This Week In Pizza: Afro's

 

 

This one is different. Very, very different. 

 

Afro's is a fairly new pizza joint located on Mutual Street just off of Dundas Street East. Despite the close proximity to the intensity of Yonge-Dundas Square (about three blocks east), Mutual Street is one of the quieter streets you can still find so deep in the downtown core of Toronto.

It is apparent upon even glancing upon the menu, the pizza itself is a fusion of several different ethnic cuisines. The Detroit style of the pizza is the obvious one, but one of the pies Afro's offers has distinct Asian inspired toppings like apple hoisin and crispy pork skin... while another leans more tropical with fried chicken and waffles(!) alongside pecans and compressed watermelon pre-soaked in tequila. One of their vegetarian options includes jackfruit, which I totally didn't have to Google to find out what that is. Nope. 

The sheer creativity of these combinations is impressively wild, and so when I strolled inside the tight space of Afro's on a sunny Friday afternoon and was instantly faced with multiple choices I'd never remotely imagined on a pizza before... I went for the one with tomato sauce, sausage and basil because I am boring. That's why they pay me the big bucks, heh.

No actually, the chicken/waffles pizza (named 'The Hendrix Experience', so extra points there) was very tempting... I've never seen watermelon on a pizza and I can't even imagine how waffles (even fried) would work on such a thing either. Alas, I'd had fried chicken the very night before (tough life, this food reviewing biz) and thus settled on a more traditional pizza offering. 

Before diving into that, some observations on the Afro's space itself. It's definitely not a spot where you go planning to eat your pizza inside, as like any true takeout joint there are no chairs and no space for such anyhow. The entire spot might be smaller than your average living room, which makes for a cramped three person pizza kitchen that dominates the majority of the space. 

I went in and was greeted by that very same fella from the video linked below (spoiler), and while this was before knowing that mini-doc existed I immediately got a sense he was one of the owners. Incredibly nice, friendly dude, and I bet he could talk about each of those pizzas on his menu for hours. Very happy to walk through the more unusual aspects of his menu, which I bet he has done more than once. 

All of it: the slightly cramped but not uncomfortable amount of space, the cheery chef, the funky names for the pizzas, the origin story... the secret ingredient to Afro's pizza might simply be charm. 

 

         

Afro's Pizza has a 5.0 rating on Google Review, with 114 (as of this writing) scores. That certainly caught my eye... I doubt I've ever seen that before. This pie you see above is the Davis Jr: housemade Sugo, pepperoni, sausage, sliced (not pickled) jalapeno, mozzarella cheese and fried basil. The pizzas come in three sizes and this is their personal size, which after tax and tip came in under fourteen bucks. That'll juice your Google score... wow. Simply a crazy deal considering this is a deep dish pizza and the four slices/quadrants you see aren't exactly woofed in a single bite. 

Bargains make my cynical taste buds suspicious and after my first chomp into this thing... well I'll be damned. It's good. Like, really good.

The sauce is really the standout: a fabulous balance of heartiness and sweet, bringing this robust flavour throughout many of the pizza. It pairs nicely with the fried basil, which feels like its there more for fragrance than taste but regardless I'm not complaining. The sausage gives a bit of a honey kick to it (there's possibly hot honey drizzled in but if so it's not a sticky presence), the pepperoni does crispy things that good pepperoni does, and yet this pork combo doesn't overwhelm the general taste with excess salt. Good cheese as well (though it doesn't reheat well) and having fresh sliced jalapenos instead of them pickled gives more crunch but less spice or punch. It's different, and frankly there are so many delightful flavours here some rogue jalapeno spice roughing it up wouldn't have been entirely welcome. 

Peering into the kitchen (it's hard not to, it's three feet from the register) I spotted they use a conveyor oven at high temperature, then dress the finished pizza with whichever toppings don't take well to such extreme heat. Which brings us to the texture of this pie. Detroit pizzas almost never reheat ideally: they're so tasty when fresh, with the crispy burnt cheese thin edges, soft dough underneath the sloppy surface... near pizza perfection. 

Afro's achieves this very goal when fresh, but most curious is the texture and taste of their dough. Completely unlike anything I've encountered: there's a cake-like consistency to it, a slight sweet sponginess that took about a slice (as the pie cooled) for me to truly notice. It's additionally strange considering this is one insanely oily pizza as well, but only on the very bottom... like a cake there were these layers of flavour and texture. While I'd say it was juuuuust a bit too oily in those spots, it really was unique to my experienced pizza tongue. 

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I think Afro's is very much worth seeking out and trying, full stop. Frankly I'm eager to go back and try a couple of the more inventive options just to see if/how they pull them off. They clearly nail the basics at the very least. The price, in 2024 dollars, is insane considering how filling just two of these slices are. Just not a whole lot to nitpick with them. Impressive.

Yet nitpick I must. Not a great pizza on the reheat: the pan makes it too crispy and the flavour fades and the toaster oven can't unsoften it enough, but that does retain more of the taste. The oiliness can be a nuisance as well, making certain bites resemble more of a wet cake once the pizza is cooled. 

But that's really it. There is so much to like with Afro's, and while I wouldn't quite give them a 5/5 (don't worry, I won't ruin the perfect score by posting this on Google)... by my own grading system what we have here is a very very strong B++, maybe nudged into A-- territory. Frankly I'd lean more in the latter direction, and if they really do pull off their wilder creations (I suspect they do) the nudge over will be an easy one. Really fun, affordable, and tasty stuff. Check them out!           

As a bonus, here is a mini-documentary about the place. Worth a watch, if only for the charisma of the chef (the very same fella I encountered, the energy is genuine).