This Week In Pizza: La Casetta

 

 

When I write these reviews I have a regular habit of researching the backstory of the restaurant (or fast food chain in the case of the Tuesday reviews) after I've already tried the food and compartmentalized my opinions and conclusions on it. In a way this is like doing things backwards I suppose, but it helps me approach these places with a (mostly) unbiased perspective. Finding out after the fact about a "rising from the ashes" or "overcoming a global pandemic" story doesn't change the taste of the food sure, but it does add some colour and flourish to the tale these businesses have lived. 

In the case of La Casetta, this "low-knowledge" approach was especially wise, lest my expectations be severely affected otherwise. See, I thought this was simply a well reviewed, potential hidden gem off the well-worn paths in Leaside... but I learned after my visit there's a fair bit more. You see, much like my Tulia Osteria story, we've got another case of a chef/owner being somebody I worked with in the past. Yep, Chef Mathan Rajaratnam and I crossed paths well over a decade ago at Pizzeria Libretto Ossington (he was the lead pizzaiolo back then and really knew his stuff, which should not be any surprise). 

If that were all, then I'd have chuckled at the cliche coincidence of "small world" and carried on as I normally do when trying new pizza. Thing is, this isn't Chef Mathan and Chef Giovanni Sarra's rookie restaurant venture either: the duo in fact also own and operate Oro Di Napoli in Mimico, Cafe Di Oro in downtown Toronto and a place I even wrote about last autumn in Pizzeria Via Napoli near Islington station! In a bizarre quirk, all four restaurants even use the exact same template for their websites (yet don't boldly mention the existence of the others). 

Hey, seriously good for them... I'm just saying for me it's a good thing I didn't know this until after the fact because I've tried those other places and greatly enjoyed them (Oro Di Napoli is probably still in my Top 15 for all of Toronto). Knowing La Casetta was a part of this would've both seriously raised my expectations and made comparisons between these places inevitable in that moment of sampling it. I'm only human after all... once you are aware of a fact it's impossible to simply flip a switch and turn that information off in your mind. Maybe with enough alcohol... but I'm not endorsing that kind of behavior (any more at least).    

Okay! With another classic long ramble out of the way... La Casetta is an cozy Italian restaurant tucked away in a mini plaza on Millwood Road, a location askew by the very winding streets of residential Leaside. They've been open since mid-2022, with Chef Mathan and his wife jumping at the opportunity to open a restaurant so close to their Leaside home. Since that opening they've become that hidden neighbourhood gem I mentioned, known only to locals and crazy adventurous pizza maniacs (not that you know any of those, nope). Coincidentally, La Casetta happens to be across the street from an old school pie joint Bravo Pizza (still there!) one of the very first places I ever tried when undertaking this Endless Pizza Quest(TM) back in autumn of 2018.  

The inside of La Casetta reminds somewhat of a French cafe: a nice mix of wooden decor and white tiles, with some quirky and elegant decorations throughout. Artsy and chic without being pretentious or unwelcoming. 

I was torn between their Diavola pizza and their Casareccia, which in retrospect it's a damn good thing I went for the Diavola because the Casareccia is the exact same pizza (topping for topping) I tried at Via Napoli several months earlier. Could've made for an interesting comparison I suppose... see how similar my observations and eventual grades were... but yeah I'd prefer not to repeat myself. 

Coincidentally, La Casetta happens to be across the street from an old school pie joint Bravo Pizza (still there!) one of the very first places I ever tried when undertaking this Endless Pizza Quest(TM) back in autumn of 2018. The inside reminds somewhat of a French cafe: a nice mix of wooden decor and white tiles, with some quirky and elegant decorations throughout. Artsy and chic without being pretentious or unwelcoming. 

I was torn between their Diavola pizza and their Casareccia, which in retrospect it's a damn good thing I went for the Diavola because the Casareccia is the exact same pizza (topping for topping) I tried at Via Napoli several months earlier. Could've made for an interesting comparison I suppose... see how similar my observations and eventual grades were... but yeah I'd prefer not to repeat myself.

 

 

Here is that Diavola! (which as I've said in previous reviews a few times essentially means "devil's pizza" because of the spice). Normally this version from La Cassetta comes with kalamata olives but I axed that since I don't like olives, but also this particular pizza (in my opinion) doesn't really need that bitterness and salty taste obstructing the fantastic flavours going on here.

