Thin-crust lust in Roncey, impeccable seafood in Scarborough and double-digit cocktails on Dundas West
PIZZERIA DEFINA 
321 Roncesvalles Ave., 416-534-4414
The newest pizza parlour on the Roncesvalles strip isn’t world changing, but it’s a welcome addition to a neighbourhood brimming with families looking for quick, crowd-pleasing food. There are plenty of oddities on the menu: pizza salads and even a lasagna pizza (a margherita with ground beef and fior di latte). The baked pies, flash-cooked in a wood-fired brick oven, are tasty, though not Libretto, Queen Margherita or Terroni calibre. The crusts one night were a touch underdone, where they should have been blistered black. The tomato sauce is fine but doesn’t have the zip of a great San Marzano. The caesar salad is phoned in: the lettuce is still damp from washing, the dressing lacks punch, and the croutons are AWOL. Green bean “fritti” are tasty from lots of salt and pepper but floppy from deep-frying. Friendly service and a perfunctory wine list.
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This friendly and inexpensive new gastropub feels more like an antidote to Bay Street than a part of it. The room is small, with just 50 seats, and the prices aren’t for masters of the universe: you can get a Stoli and tonic for $5 and a 600 mL bottle of Beau’s All Natural beer for $7. Even the wine list has plenty of interesting bottles under $50. But the cooking, by the young chef Graham Pratt, is the clincher. On a good night, The Gabardine serves up some of the city’s best pub food. The umami bomb of a cheeseburger comes topped with intensely savoury oven-roasted tomatoes and old, stinky cheddar. The mac-and-cheese, baked with aged cheddar, provolone, chèvre and parmesan, is creamy, crunchy, salty perfection. The house-smoked trout is carefully balanced and set over celeriac that’s tossed with a just-creamy-enough rémoulade. Even on an off night, the food is well prepared (if not quite so sublime): the cod croquettes that were brilliant on one visit—chunky, meaty, soaked enough to kill the saltiness but retain the flavour—were too salty on another, and the roasted chicken is also marred by a heavy hand with the salt. Mains $13–$23.
