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| - The Libretto vs. Queen Margherita Debate
Pizzeria Libretto - 4.5 stars
Warning: I'm going to go on a sideways and slightly nostalgic bent here so if you want to cut straight to the restaurant review scroll down a few paragraphs until you hit the ***. Also, I promise that not all of my other reviews are this ridiculous.
Still with me? Good. So pizza is something that is near and dear to my heart. In my final year at university I taught myself how to make various types of dough from scratch after spending way too much time on an online pizza forum that was frequented by both professionals and the type of amateur at-home cooks that spend their hard-earned money and time building wood-burning ovens in their backyards (I one day hope to be lucky enough to fall into the latter category). I literally would make pizzas every other weekend, taking notes and experimenting with slight tweaks in different variables with the ultimate goal of making the best pie (regardless of style) that I could churn out in a conventional home oven. Sadly, the general busy-ness of life has cut into my pizza hobby but I do still make a solid pizza now and again.
Anyway, the point is, I really like pizza, and I think that I am at least moderately qualified to talk about it. For the longest while however I really felt that our fine city, while great in so many ways , was something of a wasteland for pizza, or at least good, authentically Italian, pizza.
I tried a lot of random pizza places and nothing made me more upset then the countless restaurants that claimed, falsely, to make 100% Neapolitan pies (I'm looking at you, every single pizza place on College Street) only to serve undercooked, overcheesed pizza that wasn't even hand tossed. I even came across at least one Margherita pizza that had tomato sauce, cheese and wait for it, oregano, as the three primary ingredients, which is all types of wrong.
This all started to change with the advent of Terroni, which was then eclipsed by the two new undisputed pizza champions of Toronto - Pizzeria Libretto and Queen Margherita Pizza.
After getting out to Queen Margherita for the second time about two weeks ago I now feel ready to weigh in.
***
Being a west-ender, I am much more familiar with Libretto, and I try to get one of their pizzas (whether dining in or getting take-out) at least once a month. The pizzas at Libretto are uniformly great and also deliver an authentically Neapolitan experience. I have tried just about everything on the menu, but my regular is a doppio Margherita, which is a Margherita with extra cheese (the regular Margherita is a little under-cheesed).
Here's the downlow on the Libretto pie:
Sauce - fresh and full of flavour. As good as it gets.
Cheese - top notch Fiore di Latte
Crust: nicely charred and perfectly chewy.
Toppings: all very good, although in some cases (ie. prosciutto and arugula) they put too much of them on, while in others (the normal Margherita) they put too few (hence why I always order the doppio)
Queen Margherita on the other hand is a less familiar experience for me. I have only been twice but both times have had great experiences there. I have tried the Margherita (which was textbook) and spicy sopressata (very tasty and very spicy).
Here's the QM pizza breakdown:
Sauce - equal to that of Libretto (ie. amazing)
Cheese - ditto
Crust: Queen Margherita - it was about as flavourful as it gets and just the right amount of charred. There was simply just a bit too much of it.
Toppings: perfectly balanced
In terms of other key decision factors I offer the following:
Libretto has slightly better appetizers including solid charcuterie, phenomenal meat balls (only occasionally on the menu) and really good salads. I also have a slightly counterintuitive personal bias towards Libretto's crust, which although arguably ever so slightly inferior to Queen Margherita's from a taste perspective, is more manageable because it isn't so thick. The no reservations policy is obviously a bit of a drag but if you give your cell phone number they will call you 10 minutes before your table is ready so you can go and enjoy one of the many awesome bars on Ossington.
Queen Margherita on the other hand has the added bonus of taking reservations and ridiculously tasty chili oil. On the downside however I felt that the appetizers fell a little flat (sausage and polenta was a bit salty and osso buco crostini were not as flavourful as expected).
So my final verdict?
I would give both restaurants a 4.5/5.
Queen Margherita has better pizza (if only slightly), but I think that Pizzeria Libretto remains the superior restaurant if only because the rest of the menu is a bit better. At the end of the day however, both are great, and are about as good as you can get in any other good pizza city.
Toronto should be proud.
PS - to my New York friends, I like them both better than Motorino.
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