So many possible pronunciations here. The obvious (and most probable one) is "Si-Mo-Na" but could it also be "Si-Mon-Ah?" or "Sim-Oh-Na"? How about "Sim-On-Ah?" for you North-Easterners? "An-O-Mis" for those in the Mirror Universe? Where am I? Where's my medication...
How ever you want to say it, SIMONA (apparently all capitalized) is a new-ish Lakefront Mediterrean/Italian restaurant underneath one of the many condos along the quite pretty Sugar Beach in downtown Toronto. It's owned/operated by Fab Restaurant Concepts, an umbrella company (no relation to the Resident Evil universe thankfully) that also runs about a dozen other various restaurants/pubs throughout the GTA mostly (and a pub in Meaford) including Pogue Mahone, Muprhy's Law here in the Beaches, another lakefront joint in Pie Bar (which I reviewed last year), a Dupont pizza joint named Stella's Kitchen, and the Brazen Head Irish Pub in Liberty Village just to name a few. Certainly an odd collection for a company: focusing entirely on pubs or fancier casual Italian restaurants. Follow the trend-proof marketable concepts I suppose.
My severe cynicism towards corporate interests aside, SIMONA is on my route home from work and once I realized they offer pizza... do I even have to explain my motives anymore? I call this an "Endless Pizza Quest" for a precise reason. SIMONA closes at 10pm and since my shifts end at sporadic times, I decided to hit up SIMONA on my way to work instead. Their website also offered a phantom Happy Hour special between 3-6... which I saw no trace of in the actual place itself! Fab Restaurants web presence/style does seem about 15 years behind the times...
Sneaky interior photo! I like the aesthetic: kind of like a bistro vibe to the place. They weren't particularly busy at 5pm on a Thursday, aside from a big group in the back, and so I ordered one of their Calabrese pizzas to go and waited by the waterfront outside.
The pie took a bit longer than I hoped (about twenty minutes) and as such I only had time to take a couple photos, stuff a slice into my mouth and bike off to work.
It is really becoming a "go-to" for me, when trying a new pizza place, to simply get the spicy salami option. Hey, you get something a bit more interesting and potentially more punch than just pepperoni and cheese... and while I do love a white sauce pizza now and again (SIMONA had one with bacon and brussell sprouts... which while unusual I'm not sure how I feel about that) I also really like seeing if a place has a tomato sauce worth anything.
What exactly do we have here in this Calabrese? Pretty simple: soppressata, some dried/baked jalapenos, some hot honey in there, tomato sauce and cheese.
On first bite... they definitely get the texture right. Not as floppy or drippy as a wood-oven pizza can be, but there isn't a whole lot of cheese either. This means the sauce has to do a lot of the heavy lifting, and it truly does because this is a fantastic tomato sauce. There's a vivid sweetness to it, probably helped by the honey (it's not a sticky pizza either, a common "honey on pizza" problem) but even if so there's such an immediate punch and enjoyable depth to this sauce. And there is plenty of it throughout each slice.
The crust and dough has it's own charms as well. Bit of a poofy taste to it, without any kind of bready or flour-heavy flavour. Once the pizza cools off (more on that later) the crust doesn't lose much of that softness or become horribly taxing on the teeth via chewiness. There is a lot of crust considering how thin the centre of the pie is, yet because the sauce is plentiful and so noticeable it makes for a very effective combination.
We've got a good foundation here (the mozzarella cheese itself is also buttery good quality and melts excellently, but there isn't much of it) so how about the toppings? Well... we're really just talking about the spicy soppressata here. I must say, this pizza has some genuine heat! It has some slow build and is more of a fire-like front of mouth heat, the source of which I cannot precisely identify. There's a nice blend of that spiciness into every bite, like it has cooked into the sauce itself... which really gives this already flavourful pizza another dimension.
Also the salami: quite crispy! Much like a pepperoni is cooked in an oven, rather than what you often see soppressata as on a pizza: large slabs that retain their unbaked fatty mini-pockets in the middle. You can see those edges curled up, there's genuine crisp and considering the good amount of tomato sauce on here... that salami crispiness mixed in with a soft bread really works nicely.
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Overall! After a pair of serious disappointments earlier in this dreadful stupid-ass month of November... it is exceptionally nice to discover a place that I had okay-ish expectations for... well they showed up and surpassed them quite easily.
This was a very darn good pizza, with a great sauce, good quality ingredients, still delicious while cold... it lost a bit of punch and dried out somewhat in the re-heat test on the low temperature frying pan, but that's a minor quibble in the overall terrific quality of this pie.
While eating it I was thinking this was between a 'B' and a 'B+'... and now I'm going to place SIMONA solidly as a 'B+'. Legitimately very tasty, no real weaknesses... and while this is far from the most unique pizza I've encountered (aside from that terrific sweet and bold tomato sauce) they do some good work. Perhaps best visited in the warmer months and so easier enjoyed in one of the nearby parkettes along Sugar Beach. Good stuff, you impressed me... and the timing couldn't have been better. We were due for a win.
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