Pizza slices on the rise
The Gazette looks at the rise of pizza by the slice here.
Is it so new? I live around the corner from a place that’s been selling slices for years. Their location across from a big high school brings them a steady stream of business, and they make a solid reliable Montreal‑style pie.
walkerp 11:47 on 2025-01-20 Permalink
Definitely a new phenomenon. You could always get those gross, bready and sweet-saucy slices at the local fast food restaurants that also sell burgers and poutine, but the places in the article have popped up with the hipsterization of Beaubien, Verdun, St-Henri and Fairmount. They only sell pizza slices (and pies) and the quality is way better.
Mozai 11:54 on 2025-01-20 Permalink
Pizza by the slice has been a normal thing in Plateau for twenty years. Feels like there’s fewer storefronts now that offer it ’round here.
Ian 12:20 on 2025-01-20 Permalink
Back in the early 90s I practically lived off cheap pizza by the slice.
My fave place was on Mont Royal by St Larry, I think where the Timmy is now. Pizza Madonna by Prince Arthur was a good one, too.
MarcG 12:23 on 2025-01-20 Permalink
Same as Ian. There was even a 49 cent pizza place near the St-Mathieu Guy metro entrance in the 90s that was terrible/perfect.
Robert H 12:55 on 2025-01-20 Permalink
Walkerp is on to something as the improvement in the quality of pizza by the slice available in Montreal is one of the better byproducts of hipsterization-gentrification. The ensuing dietary epicurianism has left its mark, and we get to enjoy the results. A way must be found to allow this phenomenon to coexist in proximity with affordable housing. It would be a true civic boon.
Reading that article has got my mouth watering.
Blork 13:44 on 2025-01-20 Permalink
There’s definitely a NEW slice scene. Back in the day when there were 99-cent joints all over, the slices were pretty much all the same (OK but not particularly good). Over time many of them closed up. Before the pando, when I was working on Ste-Catherine and MacKay 3 or 4 days a week, I was very annoyed that I couldn’t get a slice anywhere near the office. (There is that tiny kiosk on de la Montagne just south of Ste-C but I never really liked their pizza; the crust was way too thick and heavy.)
Sure enough, I switch to full time WFH and Slice+Soda opens up on Ste-C and Pierce almost immediately. Figures. I really love S+S’s slices, and I plan my outings to St-Laurent deliberately around lunchtime so I can grab a slice from their shop over there, near Schwartz’s. (Oddly, the one on Ste-C closed after a year or two under mysterious circumstances.)
There are other good NEW slice joints around too, such as Adamo in the Hank and New Yorkaise in Griffintown. They’re all modeled after NY slice joints, which is a vast improvement over the doughy and greasy Montreal slices of the 1990s.
jeather 14:05 on 2025-01-20 Permalink
I’ve tried Adamo a few times and do not understand the love. I keep meaning to try S+S.
But yeah I agree that we used to have very cheap pizza by the slice, not good pizza by the slice. I’m sure I would find them nearly inedible now, and I’m not a pizza snob.
thomas 16:24 on 2025-01-20 Permalink
I remember getting pretty good pizza slices from Euro Deli (RIP) and after that Moleskine (RIP). There is definitely a trend to talk about and review pizza slices on social media so that is new.
carswell 16:37 on 2025-01-20 Permalink
Slices. mostly mediocre, have been available in Little Italy, St-Léonard and other Italian ‘hoods for years. If memory serves, there were also a couple of places downtown.
The difference these days is more widespread availability and, often, higher quality. Current fave is Segreta on Beaumont a few blocks west of Parc. Some of the toppings are a little over the top (most aren’t) but the crust is exceptional. Prices are on the high side but you get what you pay for.
Ian 16:42 on 2025-01-20 Permalink
I gues this is the new $25 burgers that “revolutionized” burgers 10 years ago.
Andrew 16:52 on 2025-01-20 Permalink
My condolences to Blork and jeather, Adamo is also (RIP). One of the places from the article, Toni’s, opened up one block to the west though.
Joey 17:23 on 2025-01-20 Permalink
@Ian suppose so; the burger pendulum has already swung all the way back to basic smashed patties now (save your blue cheese and artichoke hearts for some other era). To that point, the new place that replaced Frite Alors on Parc, Frite O Folie, is great.
Anyway, the Gazette’s perspective seems to be that we haven’t had pizza-by-the-slice on demand in Montreal for decades. I guess cheap, greasy slices don’t really count, because you used to be able to get slices in lots of places for 99 cents (occasionally less).
“One thing in common all the new slice shops share: pizza with chewy and airy crust, delicately sweet tomato sauce, and melt-in-your-mouth cheese for under $5 a slice” – I did a quick check: the cheapest slice at Slice and Soda and Fugazzi is more than $5. Bouquet offers a veggie slice for $4.75 with meat coming in at $5.25. Segreta’s website only lists prices of whole pies. Pizza Toni is more reasonable, with all slices under $5 (as low as $3.25, which I think is the cost of a can of Coke at a deep these days). But once you add tax and tip, you’re gonna be over five bucks. A small detail, but why include a straight-up fabrication? Did the local hipster indie bougie pizza cartel pay write the copy here?
Poutine Pundit 17:29 on 2025-01-20 Permalink
There were lots of slice places in the 90s that provided a homeopathic quantity of toppings on your pizza and buried pepperoni under the cheese–they were all terrible. I got food poisoning from the 49c place on St. Mathieu; food inspectors shut down the place a few days after that incident because of rat droppings in the flour.
