Two pizza reviews for the usual price of none!
Initially my plan was to review these two places individually... but alas I realized I didn't have as much as usual to discuss with either of them (especially the second one). Solution: squish these two neighbouring joints together into one Franken-review. Hey, the slices I ordered from both places happened to be fairly similar... so why not a direct comparison? So that's the idea here, although one was way, way better than the other...
Anyhow, the Kipling/Bloor-Dundas West area isn't one likely to win a Walk Score competition... but there are some noted food joints pretty close to the train station... longtime staple Apache Burger probably the most famed among them. This was of course a mission for pizza, and my two targets were Donatelli's and Milano's.
Starting with Donatelli's Pizzeria: this was a spot highly recommended to me by a pizza-knowing baseball friend (who still hasn't tried Descendant last we spoke) and it's a good thing he brought Donatelli's up a few times because this is probably not a place I would've discovered otherwise. For instance, BlogTo has yet to write an article on them and they can't go two days without burping out some kind of click-baity pizza piece. There is a notable YouTuber (5 million subscribers??? Curse my stubbornness with the written word!) who did a video on Donatelli's called "Discovering Toronto's Hidden Pizza Gem", which does seem kind of like a spoiler in the title but it's a four minute video so what are gonna ya do.
Aside from that and another (much less viewed) video sampling... there just isn't a whole lot of content about Donatelli's out there. Is this seriously going to be the first actual written review of the place? I mean, cool... good for me *pats self lightly on back* but the place has been open for about a year (best guess) and you'd think by now one of the major papers or Toronto Life would've wandered in. Donatelli's does have an Instagram page also and as far as those go this is a pretty bland one: the pizzas look great but why are they posting the exact same pictures of their specials every... single... day. For real. They have over 1200 posts and I'm gonna estimate 1000 of them are of the same nine pictures over and over again (obviously I did not scroll down that far to find out, I don't hate idle time enough to do that to it).
All this backstory stuff now cast away forever, lets get into the good stuff. Donatelli's is yet another very small joint: you walk in and there's a counter to order from, a drink fridge, and some stools by the entrance window to sit at. Classic pizza parlour setup, and you can tell the place is still fairly new because the tiled walls are still shiny and white.
To my immediate concern, there were only two types of slice available at this moment and both looked like they'd been sitting for a while. Bad luck on me! I wasn't going to wait around for something fresher either: I live on the opposite side of town, the sun was setting fast, plus I still had to go try the other place. So, I went for the best looking of the limited available options: a pepperoni slice with jalapenos. Normally a good combination, but those peppers looked awfully dried out.
Apparently Donatelli's either cooks or reheats (or both) their pies in a conveyor oven (I wasn't watching super closely but it definitely didn't look like your standard pizza oven). I will say the effect was similar to reheating a thicker pizza in a toaster oven: it gets a little dry on the edges but at the right temperature you can restore most of the softness. One issue though is you can't get it steaming hot this way (without losing even more moisture) and so it cools again very quickly.
Still, despite those dry edges... there was a good amount of lighter crisp to this, the crust especially was much fresher than I'd initially feared. Good balance of crunch and doughy layers. As for the flavours... some pretty good dimensions here! I think they (very smartly) added those additional dollops of tomato sauce(after the oven)to order and that stuff really explodes in the mouth with a zing. Very finely blended, almost like a puree, and it strongly leans on the sweeter side.
Good pepperoni as well, salty but not too much so, and both are tastes that linger in the mouth for quite some time after each bite (always a good sign quality-wise... call it the Anti-Little Caesar's Effect). The crust almost has a hint of roasted corn to it, while mostly tasting like a fried bread but without excess oil. It's also nicely seasoned, and the faint shavings of some parm-like cheese do add a nice extra subtle taste to it all. A lot of good stuff going on here, there's terrific balance and texture... and once again if you've been reading my reviews I prefer slightly too much sauce over slightly too little.
Unfortunately it's far from perfect and I think there's an easy obvious blame for that. I didn't get much of the cheese at all, really on any bite, as its presence was very much a numb non-factor. Likewise the jalapenos, while plentiful, emerged only occasionally with any kind of faint bite to them. The problem is clear: that slice be sitting out too long and while with expert reheating you can save some of it... you can't save it all and the dulled cheese and peppers were the biggest casualties of that. Even the second half of my slice, now entirely cooled again... really lacked a lot of the vividness I'd so enjoyed before. Still entirely fine lukewarm/cold, actually... but a lot of the sparkle had been lost.
