Bello Pizza

Andrew LeBlanc ran the kitchen at Soho House Toronto before he decided the thing worth building was pizza. Bello Pizza is where that decision landed — a twenty-five-seat shop on Collingwood's First Street, a chef's-kitchen sensibility pointed at a format most people file under takeout. The restaurant's own line is Traditional Values, Not So Traditional Pies, and the menu makes good on the second half: pies named like a crew roster, built on fior di latte and pecorino, finished with hot honey and Calabrian chili. They read less like a pizzeria's checklist than like a kitchen working out how far it can push a circle of dough.

The pizzas carry the visit. Spicy Goat Pizza is the clearest signature — Niagara goat cheese, garlic pesto, Calabrian chili, and hot honey, tangy and sharp and sweet in a single bite. The Bronson is its heavier counterpart, loud with blue cheese, bacon, buffalo-butter sauce, olives, and more hot honey. Between those poles sit Queen Goomba, dense with Italian sausage, double-smoked bacon, and a mushroom melange; Di Rienzo's, stacked with pepperoni, mortadella, soppressata, and fennel sausage; San Diego Surf, which folds oven-roasted pineapple and banana peppers into a pepperoni-and-bacon base; and Super Dave-Ola, soppressata and taggiasca olives lifted with hot honey. For contrast there is the Portabella under truffle cream and pickled chili, and the plain Bello — tomato, basil, and three cheeses — for anyone who wants to see what the dough does on its own.