Gram’s Pizza: the analog slice shop keeping the Junction Triangle fed

There’s no website, no app, no ordering through DMs. To get a pizza from Gram’s, you call. The signs in the window are handwritten on cardboard, the whole operation runs on four people, and the oven on Dupont Street is small enough that it dictates the schedule of everyone around it. Two years in, that stubborn smallness has turned Gram’s Pizza one of the most quietly beloved pizzerias in the city.

The PhD dropout who did the napkin math

Graham Palmateer didn’t plan on any of this. He washed dishes at a pub through university, worked his way up to line cook, then left the industry for a PhD in international relations, studying US foreign relations and African history. He dropped out, came back to Toronto , needed a job, and landed at a friend’s pizzeria — serving at first, then gravitating toward the pizza station because he liked it more. When the company opened a takeout slice shop, he rewrote their dough recipe and started doing the napkin math on rent, labor and food costs. “Small kitchen spaces are rare in Toronto, and affordable kitchen spaces are even rarer,” he says. A tip from a neighbor about the old Tuck Shop space closing was the opening he needed.

“Start with good tomatoes and don’t screw them up”

His philosophy fits on a cardboard sign: less is more. “I like to focus on quality bread and a few simple toppings,” he explains, and the menu stays short partly out of conviction, partly because two cooks can only prep so much before good food starts going in the garbage. The cheese is from Tony’s, which also cures the pepperoni. Theo at Ferdi’s , a friend from down the street, makes the spicy sausage to Graham’s brief: bright red, fatty, hot. The flour is Canadian. The tomatoes are the one import, a blend of two Italian cans with salt added and nothing else. “That’s the trick to a good tomato sauce,” he says. “Start with good tomatoes and don’t screw them up.”

A frankly shocking amount of caramelized onions

That restraint shows up in the slices. The cheese is built on three of them, layered so each one registers, and the basil oil version — their answer to a margherita, born from a supplier’s lacklustre basil going brown too fast — reads greener and rounder than you expect. The Tony carries dry-cured pepperoni over fresh mozzarella, seasoned with anise and cinnamon so it lands warmer and heartier than the classic. The spicy leans on Ferdi’s sausage and a hit of honey, the sweet-and-hot combination doing exactly what it should. Richest of all is the mushroom, whose base hides what Graham cheerfully calls “a frankly shocking amount of caramelized onions,” cooked down with cream, real parmesan and enough black pepper to keep it from going soft. And yes, there’s Hawaiian, canned pineapple and all. “There would be riots if I took it off the menu.”

Slices until three, then the phone takes over

A word on logistics, because they matter here. Slices are sold until three o’clock, then the oven switches over to whole takeout pies for dinner. “That’s my error in not planning particularly well,” Graham admitted. “So my bad, everybody.” Fridays and Saturdays fill up in 15-minute slots, so call in the morning. They’re open Wednesday through Sunday, closing early on Sundays — the one half-day a man working 60-plus hours a week has managed to carve out for himself.

Written by Daniel Neuhaus
Photography by Daniel Neuhaus

Updated on August 04, 2026

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