A modern staple, with each passing year, Toronto receives no shortage of new businesses establishing themselves amongst a sea of existing options for piping hot pizza. These new players elevate the humble pie and its triangular slices to represent a holy trinity of ingredients, craft, and delight.
APIECALYPSE NOW | 735 Bloor St. w
Apiecalypse Now! is serious about its mandate to operate as an exclusively vegan pizzeria and snack bar, but it’s not afraid to have fun with it, either. Here you’ll find a heavy metal-nodding menu filled out with punny, organic wheat flour crust pies like the Pig Destroyer Destroyer (not chicken and vegan bacon bits) and the SLAYER!!!11!!11!1!!1 (vegan cheeses and whole leaf basil, passionately decorated with a hot sauce pentagram).
CITTÀ | 92 FORT YORK BLVD.
Owned by Hanif Harji and Charles Khabouth (who together launched NAO, Patria, and Weslodge) and Adam Brown (Fox and Fiddle), when Città opened at the end of 2014, it was a welcome improvement on CityPlace’s dining options, with Chef Ben Heaton (The Grove) producing inspired Roman-style red and white wood-fired pizzas at all hours of the day (there was even a breakfast-inspired pie available for weekend brunch). It’s temporarily closed for renovations, but set to return this coming spring.
DESCENDANT | 1168 QUEEN ST. E
Descendant arrived on Toronto’s food scene as its first to deliver Detroit-style pizza: inventive if greasy rectangular deep-dish creations that incorporate everything from marmalade to roti while stuffing customers at just a fraction of the cost.
FIGO | 295 ADELAIDE ST. W
Overseen by chef Anna Chen (Buca Yorkville), Figo offers an Italian-inspired menu filtered through a taste for the contemporary. Baked in wood fire ovens, the emphasis here is on Figo’s seasonal ingredients, so the restaurant’s crusts are created thick enough to support some pretty generous toppings.
MAKER PIZZA | 59 CAMERON ST.
In 2015, former FBI Pizza partner Schlomo Buchler and consulting chef Matty Matheson (Parts & Labour, P&L Burger, Dog & Bear) debuted Maker Pizza as a vehicle of monk-like discipline (“It must be made perfect or it must be made again” reads one of the restaurant walls’ mantras), quality ingredients, and fast indulgence, so pies here are visually- and appetite-pleasing Mandalas, and if you’re in the delivery radius, they’re at your door in no time.
PIZZATHICK | 1026 QUEEN ST. E
Borrowing from the regional wisdom of pizzerias from Regina, Saskatchewan, new owners Amylee & Mike took the helms of this young Leslieville joint early this year, after their Toronto-style deep-dish pizza made it’s soft premiere late in the summer. Piling (read: heaping) layers of cheese and toppings onto an inspired hybrid Chicago-style/biscuit crust foundation, each pie is a formidable disc built in tribute to a hunger few local pizzerias have managed to sate.
TRUE TRUE | 169 KING ST. E
Previously One Pizza, True True is a King East pizzeria that exclusively serves oblong individual-serving pizzas with toppings sourced from St. Lawrence Market. Expect seasonal menu items like le Canard, a pie topped with gorgonzola, duck confit, roasted butternut squash, sage, caramelized onion, and sautéed mushrooms.
ZA PIZZERIA | 402 BLOOR ST. W
Eschewing the typical wood or gas oven, Za is an Annex pizzeria that offers barbecue pies topped with unconventional ingredients like potato chips, macadamia nuts, tzatziki, maple syrup, and pico de gallo.
(Cover photo courtesy of Maker Pizza’s Instagram.)
