Prosciutto – Michael Eats

Getting a Jaw Workout at the Treadwell Bakery

Published on August 13, 2018 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 122 Queen Street, Niagara on the Lake
Website: https://treadwellcuisine.com/

The perfect pizza crust should be lightly crispy on the outside, with a soft, slightly chewy interior. Well, the Treadwell Bakery in Niagara on the Lake definitely has the “chewy” thing covered. They’ve got it covered hard.

On this particular day, they had a couple of types of slices available; the one topped with salami, prosciutto, roasted red pepper, and goat cheese caught my eye.

The flavours were actually pretty solid; the sweet peppers did a great job of balancing out the salty meats and cheese, and the slice had a garlicky, herby flavour that worked quite well. It could have used a bit more moisture, but the quality of the ingredients was good; it was a tasty slice of ‘suh.

Then there was the crust. Calling it chewy doesn’t quite communicate the enormity of what was going on here. It was downright rubbery; I was having a hard time even biting into it. When I say that it was a jaw workout, I’m not exaggerating to make a point. My jaw was literally sore by the time I finished the slice. It was nuts.

I still actually kind of enjoyed it, which tells you how good it was otherwise. But man, that crust. What the hell happened there??

Decent Pizza at Scaddabush

Published on July 12, 2018 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 1900 The Queensway, Etobicoke
Website: http://www.scaddabush.com/

I’ve mentioned before that Scaddabush is a surprisingly good casual chain restaurant; well, I just tried the pizza, and yeah, I still like the place.

I got the Mario: “prosciutto, fresh mozzarella, San Marzano tomato sauce, baby arugula.”

It’s good — it’s not mind-blowing, but I certainly enjoyed eating it a heck of a lot more than the pizza at Pizzeria Libretto.

The crust is basically Roman-style — thin and a little bit bready, with a satisfying amount of crispiness on its exterior. It’s not bad at all. And the toppings are solid. The tomato sauce is slightly garlicky and not over-applied, and the salty prosciutto and peppery arugula work quite well together.

It’s nothing that anyone’s going to get too excited over — but like everything else at Scaddabush, it’s better than you’d think, given the quality of the competition.

Pizzeria Libretto, or: The Inventor of Pizza is Rolling in His Grave

Published on March 29, 2018April 1, 2018 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 545 King Street West, Toronto
Website: http://pizzerialibretto.com/

So, here’s a not-so-delightful tidbit: apparently I’ve ruined Neapolitan-style pizza for myself by eating my way through Naples for a week, because I just got a margherita pizza from Pizzeria Libretto, and it was hot garbage.

I didn’t think the gulf in quality would be so severe, but absolutely everything about this pizza was wrong. The proportion of sauce was off, but in a really baffling way — the pizza was simultaneously too dry, and too soft. It was weird. The flavour of the sauce was about right (the sauce in this style of pizza is just plain tomatoes, so it’s hard to mess up), but I don’t think there was enough of it.

The cheese was okay, but again, the texture was off. It was too dry. It’s hard for me to put my finger on what exactly was wrong, because I’m not a pizza expert, but something was clearly wrong. None of the pizzas in Naples developed brown spots on the cheese like this one, and the texture was slightly rubbery.

The worst offender was the crust. It was somehow over-charred around the edges — it was unpleasantly bitter in spots — and under-charred on the bottom. I mean, look at the almost entirely colourless bottom of this slice:

That’s not right. It was insanely bland, and had barely a fraction of the amazing chew that the pizzas in Naples had. It was like Wonder Bread; there’s no there there.

Everything else was quite good, at least. The buttermilk fried calamari featured a perfectly crispy, tasty exterior encasing squid with a great balance of tenderness and bite. It came with some really tasty romesco sauce that accompanied it perfectly.

I also tried the Prosciutto di Parma, and like the calamari, it was quite delicious. Granted, all the restaurant had to do was slice it, but it was very tasty nonetheless.

But that pizza, though. What was that?? It was disastrously bad. It was like the Neapolitan pizza equivalent of Pizza Pizza. Actually, it was worse than Pizza Pizza, because at least Pizza Pizza knows what it is and doesn’t have any delusions of grandeur.