Yeah, this pizza was fabulous. Sans olives what you've got left is thinly sliced spicy soppressata, basil, fior di latte, classic San Marzano tomato sauce (a fixture of many Neapolitan pizzerias) and that vivid orange drizzling is an in-house bomba sauce.

Starting with that bomba sauce... truly the secret weapon of this pizza. While bomba often has more of a spreadable consistency (like a pesto or a paste) than a thicker liquid one, this La Casetta recipe is a bit creamier and lighter... reminding me of a punchier type of vodka sauce in some ways. You get a lot of spicy red pepper heat to it, a gentle sting that blends into that slightly creamy texture quite nicely. There is indeed considerable punch but never does it totally overwhelm... settling nicely in the back of the mouth instead like a quality rhythm section. Excellent stuff. 

 

         

The rest of the pizza is more straightforward: salami, cheese, basil and sauce... but that doesn't mean it is undeserving of praise. That San Marzano tomato sauce is a necessity for so many top notch pizzerias with good reason: the slightly sweet, the tiniest hint of acidity and full lasting flavour of it just gives a pie such an excellent foundation to work from. 

We've got great fior di latte as well, soft and squishy to the touch and on each bite... plus a very subtle smattering of shredded grana padano. Meanwhile, the leaves of basil are baked enough for their leafy flavour to seep into the pizza but not too much to be overly charred and bitter. That vivid fresh taste is especially nice here next to the heavier and spicier elements. 

The soppressata... precisely thin, not a lot of that salty or fatty pork taste at all, and it itself has a considerable heat to it that hits the middle of the tongue (rather than the bomba sauce which sizzles all over). 

If there's any weakness here... it's that the crust is merely okay. A bit dry, hollow and crunchy, with a slight cornmeal dusting to it... again it's entirely fine but rather boring in comparison to the orchestra of spice and flavours happening on the rest of this pizza. 

 

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Overall! Simply an excellent take on a Diavola pizza, executed with skill and expert precision. Having that creamy bomba sauce on this thing elevates an already good pie into a spectacular one, really the key difference between the grade I gave Pizzeria Via Napoli and what I'm going to give La Casetta. 

In the back of my mind, considering some of the identical pizza offerings on the menus of all four of these restaurants... it's hard to shake the sense I'm comparing a bunch of completely similar pizzas against each other. All wood burning ovens, all menus with minimal deviations conceived by the same chefs... am I tripping over myself by retreading the same ground? Maybe. Probably.

Nevertheless, an incredibly damn good pizza is an incredibly damn good pizza. La Casetta is much closer to the Oro Di Napoli level than Via Napoli... this was an absolute delight to try something so delicious and flawlessly done (it even reheats in the pan extremely well!). I have to give them at minimum an "A--", placing them deservedly in the true upper echelon of Toronto pizzas. 

Despite the ties and connection with those other (perhaps better known) pizzerias, La Casetta still manages to feel like a true Leaside hidden gem that I highly recommend checking out if you can.      

          

The Tuesday Taste - McDonald's Breakfast

 

 

Oh, can it be?

The voices calling me

They get lost

and out of time

I should've seen it glow

but everybody knows

That a broken heart

is blind

   

 

Another Tuesday... another Taste. Hoo boy... we're doing this freaking place again? Seriously? Haven't I suffered enough?

 

If you've been following the Tuesday reviews since the early days (oh 2021, such an innocent time) you'll know I have a very torturous history with the golden arches. Even in my formative fast food years I just never cared for McDonald's at all... I loved Burger King (Whoppers were actually good back then, probably) and eventually Harvey's and A&W. Yet, for whatever reason, teenage me never latched onto the appeal of ol Micky D's... not even the fries or the chicken sandwiches. 

Fast forward to present day, as a jaded and pretentious food-reviewing adult... I haven't been exactly coy with my thoughts on McDonald's food on this here webzone. The Big Mac? Dry and stale with a weird artificial aftertaste. Quarter Pounder? Flavourless but at least it was small. A McChicken? I wondered whether that patty had ever even been in the proximity of an actual chicken. The McRib? Surprisingly not awful, although mostly bland and one dimensional. The fries? Like oily sticks of salty potato-facsimile product.

So yeah, needless to say over the course of four years and 115+ of these Tuesday food reviews I've given McDonald's plenty of chances... with the results being completely antithetical to swaying over my affection. I thought I was done with McD's! All the bases covered! Two different burgers and their chicken option, even their famous limited edition novelty sandwich that the freaking Simpsons parodied... and we're out! Never again do I have to sample this chemical impersonation of food again, right? 

