Ah bugger, it's time for a crud pizza... at least the place is warning me about the level of quality to expect here and... oh wait, that's not quite right...
"Crudo" from Italian (and Spanish) translates as "raw", usually meaning a dish of raw ingredients and dressings commonly involving seafood. Another example of a restaurant name sounding much more appealing when in a different language: not sure if "Raw Pizza, opening soon!" would garner quite the same amount of buzz...
Raw Crudo Pizza and Panuozzo (which advertises itself as the GTA's first Panuozzo) is a little sandwich shop/restaurant tucked away in a plaza off of Royal York Road just a notch north of Eglinton. Despite the rather obscure location (just a whole lot of houses and wide open space on this north stretch of Royal York) Crudo is a verified sensation, with considerable lineups and wait-times even during the normally lulled hours of mid-afternoon.
I'd been first told about Crudo last year by a baseball friend and fellow pizza adventurer... and seeing how they are located somewhat close to where we indeed play on Saturdays, clearly my plan became self-explanatory. I gave myself plenty of extra time and made my way through a sweltering sunny afternoon to find this popular joint. At last, on the eastern side of Royal York Road, I found this:
Success! I walked inside and found myself... inside a Caldense Bakery. Huh? Confused, I went outside, made sure I'd entered through the right door (again hot day, hard to think) and tried again. It was still a bakery, unsurprisingly.
Quite a quandary. Was this their old location and Google Maps hadn't yet updated it? Had they shut down but recently enough that their sign was still up (more on that later)? Was Crudo a side business operating out of the bakery? Is there a hidden door and this was a "say the secret password" type of situation? All sorts of possibilities ran through my mind. Not wanting this detour before my ballgame to be for nothing, I thought I'd enter through the next door and take a look through, eventually wandering down a long white hallway leading to a back parking lot behind the plaza.
Sure enough, Crudo is actually situated at the rear of the building... with a proper entrance (plus a side one through that same white hallway) and even a decently sized outdoor patio overlooking the, um, parking lot. The inside of the restaurant itself, featuring about a dozen tables, was jam-packed (not the best boost of confidence for my 'finding things' ability) with a substantial lineup of folks waiting just for takeout.
The atmosphere has a very indoor market/busy bakery kind of vibe: simple tables and chairs, various cutesy decorations on the walls, one long counter where people order on one side while you can watch the cooks up close carve and prepare those enormous sandwiches... plus a general murmur of conversation and movement one gets in such a busy place on a hungry Saturday afternoon.
I made my order, was informed it would be about half an hour (thankfully I'd given myself considerable buffer time before my game) and seeing no room to even really comfortably stand inside the restaurant, I waited by the curb outside. The timing was starting to pinch me a bit but I managed to sample some of my food (and take some quick notes) before riding quickly to the park.
Going in and knowing arancini was on their menu, I knew I had to try some of that. Three fried orbs (plus a portion of marinara sauce) filled with mozzarella, ground beef, peas and carrots... clocking in at a reasonable six bucks.
We need to talk about that marinara because it is bold and beautiful. Bright, lively tomato flavour... finely blended and a little bit chunky in spots. Absolutely exceptional stuff: you can often tell when a place makes something from scratch in-house and I'd be stone cold shocked if Crudo didn't make this fresh semi-daily.
The arancini is likewise very tasty. I didn't get much of the beef or peas in here... but definitely plenty of the cheesiness and corny rice all mashed inside, with a pleasantly crunchy light shell of fried rice as an exterior. Sadly I only had time to sample one of these fresh (stupid baseball gam-I-mean go team) and they did not keep the same magic reheating them several hours later in the toaster oven (that once crispy rice shell had become just a bit too stale). Nevertheless these were real damn good on those first much earlier bites.
Onto the pizza of Crudo's namesake "Pizza and Panuozzo". "Panuozzo" if you don't know (I didn't) is a term for an Italian sandwich that uses pizza dough as the bread... which certainly seems a rather tidy way to operate a pizza and sandwich place, doesn't it.
This pie with the pepperoni spilling out from on top of it is cheekily called the "Americana", featuring just fior di latte cheese, tomato sauce and enough pepperoni to rebuild a hog.
While an absurd amount of pepperoni no doubt (you can see stacks upon stacks of it here) it is also extremely tasty pepp at that. Not overly salty or spicy, minimal oiliness or grease, it's thinly sliced yet quite tender for what it lacks in crispy edges... and while the sheer quantity of it dominates every bite the flavour of it is much more willing to allow the cheese and sauce into the spotlight as well. A sign of a good pepperoni is when you see this much on here and yet it still feels a tragedy when a couple slices fall off your slice. Frankly, it tastes more like pepperoni one would want on a sandwich than a pizza (though it still very much works on the latter).
The tomato sauce, like it's marinara counterpart, has an irresistible brightness to its flavour that I quite like... though with a bit more light sweetness. The mozzarella is pretty much your standard 'quite good' mozzarella: melts very well, stays semi-soft throughout and there is just enough of it to be a presence on every bite but not too much to make the pizza a goo-fest. None of that cheap "becomes plasticy-hard once cold" stuff here either. Very nice.
You get some nice char to the crust, plus the bread (while fresh from the oven) is quite pillowy and soft. Smells awesome too. Flavour-wise, I got a bit of a dry dusty flavour among the flour and corn base. This was more an issue on the reheat as so much of what makes this pizza very good is that fantastic dough baked in-house. It loses a lot once that freshness departs and that dry flavour is amplified once the crust gets more stale. Still totally fine (just dip it in some hummus or whatever) but when fresh it truly is something else on the enjoyment meter.
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Overall! Sadly between the time I made my visit (mid-July) to the weeks later I'm finally publishing this, Crudo has temporarily closed due to an unspecified incident. By the sounds of it everyone is okay and I won't speculate any further, hopefully they can reopen soon.
Anyhow, it is extremely good pizza. Very simply done: there isn't a whole lot of nuance to these flavours... the pepperoni is pepperoni, cheese is cheese and the tomato sauce is bright but not hitting your tastebuds with any garlic or oregano and such. It does become a repetitive flavour sure once that second slice comes in, but doesn't lose any of its tastiness.
While it's far too good to ever become boring, it does lack the extra "ooomph" you find among the truly elite pizzas I've encountered. As is, I'd still recommend checking them out. The texture of the pizza is fabulous because of that wonderful dough baked in house and those simple stripped down flavours are still highly enjoyable. I'll give them a modest "B++" grade, which probably lands them somewhere in the lower back half of Toronto's Top 50.
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