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| - As old-school Italian as this city gets, Dante's is one of the city's great unchained pizza shacks.
Apparently they sell soup. Skip it in favour of a gigantic Caesar salad that balances sweet romaine hearts with homemade croutons, garlicky dressing and technically wrong but oh-so-right bacon. Or, if you want something a bit lighter *giggle*, try what we call the 'antipasto salad' of iceberg lettuce, tomato, a few other veggies and loads of provolone and salami goodness. Thankfully, it comes with a light vinaigrette...because, you know, you have to watch what you eat.
Dante's offers huge pizzas with an avalanche of quality toppings. Pepperoni is the best this city has outside of Paisano's; dime-sizes bites of crispy upturned sausage hold the oven's heat alongside an enchanted forest of lightly charred mushrooms. Sausage is pleasant but is really an afterthought compared to the pepperoni. Generosity is a bit of a drawback when it comes to brutally huge chunks of bitter green pepper. Light cheese, exceptionally bright tomato sauce which finds its way onto just about every menu item, and a sturdy crust mean that you can actually order down a size, and still fill your party's tummies.
Pastas are similarly portioned, but unexciting except for that fabulous red sauce. Ravioli is the best of the lot. Lasagna is woefully uneven. Some nights, it's well-composed and seasoned; other nights it's a mess of random pasta shards and tough hunks of ground veal. I suspect that in those cases, they sell out of the real stuff and rush to prepare something that can be scraped onto a plate using what's around, hidden under a conspiratorial blanket of melted cheese.
Once the cornerstone of the Bayview-John neighbourhood, Dante's has moved into posh Vaughan digs. It's a much better experience if you don't mind the drive, but it's hurt already hit-and-miss delivery.
Coffee is decent, desserts sit forlorn, since nobody's got room. If only they were made from that pepperoni.
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