow... after a long windy walk buying some Halloween candy, I stopped in Somun Superstar and ordered their Smoked Beef pizza. Here is the whole thing below:
Taste or flavour aside... that is just a beautiful looking pie. My first time trying Somun Superstar, I went simple: it was sliced sausage, mozzarella and sauce. Not here. This above is a pizza with their dry smoked beef, sudzuk smoked sausage, tiny basil leaves, tiny sliced mushrooms, kajmak cream cheese, and your usual tomato sauce and mozzarella.
To cut out the dramatic buildup... the quality matches the aesthetic. This was simply phenomenal. Absolutely fabulous pizza. Again, the bread/dough grabs the spotlight... a light, yet fluffy and pillowy bread that is soft on each bite, almost heavenly how good this is when still warm and fresh from an oven. While I was waiting, a couple came in just to order some of the fresh flatbread by itself... just saying in case you don't believe me. I've said it a lot but having excellent bread is such an underrated aspect in a pizza: it makes the texture of it so incredibly enjoyable and can elevate otherwise mediocre ingredients.
Fortunately, the other elements of this pizza far transcend mediocre. These toppings have a fair bit going on... but flavour-wise it's really the dry smoked beef that stands out. It is on the dry, chewier side, but who cares when you can get this much zing into such a thinly sliced and then baked meat. You get the smokey flavour more than the dry, but both are noticeably there... almost like sipping a fine scotch in meat form. Really interesting and flavourful. The sudzuk is more like a black peppery, with mild-ish spice, thinly (and perfectly for this) sliced sausage that likewise isn't shy with flavour, but not dominating on bites either. This gives a hint more juiciness than the smoked beef, and they work in tandem marvelously.
But wait, there's more. The dollops of kajmak cream cheese, multiple ones on each slice, add some pleasant creaminess to it all. It's a loose cream cheese, with more of a thick yogurt consistency than your spreadable Philadelphia-like brand... and it provides a nice subtle hint of rich sweetness. A very fine balance to the multiple beefs adorning all of this pie.
The mushrooms and basil leaves are very much background features here: I only noticed each respectively on a couple of bites throughout the whole pizza. Tomato sauce is even less noticeable: I do greatly appreciate when a place (especially made to order) isn't a wallflower with the sauce and sadly my biggest complaint here is that you hardly get a whiff of it. No sense of what their tomato sauce tasted like at all... this could've been a white pizza very easily and made little difference. For a lesser pizza I would seriously dock some points... but man everything else here was just so remarkably good I'm willing to allow the moving screen.
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Overall! Gee golly, I don't say this often but within my second slice I already knew this was one of the best pizzas I've had this year. To bring it back to my introduction about trying places again, it was very interesting to see how different Somun Superstar's pizza was after three years. Their foundation is their great bread and that delicious high quality remains... but this pie was much less poofy and more refined than that first one I'd tried... and more evenly cooked as well. They pass the reheat test (the bread loses a lot of that beautiful softness but gains some fine crispiness on the pan, low heat), the distribution of toppings is impeccable (each bite has something to offer, yet few are the same), the overall balance of everything is there... I don't know what else to say.
When I first tried them in 2020 it was clear they knew what they were doing, but as suddenly making pizzas on top of their usual offerings (during a pandemic no less) was perhaps not in their initial grand plans... my theory is that they were fairly raw at the pizza game back then (my first review would've been within two or three months of them starting that). They were good then, and now with three years to work at it, they've gotten even better. Much better. In 2020 I gave them a "B+"... this one here is on the lower side of an "A--", for real. Needs more sauce, and maybe the simpler offerings are a bit more generous with that... but everything else just works so fabulously. The smokey beef, the creamy sweet dollops, the delicate dough, good solid mozzarella... its harmony and diversity for the taste buds. This is a Top 20 pizza place in Toronto, full stop. Bosnian pizza. Check em out.
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