The Best Pizza in Toronto
Toronto has become a serious pizza town. New York slices, Detroit squares, tavern-cut pies, sourdough hybrids: the city now does all of it, and does it well. That is exactly the problem with a list like this one. There are so many good pizza spots in Toronto right now that we had to be ruthless, narrowing the field to a highly curated dozen. Some are counters where you eat standing on the sidewalk; others are bars where the pie arrives with a pitcher and a game on the screen. At Tastet, we only put a place on a list if we would send a friend there without a second thought. These are the ones that made the cut.
Nice Slice
Nick White finished law school at Osgoode Hall, articled, and walked away. A stint at Mac’s Pizza starting in late 2022 taught him the craft, and in October 2025 he opened his own counter at the corner of Harbord and Borden, in the old Think It Cafe space. The menu keeps it tight: cheese and pepperoni on red or vodka sauce, a red pie with sliced garlic and parmesan, sausage with long hots and hot honey, and a za’atar pie that nods to manakish. Slices come with cold beer or wine, including Nice Pils, brewed with Bickford Brewing Co. Barely a year in, Nice Slice is the name people bring up when they argue about where the city’s slice crown goes next. Harbord Village finally has its pizzeria.
Toronto
Pizzeria Badiali
Ryan Baddeley left fine dining at Bar Isabel and Bar Raval to build the New York slice shop he kept dreaming about, on the corner of Dovercourt and Argyle. Every pie is 16 inches, thin, crisp and foldable, under a blanket of pecorino, grana padano and whole-milk mozzarella that bakes into a golden, crackling layer. The margherita and pepperoni are the classics; the cacio e pepe slice, silky and peppery, is the sleeper favourite. In 2024, Baddeley became the only Canadian ever ranked on The Best Chef Pizza world list, placing 32nd. A second location has since opened on Markham Street. If one corner walk-up put Toronto pizza on the international map, it is this one. Every conversation about pizza in this city starts or ends at Badiali.
Toronto
Mac’s Pizza
During lockdown, sales rep and former line cook Josh McIlwaine sold pizzas out of his apartment every Saturday, and sold out every week. He put in shifts at North of Brooklyn to learn the trade, then opened his own storefront in 2022 in Dovercourt Village, in the old Village Pizza space. The pies are thin and dough-forward, sauced with Bianco DiNapoli tomatoes, sold as hot slices or whole rounds, with wine and cold beer in the fridge. The decor came out of family basements, and it suits the place. Mac’s is the neighbourhood slice shop as a genre: unpretentious, consistent, and good enough to have trained the next generation, Nice Slice’s founder included.
Toronto
North of Brooklyn Pizzeria
Long before the current slice boom, North of Brooklyn was folding New York-style pies on Queen West. The formula has not moved: a thin, blistered crust ringed with sesame seeds, a bright San Marzano tomato sauce, and a short roster that includes the Killer Bee, where honey and heat trade punches, and the cult-favourite kale and bacon. Garlic knots and a house garlic dip round out the counter. Several locations now stretch across the city, each built for the grab-a-slice-and-go ritual the shop helped normalize here. This is the elder statesman of Toronto’s slice scene, the pizzeria that opened the lane most of the newer shops on this list now drive in.
Toronto
gram's pizza
There is no website and no app at Gram’s; to order a pie, you call. Graham Palmateer, a PhD dropout in international relations, runs the Dupont Street shop with a four-person team and a menu that fits on handwritten cardboard. The cheese comes from Tony’s, which also cures the pepperoni; the spicy sausage is made down the street by Theo at Ferdi’s; the sauce is a blend of two Italian canned tomatoes with salt and nothing else. Slices go until 3 p.m., then the little oven switches to whole takeout pies, and weekend slots fill by morning. Two years of stubborn smallness have made Gram’s one of the most beloved pizzerias in the city. Nothing on this list is harder to get, or more worth the phone call.
Toronto
Slowhand Sourdough Pizza
Dan Ewing and Brett Feeley, two east-end dads, started baking pan pizzas out of their home kitchens during the pandemic before settling into a storefront on Pape. Their square pies split the difference between Roman slab and Detroit pan, raised on a slow-fermented San Francisco sourdough culture, so the crumb reads thick but eats light, with caramelized cheese crisping the edges. The Peter Piper, capped with ricotta and hot honey, shows how far the format can stretch. Service runs from the counter, and the picnic tables outside do the rest. Slowhand proves a pan pizza can carry sourdough character without losing its crunch. It is the east end’s answer to the square-slice question, and a convincing one.
