Michel-Ange Pizzeria: The Best-Kept Secret on Jean-Talon

On Jean-Talon Street East, a discreet sign hides one of the best pizzas in Montreal. Michel-Ange Pizzeria, which opened on September 9, 2021, is no spectacular trattoria. No table service, no reservations: you walk in, order at the counter, and wait while the pizzaiolo and the oven get to work. And that’s precisely the point.

Behind that oven stands Antoine Roy-Camarda, owner of Michel-Ange Pizzeria, a Quebecer with Calabrian roots. His father left Calabria to meet his mother here, and his entire childhood was punctuated by Friday pizza nights at his grandmother’s: large round pizzas devoured before the empty boxes got hidden in the snow forts out in the yard. “Those were the treasures we’d go dig up,” he remembers. A few decades later, those same large round pizzas have become his signature.

Before opening, he trained seriously: cooking courses at the ITHQ, a vocational diploma in bread-making at the École hôtelière de Montréal, and several years working in pizzerias and bakeries to sharpen his craft. But beyond the schools and the formal training, it was passion that taught him everything. “The secret to learning pizza, for me, was my love for it,” he explains.

His pizza is neither Neapolitan nor strictly Calabrian. It’s his own. A high-temperature deck oven from northern Italy, peel loading, and someone dedicated to watching every single bake. The menu shifts with what’s coming in: Margherita, all-dressed, soppressata, and others. But the spirit stays the same. “Cooking is personal,” he sums up. “I make the pizzas the way I like them.” At Michel-Ange, quality leads. The ingredients are carefully chosen by Antoine, and even though they want to offer pizzas at accessible prices, they still use one of the most expensive flours on the market. “It’s among the priciest, but for me, that’s non-negotiable.” No compromise on quality.

The decor is deliberately modest: 27 seats, a counter, the essentials. You don’t come to Michel-Ange for the setting — you come to grab a big round pizza on your way home from the metro, to have a quick, satisfying family dinner, or to hang out with friends over a slice. The dining room is quiet; this is a take-out spot at heart, and that suits it perfectly. On the drinks side, the selection is short and confident: a German Pilsner, three or four bottles of wine, a single house wine by the glass, and a few small Italian sodas that bring him back to his childhood.

“I keep things really simple,” says Antoine. And it’s exactly that discipline — one product, an exceptional flour, a mastered gesture, a price he insists on keeping accessible — that makes Michel-Ange one of the most true-to-itself neighbourhood pizzerias in Montreal.

Written by Jean-Philippe Tastet
Photography by Alison Slattery

Updated on May 27, 2026

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