Nope. Over the course of recently trying all these local breakfast sandwiches like Egg Club or Bagels On Fire, it occurred to my brain that some of the enormous fast food chains also offer breakfast items, McDonald's chief among those. Damn you, brain! 

Sigh. That is how, on a sunny and semi-frosty spring morning, I rode off to the nearest golden arches and caught their famous breakfast menu with ten minutes to spare. I've read online that some locations do the breakfast menu all day, but the specific knowledge of which ones is several galaxies away from my particular jurisdiction. Also, can't believe everything you read on the internet am I right??? Um, except these reviews, of course.

 

             

Okay I admit, imprinting the 'M' logo into the top of a sandwich has a uniquely tacky charm to it. 

The lead photo of this piece shows the three items I sampled: one hash brown, a bacon and egg McMuffin and finally a sausage and egg McGriddle (the branded bun you see above). They other a small legion of other breakfast items too, I know... but seriously I wasn't going to try every single damn one now, was I. Especially when you consider how most of these options are essentially the same three things only with different starchy packaging (english muffin, bagel, tortilla etc). 

Also more importantly, I flat out refuse to ever review a wrap from any fast food place. It's a freaking wrap... like come on, what am I gonna say about it? "Uhhhh yeah! This tortilla is definitely... tortilla-like." Now before you hurl husks of corn at me through your screens, I'm not including shawarmas or burritos and the like in that. Those usually have way more to them in terms of preparation, the overall composition of it and the ingredients inside... a McDonald's breakfast wrap is just swapping the bun thing for a tortilla thing. No thanks. 

 

        

Come for the rants, stay for the foods! This is the sausage and egg McGriddle and I'll admit to previously never having any kind of McGriddle before. I didn't even know what a McGriddle was, frankly... all I knew going in was it would probably be pretty fun to type McGriddle as many times as McPossible. 

I was quite surprised upon my first bite: my expectation for the bun had been some kind of buttery, french toast-like thing that would likely be stale on the edges. Instead... soft and almost wet-spongey... like a pancake drenched in syrup to the point it seeps in, that kind of squishy texture. The flavour is definitely trying to resemble that description: there is a pancake/maple syrupy hint throughout, fairly artificial tasting as it may be. 

Still, having never tried anything quite like this before... I was genuinely intrigued by it. This was kind of like eating a little plate of pancakes with invisible syrup, egg and sausage, only in sandwich form (and without the stickiness). The sausage patty itself is for sure on the greasier side but also fairly juicy and not tasting of gross old grill. Meanwhile, eggs formed into the shape of a perfect puck always throws me off (yeah yeah it's because of a special cooking contraption they have and they do use real eggs)... so this isn't a sandwich I'd want to make a regular habit of. 

Nevertheless... I actually kind of enjoyed this one! The egg does have a good eggy taste (very descriptive I know) and there's solid balance between the greasy sausage and the melted processed cheese. Combined with the strange charm of the fake-syrup pancake buns, this is easily the best and most interesting thing I've ever reviewed at a McDonald's. I would willingly eat this again. And my heart grew seven sizes that day... (along with my belt).           

The Egg McMuffin is of course a classic, I don't need to explain that one. But I will anyway! 

The invention of the Egg McMuffin dates back to the late 1960s/early 1970s, when numerous McDonald's franchisees were experimenting with various breakfast-on-the-go concepts. Herb Peterson was the operator of multiple McDonald's locations in California, and with his background in advertising had done some work for the company in that capacity as well. Seeing the potential in this yet untapped fast breakfast market, in 1972 he tested out a sandwich made to resemble an eggs benedict. The rest is history, of course.

That back story is interesting, to me anyway, because until now I'd never connected the dots on how similar this is to a classic eggs benny. I mean, you've got the English Muffin, the ham/bacon, the bouncy texture of the egg is quite similar to the whites of a poached egg... you're really just missing the delicious runny yoke (although that wouldn't really work for an on-the-go sandwich) and the rich thick creaminess of a Hollandaise sauce, to which the slice of processed cheese is a (lacking) substitute for. 

Alas, those missing parts are pretty darn crucial aspects of a good eggs benedict. Without them? Well, you've got an Egg McMuffin... and left like this it's a pretty bland affair. This is the kind of sandwich you can spruce up at home with some lettuce or hot sauces or mayo... all those would spark some life into this and make it pretty tasty... but no bonus points for that obviously, we have to review it as they serve it. 

