TOMATO : LA BOITE A PIZZA - THIN CRUST PIZZAS

DELECTABLE THIN CRUST PIZZA ON ST-DENIS  

TOMATO : LA BOITE A PIZZA!

Their website (with menu right on the front page):  http://www.tomatopizza.ca/

4319 St Denis, Montreal, QC H2J 2K9
Telephone:(514) 303-7730

Open:  Everyday from 10:30am till 10pm
Price Range:  $20+ per person including one drink, meal, tax, and tip

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Restaurant exterior. Per usual, customers have been digitally blurred. Y'know, privacy issues and all that.

Favorite pizza here:  La TOTALE!

Mouthwatering summary:  Cozy, inviting pizzeria that serves thin crust pizzas in the Plateau Mont-Royal
Food to try:  La Totale!

Hello my lovely-wuvleys, how have y'all been? Time now for another installment of pizza review!

So, on an unseasonably warm October night, me and three of my friends decided to eat out on St-Denis Street. With pizza on our minds, we hopped on over to Tomato : La Boite à Pizza and sat on down in their outdoor terrasse to take advantage of what had to be one of the last hot days of the year. Well, it should be, right? There's a limit to how much climate change can change the climate, isn't there?  ... Please?

Ahem. Sorry, had to get that out of my system. So:  Pizza! Or more accurately, thin-crust pizza!

I've been coming to Tomato : La Boite à Pizza for a little while now. Hell, I LOVE it in winter time. It's a cozy restaurant with a warm, inviting decor and atmosphere that's perfectly suited for dining during cold, cold nights. Alternately, in the summer (or hot October nights, as was the case), their terrasse right on the street makes for a nice bustling eating experience. Also: I love the waitresses here - they're always so friendly! As for the food, they primarily serve thin-crust pizzas, apparently made from ingredients purchased fresh daily at the Jean-Talon Market (http://www.marchespublics-mtl.com/English/Jean-Talon/) (I LOVE that place!) provided by LUFA farms (http://lufa.com/en/). I don't know if that means that Pizzeria Geppetto (see my review of that place here: http://mouthwateringmontreal.blogspot.ca/2013/09/pizzeria-geppetto-pizza.html ) also does the same thing since, for me, the pizzas at the two places are pretty comparable. It could just mean that my palate isn't as refined as I think it is, but either way, I like both pizzerias!

And so, here are some pizzas we ordered at Tomato. First, the Calabrese ($14 for a small):

This is a pretty simple pizza, but it works! Besides the tomato sauce, the pizza is topped only with fresh mozzarella cheese and spicy Italian sausage. For something so simple, it shouldn't make me as happy as it does, but hey, there's no accounting for what you love, y'know? It's a salty, meaty, spicy pizza, and the tomato sauce is ever so mildly tart; this little hint of sourness really adds to the overall flavor.

Next, we have the Portuguaise ($18 for a small):

So, the Portuguaise was topped with fresh mozzarella, chorizo sausage, red peppers, and garlic rosemary oil. I would characterize this pizza as having a bit of a smoky, spicy flavor - no doubt due to the chorizo. I also noticed that this particular chorizo was ever so mildly sweet. Maybe that came from the sauce? Or was it just the particularity of the sausage used? Hm. Don't know, don't care - I just like it!

And now, the Garnie ($14 for a small):

The Garnie was topped with fresh mozzarella, Genoa salami (aw, yeeeah), portobello mushrooms, and green peppers. Somehow, this pizza was more delicate than all the others. Which is fine, since, well, it's a thin crust pizza place. And besides, despite its...slight... nature, the flavor was good and rich. It made me smile, at least :).

To close it all off, we have the Totale! ($17 for a small) (okay, the exclamation point was unnecessary, but damn it, it just sounds more right as an exclamation!):

Pancetta on pizza. How can you NOT love it?!!

With such a name, the Totale unsurprisingly had a lot more toppings than all the other three pizzas we had that night. The pizza was garnished with fresh mozzarella (of course! Why am I even bother to list that anymore?), Genoa salami, portobello mushrooms, green peppers, red onions, and PANCETTA (yeeess... I loves me anything bacon-like!). Out of all the pizzas I've had here, this is the one that comes closest to tasting like pizzas served at the more familiar North American style pizza parlors. The crust was still thin of course, but there was more than a fair bit of meat, and it was mildly spicy.

Huh. I literally just salivated a little while typing that. 

Okay, that's typically a sign that I need to wrap up writing and get to eating something. A couple of things before I go: Tomato also delivers, and I don't know how long this special is lasting, but you can get four small pizzas delivered for $38. Certainly not a bad deal if you don't want to leave the house. And that's it for now - I'm done writing, you start eating!

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Map of restaurants I have reviewed:

Mouthwatering Montreal - Tomato : La Boite à Pizza is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.