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I'm going to give my final thoughts and grades at the very end. For now, lets move onto Milano's Pizza (which will be shorter* I promise)
Compared to the new-ish Donatelli's, Milano's might be the oldest active pizza spot in Toronto I've reviewed (now that Vesuvio is gone, RIP). According to their website: Milano's opened in 1963 and when you walk into the place, see all the photos on the wall of junior sports teams they've sponsored, polaroids of former staff and a bunch of other random nic-nacs that wouldn't be out of a place in a legion hall... yeah you definitely believe it.
I actually had tried Milano's before, back in 2020 (great year am I right). Vaguely, I remember being pretty impressed, and was keen to rank them on The Big List version one. Of course, this was about a week before the 'Some Creep on The Danforth Steals My Phone' incident, which meant the loss of (among many other more important things) all of the photos I'd taken of pizzas sampled that year. Like I said, 2020. Great year.
Well now, we're finally back and here's Milano's. This was my second pepperoni-type slice in about the span of twenty five minutes, but this one (as you can see in the photo above) is much more of a no frills straight-forward attempt.
Starting with the positives: it smelled great. If I'd grown up with a pizza place like this nearby, I would still be tasting the nostalgia while breathing the cold December air. The sauce... more on the herbal side which I'm normally not a fan of, but at least you can taste it throughout the slice and it works well with the thin light crisp of the base. Very underwhelmed thus far, though.
The rest of it? Just not a lot going on. Generic crust (little in the way of flavour beyond ordinary bread), unremarkable cheese and the type of pepperoni you've probably had a thousand times on okay-ish pizzas, which is what this is. Nothing offensive, but nothing that stands out in an especially delicious way either. It reminds me a lot of Pizza Nova, actually... and I mean Nova now not ten years ago when they were still pretty good. Even the little pepperonis are similar, but worst of all was trying to reheat it in the pan (thin crust). Avert your children's eyes (unless you want them to suddenly go vegan) and behold this horror:
For real. After several minutes the cheese refused to get even slightly warm and gooey, so I flipped the thing (toppings down just for a quick minute), and I still couldn't get this cheese to melt (congealing seemed more it's dance). Trust me, it tasted about as good as its radioactive shell looked. After two bites I gave up and picked the pepperonis off just to eat those).
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Overall! I don't think it's going to be much of a shocker which pizza I preferred. Yeah I can't even make a good fake-out because this isn't even close. I'm not going to dock them for that awful reheat (it doesn't help) but Milano's was just so blah... beyond an okay texture before you got to the crust, this was like every random mediocre pizza I ate in my teens/early 20s. Very forgettable, no seasonings, extra hint of secondary flavour, and so much of a Pizza Nova clone I was worried the heartburn hounds would get me good (they didn't, so points for Milano's there). For an old school type of place, this was probably a damn fine pizza twenty five to thirty years ago... but the playing field has jumped several levels in that span and flavour-wise they've been left well behind. I'm obviously not going to recommend them, but it's a quirky little time capsule to visit as a place at least. For that, I'll be kind and award a "C+". But that's the only memorable thing about it.
As for Donatelli's... I could tell (especially with the bland Milano's slice following them) that there is some good idea of flavours and quality here. Those two tomato sauces couldn't be more different, and I liked the little touches around the margins Donatelli's did as well (the seasoning, roasted corn hint in the crust). Alas... I can't completely look beyond that numbed cheese and those stale jalapenos that just didn't bring the ooph I was hoping for.
However, clearly I'm feeling kind today and I will chalk those shortcomings up to just arriving at a bad time. It won't change my grade for now, but there was clearly enough here that I think another visit is deserved... only this time ensuring I get something straight out of the oven. Because if the entire pie can be as terrific as those glimpses I got a sense of... now we're talking something special, perhaps "Top 20 in Toronto" special. Lets call it a strong "B+" in the meantime... which is enough that I would recommend trying them out (but again, its gotta be fresh because that conveyor belt oven isn't keeping anything warm for long in December weather).
So much for keeping this review short, eh. I even dialed down the personal backstory more than usual! Like how the first time I tried Milano's, I was actually at Kipling Station to buy a bike from a dude off Kijii (the bike ended up being a lemon and got stolen within a month. 2020! Great times). Anyhow so after I bought the bike I noticed a little winding street leading up to Bloor and so with th
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