All you really taste is egg. The English Muffin has some decent toasted crunch to it, whereas the bacon is hardly any factor in here whatsoever. It's cooked to within an millimetre of its life while its flavour has already passed onward into another plane of existence. Crumbly and tasteless, such a sadness for bacon to end up this way. 

Still, even substituting the juicier and livelier sausage patty for the bacon would only make this whole thing slightly better. This sandwich is screaming out for some kind of sauce or anything with some zing, and while I don't expect McDonald's to bother with the trouble of making Hollandaise (nor would I trust it if they did) there must be something similar they can offer even on the side to liven this thing up (and if you're thinking ketchup I'm calling the paddy wagon). 

Interestingly enough, at first when the McMuffin debuted (and some countries still might do this) they offered strawberry jam alongside it, just to add a potential sweetness to it. Jam isn't exactly what I had in mind here, but at least it's something.

 

 

Finally, the hash brown. It looks like a potato shoehorn, or a tongue. Or a piece of an unpainted picket fence.

Taking a bite... yeah it also tastes like a picket fence. Not particularly crispy at all, the potato flavour is pretty weak and fades very quickly... no seasoning whatsoever... a genuine disappointment. Even my low expectations (hopefully but wrongfully) expected a McDonald's hash brown to be semi-decent... it's just an oval of shredded and fried potato, how can you make that limp and boring? They found a way.

Next time I'm in the mood for something like this I'll check the discount freezer in the supermarket. This was three dollars, too. Madness.  

 

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Overall. So one thing I found quite amusing, as I was leaving the McDonald's on Eastern near Coxwell, was the drive-thru situation. It was about 11:15 at this point, breakfast had given way to their regular menu... and just like a finger snap there was now a modest lineup in their drive-thru. When I'd arrived half an hour earlier? Barely an automobile soul in the parking lot with the drive-thru completely clear. It's like a bunch of people were driving around to nowhere, counting down the agonizing minutes until the McDonald's regular menu came on (at least that's what I like to imagine).

Look, you all know by now how McDonald's has never done it for me and the odds of me recommending anything they offer are only slightly higher than Donald Trump gaining a sense of humility (admit it, you can totally imagine him bragging about how he's the most humble person ever, "nobody's more humble than me...") Simply put, I've never understood the sincere love people have for the golden arches and that's just the way it is.              

However... that sausage McGriddle was indeed compelling enough for me to reserve most of my usual McDonald's slander. I liked how different it was... and though it's not likely I'll ever actively go out and order another one, I will tip my reviewer cap at the ingenuity of it. At least with the McGriddle I can understand its appeal as a guilty breakfast pleasure food, I can meet it there...whereas with almost anything else from McDonald's I'd much prefer gnawing on a couch cushion. 

And yeah McGriddle aside this breakfast here was extremely weak. Quite lifeless and rather manufactured tasting... with decent quality eggs elevating it into the realm of "actual food" at least. But this is food you merely eat without thinking about it, consumption for familiar sensation and sustenance rather than lasting enjoyment or experience. Still not a fan.            

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Binging With Breakfasts

There has been a reason/overall scheme to why these Tuesday reviews have featured so many breakfast items lately. Yes, I'd like to announce that coming soon will be an article ranking all of these breakfast sandwiches I've sampled! (plus a few others that alone didn't quite have enough for their own review). 

My criteria for what qualifies is loose as always, but to limit this from a list of hundreds (I already have an endless Pizza Quest, don't need another impossible mission) I'm only ranking places that have more than one location in Toronto. Places are allowed to have multiple entries, however, as long as they are distinct enough from one another. 

Stay tuned for that in the next few weeks! Of course, the hardest working Babish in the food videos business, Andrew Rea, did something similar when he compared a bunch of frozen breakfast sandwiches a while back. It's a good watch! May my experience be a more positive one...

 

   

 

Tuesday Tune

March was a very strange month... tends to be the case when you find yourself in a hospital bed upon the beginning turn into that calendar page. Factor in some additionally unexpected and blindsiding news a few days later that seriously rubbed me the wrong way personally... well I kinda feel like I have a pretty big chip on my shoulder as we enter these spring months. Nothing lasts forever anymore.

Hey though, don't worry dear reader... I won't take any of that out on you. Saving my bile-filled ammunition for the truly the grossest and most abhorrent foods we might stumble across here in this bizarre little corner of the interwebs... and here's a song that fits that mood. Until next time, stay safe, stay warm and most of all don't spill that mustard.