Why Not? Italian Food

Why Not? Italian Food works two counters at once. One sends you home with lunch — a panini, a slice, a cone of pizza dough you can eat walking out the door. The other sends you home with dinner you have not made yet: fresh dough by the bag, frozen ravioli and gnocchi, jarred sauce, and a shelf of imported Italian groceries. The shop sits on Kortright Road West, in the Kortright and Edinburgh district near the university's south edge, where a takeout order and a grocery run turn out to be the same trip.

The pizza cone is the order that explains the name. A cone of pizza dough filled with sauce and cheese, built up with pepperoni, mushrooms, peppers, or onions, it is portable, a little improbable, and not something most Italian counters bother to make — pizza eaten one-handed, no plate required. The pizzas underneath it are more conventional and just as considered. The Why Not pizza runs a twelve-inch round of San Marzano-style tomato sauce and fior di latte under spicy soppressata, roasted red peppers, and olives; the Margherita keeps it plain; the Salsiccia, Prosciutto Arugula, and Primavera round out the board.