Queen Margherita Pizza

This bustling and buzzed about Napoletana pizza place on Queen Street East has reason to celebrate, it really is that good. First of all, Queen Margherita takes reservations, trumping its West side competitor Libretto. When you first walk in, the front area looks small, but don't let that fool you. Just upstairs is a huge seating area with large glass windows, rustic wooden tables and a view of the pizza oven in the back.

It's always nice when a bread basket comes to the table, especially if you're starving, but knowing what was ahead, the basket did not get used. The pizza menu is exciting but they also offer a great deal. For $25 you get an appetizer, any pizza on the menu (some of which go up to $18) and a dessert. What I heard going in was that the pizzas are huge, so my friend Jeff and I decided to split the fixed price. To start we got the ceaser salad, which tasted like your average ceaser, but I found it to be a little small to split. It would have been easy to devour the whole thing. For our pizza we ordered the mezza luna - half margherita and half calzone stuffed with ricotta. The pizza actually came before we finished the salad, which made us feel a bit rushed, and left the pizza to cool off too much. But for this round, it was the perfect sharing size. If you wanted to get your own and don't finish it, they are happy to pack it up. Lots of people were leaving with pizza boxes. I also liked how the crust was a tad thicker and didn't fall apart like at some thin crust pizza places. It had just the right amount of tomato sauce, fior di latte and basil. My one complaint is that our knives weren't sharp enough and it was a bit of a struggle cutting the pizza. There's also hot sauce on the table, that the waitress warned was incredibly spicy. Jeff said it wasn't bad, I had no interest in trying it. The desserts are simple. We got the caramelized bananas with vanilla ice cream. And even though it was small, in the end, it was nice not feeling like we were going to explode from over eating.

Can't wait to go back and do it all over again.