Pizza Toni is a New York-style slice shop in the heart of Mile End, serving classic NY pies and square "grandma" pizzas made with the best ingredients its owners can get their hands on. It's the second act from Yoni Amir and his business partner Daniel Maislin, the team behind the wildly popular Falafel Yoni just a few doors down — and the name is a wink in two directions at once, nodding to the classic Italian-American Toni (Sopranos-patriarch style) while riffing affectionately on the falafel spot that took its own name from Yoni. Amir isn't a man who does things by halves: to get the pizza right, he went and worked alongside a string of pizzaiolos, first at Vesta, a beloved Villeray trattoria, then at a New Yorker friend's newly opened slice shop in LA — immersing himself in authentic pizza culture so he could open a place as true to New York as it is to himself.
The space is as considered as the pies. Designed by the firm Menard Dworkind, it blends seamlessly into the Mile End streetscape while speaking a visual language shared with Falafel Yoni — spacious and welcoming, with light pouring through big bay windows, a rustic wooden wall, and clever touches of orange warming the room, plus artwork by Dan Climan on the walls. Step inside and it feels like a Brooklyn slice shop on a perfect summer day. As for the pizza: for its first year the menu stayed deliberately tight — just six pies — before the team opened things up to give the people what they wanted, more options, adding a slew of new toppings from organic mushrooms to vegan cheese so you can build your dream pie (pro tip from the shop: stick to a few toppings to keep the structure of your slice sound). Beyond the essentials — cheese, margherita, and a standout pepperoni — the roster runs to the Triple P (provolone, pepperoni, pickled jalapeño), a Sweet Cherry Pie with goat cheese, sun-dried cherry tomatoes and spicy honey, an aubergine parm, garlicky numbers like the Pep d'Ail and Fung'Ail, and rich vodka-sauce pies — available as round 14" or 18" pies (roughly $24–$38), as thick, chewy square grandma slabs, or by the slice from around $5.50. Don't order without a drizzle of the house spicy honey or ranch.
To round it out there's a genuinely fun drinks list, led by the house Pizza Toni Pilsner (an Italian-style pilsner at 5.0%) alongside a rotating handful of beers — a hefeweizen blanche, a lime-and-long-pepper Gose, a punchy double IPA — at $7 a can or $24 for four, plus sodas, seltzers, and warm chocolate-chip cookies to finish. No-nonsense, generous, and about as close as Montreal gets to a genuine NYC slice, Pizza Toni is a Mile End favourite that's since added a second home in Saint-Henri — proof that when you source the best and sweat the details, people will happily line up for it.