Fazari’s Cucina

Chef Lou knows Italian food, it’s as simple as that… Well, to be honest, I can only speak intelligently about one aspect of his Italian cuisine knowledge: Pizza!
I stumbled onto this back alley diamond by word-​of-​mouth, and unless you know exactly where you’re going, it is tough to find. Fazari’s Cucina sits tucked away off the main drag of Downtown Dundas — though its address is on King Street the front door is in the back parking lot accessible off Park Street (or on foot through the Collins Brewhouse parking lot and then down the embankment on the right, across the gravel parking lot, and past the back doors of Herb Bowes drycleaning), and I can not emphasize this enough: the extra couple of minutes it takes to find the place is worth every second!
He’s only been open now for a few months, but I kid you not — you walk in the place and it feels like he’s been there for decades. You get an instant feeling of, ‘Oh, baby, there’s gonna be some good eats here.‘
I ordered two pizzas to go: a pepperoni (for the kids) and a quattro stagioni (for me)… Fazari’s Cucina does not sell pizza by the slice. You will not find four-​hour-​old pizza under a heat lamp waiting to be re-​heated. What you will get is a freshly baked 12″ pizza — one size fits all, priced reasonably (in fact, his prices are a steal!), and super fresh… The pepperoni is dry cured and rife with flavor, the mozzarella cheese is pure and soft — it melts properly and maintains consistency, the sauce is clearly made with a deft hand practiced at building flavors, and lastly — the crust — the crust is the knockout punch for me: thin yet sturdy, it has a slight crunch yet its center is soft.
Am I going overboard with this review? Gushing like a school girl over her favorite teen idol? Perhaps, but I’ve lived in Dundas a long while now, and I’ve been suffering for decent pizza ever since. All our town had before Fazari’s Cucina were the likes of Little Caesars, Dominos, and other cheaper shops that simply use cheaper ingredients and sell their pizzas and accompaniments at too cheap a price to be considered quality food.
You can only get your pizza to go here — well, there is one hgh-​top table, but it’s not really conducive to any more than 2 people. All Fazari’s pizzas are served in a box to go. He also has one or two pasta specials each day, he makes calzones and hot paninis too. He has a pastry counter that offers three or four different authentic Italian pastries (but be warned — the pastries are fresh too — so when he runs out, he runs out).
Lastly, the pizzas I took home — the boys and I didn’t finish them, so the next day I put them on my own pizza stone and stuck them in my home oven at 375 °F. eight minutes later the pizzas were perfectly reconstituted and very nearly as good as the day before. This — to me — was the ultimate final test of pure pizza joy, the leftovers, the day-​olds, is it just as good? You’re damn straight! Fazari’s Cucina, from this day forward, will be my choice for take-​out pizza.
Go forth and enjoy!