Levetto — Restaurant in Toronto

We're back on the HUNT for Toronto's BEST! Stop #1 of the pizza pie tour: Levetto

I can't say that I've ever had a love affair with pizza, especially since we're typically inundated with "greasy for the sake of grease" slices from your major fast food pizza spots, but after a trip to Levetto, I might be a believer.

Levetto is a small restaurant with a modern feel, near Queen & Dufferin. As an old man at heart, it's the kind of spot that you feel hip walking into, but just short of pretentious. Cool, simplistic decor, with a modest amount of seating, so I'd say limit yourself to a four person group max.

Though we're on a pizza hunt, we dabbled in a little extra because Levetto is also known for their pasta and desserts. First up we ordered a bowl of Trecce pasta between the two of us. The pasta is served with garlic infused olive oil, chili flakes, sundried tomatos, goat's cheese, and arugula. Since I'm regularly unimpressed by pasta, I was pleasantly surprised with this dish. The pasta was cooked to a nice al dente, and you could taste that it's made fresh daily and cooked to order. It's got a noticeable spice from the chili, which is expertly balanced by the goat cheese that melts over the pasta. And shout out the sundried tomatos, which were wonderfully sweet hits of flavour.

Then came the pies! On the suggestion of pretty much everyone, waitress included, I grabbed the Funghi. As the name suggests, mushrooms are the main act of this show. You'll get a beautiful mess of portobello, oyster, and cremini mushrooms sitting on top of a creamy layer of mascarpone cheese and roasted garlic crema. Also, there's a shredded cheese topping. (Probably parmesan.) This pie can be summed up as a savoury sanctuary of heavy mushroom and garlic flavour. And I KID YOU NOT, once you dive in, you won't even notice that there's no meat! Vegetarians rejoice! Levetto serves romana style pizzas, so you'll get a thin & crisp crust, but unfortunately this is were my one minor annoyance came in. Good luck trying to actually pick up every slice, because some of the crust gets a little wobbly after sitting under the love it supports for too long. It's still very manageable though with a fork and knife. Anyway, I'll finish with the much needed props to how after you've savoured your way inward from the creamy mushroom oasis of the center, you'll abruptly hit a crust that is perfectly crisp around the circumference of the pie. Just give me some of that damn crust on a plate, turn off the lights, and let me enjoy.

I also tried a bit of the Verde pie, which stars their basil pesto and includes: cherry tomato caramelized onions, spinach, radicchio, and Fior di Latte (mozzarella). It's a much brighter pie than the fungi, with some unexpected sweetness, and an overall fresh flavour.

We finished up with a warm brown butter & coconut cake for dessert. Apparently people come to Levetto just for the desserts, but I'm not about that life. It wasn't bad at all, but it was so out shined by everything else that I won't be wasting the calories on it in the future.

All in all, I was really happy with Levetto, plus those prices aren't bad at all. $15 for the large Funghi. $7.5 for the small Verde. Bomb ass pizza, nice...

Second review (see first review below):

I had such a great experience eating here last Friday night. Kam, the President of Levetto, invited us back and Executive Chef Shahir was kind enough to cook for us. We really didn't enjoy our food the first time but because the staff and the actual service was really nice, we decided to give Levetto another chance.

We had the arugula salad with chicken breast and the trecce. The arugula salad was really good. I liked the addition of dried apricot which I have not seen before. I would give it a 9/10 (not 10/10 because it didn't completely blow my mind). The trecce had a really nice heat to it thanks to the chili flake. It was quite unique.

Now, the desserts was so insanely good. The warm brown butter and coconut semolina cake was the best cake I have ever had (10/10 for sure)! Every time I took a bite, it's almost like I forgot how good it was and then I relived the incredible experience all over again. We also had the panna cotta which was also excellent.

I guess I just came in on a bad night the first time I had Levetto. I'm really glad I gave it another chance. It is a restaurant I recommend because the food is good and the service is really excellent.

First review:

I have never been so disappointed in my life!

We were hungry so we looked around for a restaurant and Levetto had good reviews. We went in and ordered a carbonara and a pollo toscano pizza. It did not take a long time for us to get our food which was good and the food looked phenomenal! However, it tasted so, so bad.

Honest to God, the pasta tasted like Gattuso instant noodles! The tomato pesto on the pizza also tasted off... It was weirdly sour for some reason... It was also kind of burnt at the bottom.

Overall, I am so disappointed. I am never going back to Levetto again. It is really too bad because the staff were extremely nice (they offered to remake the food but we declined) and the...

Ordered delivery via UberEats, order arrived 45mins later than the latest expected time on app. Usually this is not the fault of the restaurant but this time the app stated as the reason for lateness that the order had been readied late at the restaurant and so it seems this place has some trouble getting delivery orders made on time.

The carbonara pasta was soggy with clumped sauce and was inedible. The SoCal BBQ chicken pizza fared slightly better because of the nature of the dish but regardless was cold with hardened cheese.

I think the food would have tasted much better if it had been delivered on time and even better if dined in. Ordering pasta for delivery inherently has this risk I suppose and I really should have known better. People who want to order delivery from here please take caution. Lesson learned for myself and I will not repeat the mistake.

EDIT: The restaurant reached out on UE and provided timelines for the order on their end to explain that the order had been made on time and that it was the delivery person who was late likely due to the soccer World Cup starting. Not sure why the app stated the order was made late at the restaurant in that case... unsure which version of the story to believe.

Was provided with a coupon for next order. Adding 1 star to this review to recognize their follow-up, thank you to the restaurant for doing so.

Unfortunately the experience was regardless not good and I do not think I will be using their coupon to place another order, for the fear that something like this will...