THE ACCIDENTAL PIZZERIA
Casual dining ‘Neapolitan style’
What’s the best word to describe how The Parlour Pizza Kitchen & Bar came to open last May? “Unintentionally” comes close.
Its co-owner, Linda Price, told me last week that she and her husband, Joe, had not meant to open a restaurant last year. What they did want was a larger space for their business, Toss It Up Catering. Then they learned of The Parlour’s space coming available, in the same Greenbank Road mall where, from 2001 until 2012, they had run the P.J. Quigley’s Bar and Grill.
It made sense, Price said, to operate Toss It Up from that nicely renovated 1,000-squarefoot space in the mornings and afternoons, then to serve dinners in the evening, in the cosy, darkened, 28-seat dining room. Or, perhaps it made as much sense as running two businesses back-toback during 16-hour work days.
Price told me this interesting tale and more after I had ea ten thrice at The Parlour, which was enough times to form a positive, if not knocked-out, opinion of its Neapolitan-style pizzas, of many of its starters, of its admittedly in-the-box specials and pastas, and its friendly service.
There’s fancier food out there than what chef Michael Hargreaves, who is also the catering company’s chef, puts out. But The Parlour’s best dishes have showed off clear flavours, respect for key ingredients and nice attention to detail.
Perhaps most notably, the restaurant strikes me as providing fine value for money, especially with $19 chalkboard specials that come with batons of pillowy, house-baked focaccia served with mascarpone-enriched butter, plus a sizable portion of salad bolstered with roasted beets. The value proposition also gets a gold star on Tuesdays, when pizzas cost just $10 each.
Here, thin-crust, 11-inch pizzas, are made with Italian “00” flour, which, thanks to its fine grind and slightly lower protein content, reputedly results in crusts that are crispy on the outside and tender inside. Crusts made with all-purpose flour tend to be more chewy. The Parlour will also make gluten-free versions of pizzas for an extra $3. Tomato-wise, Hargreaves uses the much-loved San Marzano for his pizzas.
While the Prices couldn’t install a wood-burning oven as they had originally wanted — it would have been too heavy — the oven does reach 600 F, I was told. It fires up to make “Neapolitanstyle” rather than true Neapolitan pizzas proper. Certainly Hargreaves’ more untraditional creations — a tandoori-chicken pizza, a duck-confit-with-hoisin-sauce-and-pear pizza that I found too sweet and on the dry side — would make pizza purists flinch.
I’ve noted some fluctuations in the tastiness of the crust and pizzas at The Parlour. A vegetarian pizza, called The Answer, was bang-on, with a toothsome crust loaded with fine pre-roasted zucchini, red onions, mushrooms and grape tomatoes, plus plenty of pesto and goat’s milk cheese.
The crust on the LaLa pizza ordered that same night was more dense, but the main impression it left was that it was one spicy red pie, generously topped with potent Calabrian peppers as well as hot soppressata and San Marzano tomatoes.
A fan of all-day breakfasts liked his Wake N Bake pizza topped with double-smoked bacon and a sunny-side-up egg, plus baby spinach and grape tomatoes.
I’ve had nothing but simple and satisfying starters at The Parlour, including tender, skewered grilled calamari; massive, panko-crusted risotto cakes that hid hits of provolone and sausage inside; some seared scallops served with bits of bacon, tarragon and lemon. Best, and most filling, was a hearty plate of fritto misto, with commendably ungreasy deep-fried discs of eggplant, fingers of red pepper, broccoli florets, mushrooms and zingy slices of deep-fried lemon, all enlivened with aioli on the side.
Specials have been well-made, if less imaginative than some of the pizzas. But even served with ho-hum accompaniments such as plain rice or mundane mashed potatoes and julienne veg, a blackened salmon filet and stuffed chicken breast were both well-executed and affordable.
Homemade pastas were mainstream choices — spaghetti and meatballs, lasagna, a seafood linguine dish. The latter contained the slip-ups of cooked but pale, unseared scallops and a so-so cream sauce, but its shrimp were just right.
The best of three desserts was a slab of classic, lady-fingered tiramisu, better than the chocolate mousse and the diavoletti (fried nuggets of dough, served with caramel and Nutella).
Overall, this is a small and unpretentious place with some better-than-average food at commendable prices. It will be even more appealing with the weather warming and the polar chill that had whipped in the door long gone, and especially on Tuesdays.