Toronto
Danny's Pizza Tavern
Getting a table at Danny’s has been a College Street sport since Daniel Barna and Anna Hopkins started slinging their party-cut, Chicago-tavern-style pies. The crust is cracker-thin, cut into squares rather than slices, and the mushroom pie with house chili oil has its own fan club, as do the mozzarella sticks and the oversized Aperol spritzes. Demand ran so hot that in 2025 the duo opened Danny’s Next Door, a standing-room bar one door over where the same square-cut pizza lands without the wait, with Seinfeld playing on loop. Toronto barely did tavern-style pizza before Danny’s; now the city argues about little else. The toughest reservation on this list, and the squares justify the sport.
Toronto
One Night Only Pizza (ONO Pizza)
One Night Only started exactly as the name suggests: a home operation turning out 25 pies every Saturday night, until word got around. In spring 2021 it moved into the old Casa Tamayo storefront at Pape and Wroxeter, just south of the Danforth, where pies now leave the oven on preorder, timed so your 16-inch arrives hot as you walk in. The crust is thin and crisp with barely any char, the pepperoni comes topped with fresh mozzarella and basil, and every order ships with a creamy garlic-dill dip. Slices run at lunch; weekly specials keep the regulars guessing. Ordering opens Mondays and sells out promptly, which tells you most of what you need to know. In a slice-starved stretch of the east end, ONO built its own gravity.
Toronto
Maria's Sports Bar
Maria Leandro ran her College Street sports bar for 32 years before chef Graham Pratt wandered in to watch a game and noticed the dormant wood-fired oven. He asked to run a pizza pop-up; she asked if he wanted to buy the place. With Adrian Montesdeoca and Mikey Kim, the team behind Milou, Bambu and Bar Bowie, Pratt reopened Maria’s in June 2026, keeping the pool table, the screens and the regulars, and firing ten pizzas on a supremely thin, supple crust: five classics plus signatures like the K-Town, with Spam, kimchi and scallions. Maria still drops by. Nowhere else in the city does a proper pie come with two-for-one lagers and the game on. Maria’s is what happens when serious pizza people refuse to ruin a good dive.
Toronto
Descendant Detroit Style Pizza
When Descendant opened on Queen East in 2015, it was the first pizzeria in the country to commit fully to the Detroit style, and Leslieville has been lining up ever since. The dough cold-ferments for 48 hours before hitting blue-steel pans, where the cheese bakes right to the edge into a caramelized, crunchy frame. Toppings run from classic pepperoni to left-field builds like coconut sambol. The dining area seats just 22, all retro charm, and founder Chris Getchell has since passed the pans to Sotirios “Ike” Tzakis, who runs the operation today. Every Detroit-style square in Toronto descends, quite literally, from this kitchen. A decade on, those caramelized edges remain the benchmark.
Toronto
Bar Sugo
Next door to Conor Joerin’s no-reservations red-sauce counter Sugo sits its sit-down sibling, where the wood-fired oven was built from bricks salvaged from Joerin’s old high school. The pies come out blistered and char-edged, made to be eaten alongside a fuller bar list and the same loud, generous Bloordale energy that turned the original into a nightly lineup. Where Sugo is all baseball-sized meatballs and heaping pasta, Bar Sugo lets the oven do the talking, an Italian-American pizzeria in spirit as much as in menu. For a wood-fired pie in a place that feels like a party, Bloordale has no rival. Bar Sugo brings the red-sauce swagger this list would be poorer without.
Toronto
Fresca Pizza and Pasta
Long before vodka slices and sourdough hybrids, there was Fresca, the family-run College Street counter where the slices are thin, crisp and reliably the same, year after year. This is Toronto-style pizza in its natural habitat: generous rounds at prices that feel like a different decade, calzones and sandwiches on the side, and a house garlic sauce, handed over free with every order, that regulars refuse to eat without. No redesigns, no rebrands, just a display case of hot slices and a lineup that never really ends. Every pizza city needs its old guard, and Fresca is ours. It fed College Street long before the boom, and it will outlast a few trends yet.
Toronto
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