Toronto’s neighbourhood pizzerias are serving up a slice of a pizza renaissance - Toronto Star

From Badiali to Gram’s, independent slice shops in Pape Village and Trinity Bellwoods are driving demand.

Freshly baked pizzas await customers as Gram’s Pizza (1640 Dupont St.) opens for lunch service.

There’s exactly one barstool inside Gram’s Pizza, a brick-walled pizzeria on a largely residential street that barely fits its staff of four. The weekday lunch crowd trickles in at opening, well aware of the strict 3 p.m. cutoff for slices, served on recognizable fluted white paper plates with as much structural integrity as a napkin. After that, the oven is dedicated to dinner orders placed by phone, rather than through an app. The decor, if you can call it that, is a menu written in black marker on cardboard taped to the wall.

The New York-style slices have the requisite crispness but are still flexible enough to fold in half. The slightly charred crust is best with a swipe of spicy garlic dip. Alongside the ever-popular pepperoni and plain cheese, there are occasional specials: fork-tender brisket on one visit, Ontario peach and pancetta on another. The tangy-salty-fatty combination works for Hawaiian pizza, and it works here, too. Despite opening just two years ago, Gram’s already feels like a neighbourhood stalwart.

Graham Palmateer at his pizzeria Gram’s Pizza in Toronto.

Gram’s, on Dupont Street near Dundas Street West, is part of a new wave of pizzerias that have popped up over the last five or six years on side streets and in residential neighbourhoods in the Junction, Pape Village, Riverdale, Harbord Village and Trinity Bellwoods. They look like they’ve been around as long as Bitondo’s or Pizza Gigi, but their owners will wax poetic about 72-hour fermentations and put unorthodox toppings on a weekend special. Despite the kitchens never being big enough to meet demand, there’s enough interest to draw pizza enthusiasts willing to make the trip (hello, Badiali!) and get into spirited debates on whose pies are the best. And if you ask the owners, there’s room for more.

“We can probably stand a few more pizzerias in Toronto, especially smaller ones because we can’t keep up with demand,” said Gram’s owner Graham Palmateer. “There’s a market for it too, now that pizza tourism is a thing. On weekends we get people on pizza crawls and there are pizza influencers.”

Luke Pollard makes a pepperoni pizza at One Night Only at 581 Pape Ave.

Other slice shops that have opened in recent years include Nice Slice (October 2025) on Harbord Street; Gracie’s Pizza (March 2025) inside the Get Well bar in Trinity Bellwoods; One Night Only Pizza (April 2021) in a former convenience store on Pape; Lorenzo’s Pizzeria (June 2025), a short walk north of One Night Only; and Badiali’s, which opened in June 2021 and added a second location in Mirvish Village in May 2026.

They’re all purveyors of classic thin-crust, slightly floppy slices, but each has its own quirk. Nice Slice makes a tangy zaatar slice with pomegranate molasses. One Night Only Pizza in Riverdale prefers a longer dough fermentation and says the organic flour it uses is easier to digest. Lorenzo’s swears that hand-grating its cheese on a thicker setting makes a better product. Gracie’s Pizza has a slightly fluffier, larger crust, while Gram’s is crispier.

“We’re going through a pizza renaissance, starting with places like North of Brooklyn and Badiali’s,” said Lorenzo’s owner Djordje Krstich. “You’re getting each pizza maker’s personality and style, and each place attracts a certain crowd because everyone is going to have their own preferences.”

Luke Pollard makes a pizza at One Night Only at 581 Pape Ave. in Toronto.

Despite serving a more premium slice than a typical chain, these pizzerias offer something increasingly valuable: a made-from-scratch meal at an accessible price. A slice at Gram’s costs $5.30 and dip is $2. Gracie’s Pizza slices start at $5.50, Nice Slice is $5.75 and Lorenzo’s is $6. At One Night Only, three big slices, ranging from classic pepperoni to a weekly special of brie, bacon, hot honey costs, onions and sesame seeds, came to under $25, including dipping sauces, and were enough to feed two.

“Pizza is one of those things, even in a recession, you can still get and it brings people together,” said One Night Only’s Luke Pollard. “Times are good: pizza. Times are bad: pizza.”

Graham Palmateer at his pizzeria, Gram’s Pizza.

While pizza is synonymous with delivery, part of the appeal of this new wave of pizzerias is that they’re opening where people live, giving residents an alternative to chain takeout or a night out at a restaurant.

“Where we are (just north of Pape subway station), we’re looking at young couples with kids and a mortgage,” said Krstich of Lorenzo’s. “They’re not doing fine dining (and don’t) have the time to go to a restaurant on Ossington, but maybe still want a higher-end pizza that’s $26, $28 and can feed four people.”

Just a 15-minute walk south of Lorenzo’s is One Night Only Pizza, where the space was once a corner convenience store owned by Pollard’s friend and neighbour. Pollard started the pizzeria with his wife by having a once-a-week pop-up inside the space before fully taking it over.

Gram’s Pizza in Toronto is a tiny, takeout-only pizzeria with a menu written on cardboard. 

“If you live in the neighbourhood, we’d all know. You’d get regulars anywhere but being in the neighbourhood, our neighbourhood where our kids go to school here, you just end up knowing everyone,” he said. “I’d say we have about 50 regulars and every week, same time, same order for five years...The pizza shop is a very welcoming place, like a barbershop where people hang out and tell you the juicy gossip in the neighbourhood.”

Spend any time at these pizzerias and within minutes you’ll overhear a customer talking about their plans for the weekend and how their kids are doing.

“We’re small and quaint, people want to support that and most of our customers are regulars and we know them by name,” said Palmateer of Gram’s. “People want to be familiar with their local pizza vendor in a way you know your barber. It’s a tight-knit neighbourhood and I’ve benefitted from that.”

Karon Liu is a Toronto-based food reporter for the Star. Reach him via email: karonliu@thestar.ca.