Off With Her Head

I enjoyed eating at Queen Margherita, but this pizzeria's location in the far east end means that I don't make it out there often. So I was excited to hear that a location has opened at Bathurst and Dundas in the past week. Braving the cold autumn rain and construction, I made my way down Tuesday night to try it out.

It's located in a 2-level set-up, the previous site of a carpet store. Right above is Hard Luck Bar; you can hear live music playing faintly through the ceiling. The street level contains a few tables, but the basement is quite large and comfortable. This space is much bigger than its parent though it loses a bit of the cozy trattoria feel. I sat down two tables over from celebrity chef Susur Lee (one of his restaurant, Bent, is just a few doors down). He has just finished his dinner. "Awesome", I thought, "If Lee eats here, this must mean I'm in for a treat with my $29 prix fixe."

How wrong I was. The dinner started nicely enough: an arugula salad sprinkled with goat cheese, dried cranberries, and roasted pecans. I don't like acidic dressing but the saltiness of the cheese and the sweet fruit created a better balance of flavour. The Calabrese came out looking top-notched: generous toppings of sausage and parmigiano and still smoking crusty dough. But after one bite, I couldn't believe how salty it was. I separated out the ingredients. The cheese: slightly salty but typical; the sausage: a little too much so; but even the tomato and dough were too aggressive. Add them up and it was inedible. The pie was just barely tolerable after I scraped off most of the toppings. This was the worst pizza I've ever eaten. The mediocre tiramisu capped off a bad dinner.

The service was no great shakes either. As a non-drinker, I usually expect low-priority service from the waitstaff because I'm not padding out my bill with profitable booze. But even by those standards, I might as well have been invisible. Luckily, there are plenty of other pizzeria options in the west end.