Big Tony’s Original Woodfired Pizza

Thought I would try this place out for the first time with a friend. It really did not meet my expectations. First of all it was absolutely freezing in there. I wore my winter jacket the entire time. I almost put gloves on too!
There really weren’t as many options as I thought there would be. Especially for pizza. The one tasty thing was that the bacon they used was real cooked bacon slices and not crumbled bacon or bacon bits.
The wait for the pizza was unacceptable. I know that wood-​fired pizza takes a bit longer, but holy crap we were there for what seemed like an eternity. Not pleasant when you’re starving.
I would not go back.

Any place with a wood-​fired pizza oven has to be great, right? Not necessarily. It took us two trips to Big Tony’s to get a chance to taste that wood-​fired goodness and both times we were disappointed with the experience.
The first time, we arrived twenty minutes prior to closing. This wasn’t purposeful; we just didn’t know that Big Tony’s closed early during the week. Since they had already started to shut down for the night, we were told that the kitchen was closed but we could order a drink. We declined and discovered the wonder of Vito’s Olde Walkerville Pizzeria. (Read about that in another of my reviews to be posted soon.)
On a side note, I checked Big Tony’s website before writing this review and it appears that Big Tony’s is currently only open Thursdays to Saturdays from 4pm until midnight. Clearly, business during the week was not a booming success for them.
On our return trip, we made sure to arrive with plenty of time to wine and dine in style. Sitting against the wall in the middle of the restaurant, we were able to scan the entire space and get a feel for the environment.
Along the opposite wall ran the bar and open kitchen area, with the wood-​fired oven set as the grand focal point. Warm, dark colours and low-​light levels set the mood. The furniture in the dining area was comfortable but if appeared as though less consideration was given to the dining room design than the kitchen and bar.
The oddest feature was the aqua-​toned sushi bar on the north end of the room with a lonely sushi chef repeated wiping off the counters with a wet cloth. Why is it that restauranteurs in this region think that dropping a sushi bar in their establishment will make it a trendy hotspot?
First of all, sushi bars are not trendy. They are a staple of the North American dining experience and they haven’t been a snobbish cosmopolitan extravagance since long before Y2K failed to bring our societies crumbling down.
Next, I think it’s fair to say that adding a sushi bar to, say, an Italian eatery does not suddenly turn the restaurant into a fusion food experience. Stick to a definable menu and learn to excel at making that food, or brand yourself as a provider of a varied world menu from the start.
By the time we had taken all of this in, our waitress returned to tell us she couldn’t provide a Blueberry Tea – a cocktail of amaretto, orange liqueur and orange pekoe tea – for lack of the appropriate ingredients. So much for an attempt at being cosmopolitan.
Our pizza’s arrived and looked pretty good. The crust of the pizza was relatively thin but unfortunately over cooked. I’m sure that the pizza would have been quite tasty except for this unfortunate point. Perhaps there should have been one less log on the fire, or the chef a little more on his game.
Speaking of off his game, the chef rushed out as we were taking our first bites to apologize for forgetting to put several of our ordered toppings on our pizzas. He placed a plate with the missing items on our table and backed away, continuing to apologize. The new arrivals were inconsistently cooked compared to the rest of the pizza, so we opted to leave them off.
At this point, another customer arrived – Did I forget to mention that we were the only ones in the restaurant? – and wandered over to the sushi bar. He ended up being the guy that printed the fliers for Big Tony’s and he only ordered a drink, likely on the house, and then left. The sushi chef seemed disappointed.
As we choked back the dry-​crusted pizza slices, Tam noticed that the bar had Disaronno Originale (an amaretto) and Triple Sec (an orange liqueur) on its shelves, so she asked for a «black tea,» a shot «Disaronno,» a shot of «Triple Sec,» and then mixed her own Blueberry Tea. The waitress was so sweetly oblivious to what Tammi had done that we decided not to point out the obvious to her, tipped her well and decided Big Tony’s was not for us.