I find that many of the New York-style slice places still aren’t anything close to what you get in New York, but they’re a definite improvement. Not a fan of the overpriced traditional neapolitan places popping up around town either, which also tend to be crust-and-sauce forward and minimalistic when it comes to toppings.
Give me cheese! Lots of it! Pan American Pizza in Mile Ex does a good comfort-food pizza.
Ian 17:37 on 2025-01-20 Permalink
Yeah that 5 bucks thing made me wonder – Segreda is over 30 bucks for a pep square, lol.
Blork 18:18 on 2025-01-20 Permalink
Folks, the Gazette is NOT implying there were never pizza by the slice joints before. The title of the article is “Pizza revolution: the rise of Montreal’s new slice scene.” Emphasis on “new.” What’s new is the SCENE. While there were always pizza slice joints, there was never a “scene” around them. Now there’s a “scene.’
And yeah, $5 or more for a slice, but hey it’s 2025 and everything’s expensive. I was looking at the menu for some Italian joint downtown the other day and linguini pomodoro — about the most basic pasta dish you could ask for — was $32. $32! Material costs for that dish is about $2, but they’re charging $32. (It used to be that material cost should be about 35% of the plate price; now I guess it more like 7%!) Reviewing the menu on Google, that dish was $26 about four years ago. Even that was high, but wow, talk about inflation.
So your shitty small 99-cent slice in 1998 being replaced by a large and delicious $5 slice doesn’t seem so bad by comparison.
And yeah, the burgers. I was never a fan of those fancy burgers from a decade or so ago. I’ve always preferred smash burgers even before the name was popular. Top of the list is my homemade Oklahoma onion burgers. Sometimes I fancy those up a bit an make my Grapes of Wrath burgers, which is an Oklahoma onion burger with a bit of bacon (to represent the Joad family pig that was slaughtered, butchered, and salted at the start of the novel), a bit of lettuce (to represent the farms of California, where they worked as harvesters), and a dab of chipotle mayo (to represent the Mexican migrant workers they worked alongside). That’s a 100% Blork creation, so if I ever see it on a menu I’ll know it was stolen from here. 😉
Ian 18:23 on 2025-01-20 Permalink
I still question a scene that includes straight up chains like S+S or Toni. In my neck of the woods those are just typical overpriced Ubisoft lunch counter joints.
That said your Grapes o’ Wrath sounds pretty awesome. Really hipster it up and serve it on a shovel 😀
DeWolf 19:59 on 2025-01-20 Permalink
Pizza Toni has two locations, is that really a chain?
dhomas 10:29 on 2025-01-21 Permalink
All this talk of shut down spots got me thinking of FCO pizza that had opened about 10 years ago. It was actually real authentic pizza “al taglio” (square slices), but I guess it could be considered “by the slice”. It was on Viger close to Square Victoria. Legitimately the best pizza I’d had in Montreal, despite it being pretty much fast food (though fancy fast food). I would go there regularly when I worked in the Centre de Commerce Mondial. They had really awesome gelato, too (also some of the best I’d had in Montreal). Everything was authentically Italian: the pizza ovens were imported directly from Italy, many of the ingredients, and even the employees (when they first opened, several employees could only speak Italian)! Unfortunately, they closed down around the time of the pandemic and never quite recovered afterwards. Given this resurgence and “new scene”, I think they would really do well if they decided to reopen.
Josh 11:14 on 2025-01-21 Permalink
20 years ago I lived above a 99-cent slice place in Verdun called “Pizza AlPacino”. Not new at all.
https://fastly.4sqi.net/img/general/width960/59350436_Dcy74jC9A8u73iX7E9YEN3ak7UQ_YziEQWBYwN81yYc.jpg
CE 11:30 on 2025-01-21 Permalink
When I was a student, I used to live on the cheap(ish) slices at Al-Taib. They were never good but they kept me alive. The last 99 cent pizza I personally saw was a place on Rosemont, across the street from what became the library next to the metro. It was actually ok. Unfortunately, despite the large Italian population here, we’ve never gotten as good at pizza by the slice as NYC. The worst pizza I’ve had there has generally been better than the best I’ve had here.
Blork 12:26 on 2025-01-21 Permalink
20 or so years ago the Gazette did a piece on the proliferation of “2 for 1” pizza joints, and the takeaway was that all you need to essentially print money is a pizza oven and rudimentary cooking skills. In other words, pizza, even when it’s bad, is still pretty good, so consumer expectations (at the time) were low. All you had to offer was the most basic uninteresting pizza and it would still sell. That’s where things have changed. People (especially younger people) are now more discerning than they were back then. Shit pizza doesn’t really fly anymore, but GOOD pizza does.
As CE says, NYC pizza is always good because people there were never complacent about it. CE, I tried an Al-Taib slice once, around 2017, and I didn’t like it at all. But I was a working guy with a bit of money, not a starving student, so I could afford to be fussy. At the time, the only decent slice around from my POV was from Double Pizza at de Maisonneuve and Pierce. While no one would ever call it particularly GOOD, neither was it particularly bad.
Another one gone downhill is the “Heure de pointe” place in the Longueuil Metro/bus terminal. Five years ago it was actually good (not REALLY good, but good; better than any of the old-school joints downtown). But a few years ago they changed ownership, renovated and expanded, and now their pizza is completely forgettable, primarily because the crust it just too thick and heavy.
MárçG 15:12 on 2025-01-21 Permalink
That’s sad news about the pizza place at the Longueuil bus terminal, I would always grab a spinach slice on the way through there.
nau 15:56 on 2025-01-21 Permalink
Ah, Pizza Alpacino. Easily Montreal’s best just for the cheeky name. Never did grab a slice.