Buy Canadian Viagra Online, Viagra Pastilles # Prescription Free Sildenafil foodies alike, so I expected something that at least made sense. But it really didn’t.  Cooked in a wood burning oven, the pie has an imposing fringe of outer crust and a depressed center. The first slice has the firm pliability that is the hallmark of a good crust but try to pick it up and the toppings all slide down your shirt. Most people who don’t like Neapolitan-style pizza bitch about the scarcity of the toppings as their main complaint, but the Magpie pizza is a great example of why a thin crust pizza can’t be loaded up–it just turns into a mess you can’t pick up. And, with apologies to the relativists, you shouldn’t have to eat any pizza with a fork and knife. If you can’t pick up a piece, then its just not a well made pizza. End of story. Sure, I’m willing to admit that the firm pliability of that first slice is what a pizzamaker is looking for (if I forget the fact that you can only test the pliability once the toppings have sloshed off), but in about one minute it’s gone and you’re left with a pizza stew surrounded by a ring of overly dense crust. Not what the doctor ordered.

As for the toppings, the meatball and mushroom pizza had some quality. The meatballs had a lot of flavor and played well with sauteed mushrooms and the sauce was flavorful with a nice balance of sweetness and acidity. The fennel sausage, onion and red pepper pizza was so bad I don’t think it could beat take-out from Mike’sTrattoria di Mike’s (not hyperbole–really an honest assessment). When I think of a good fennel sausage, I imagine a crumbly artisanal-style sausage. Magpie’s was emulsified  (like a big hot dog) and tasted nothing of fennel. Dense, flavorless and visually unappealing it paired well with the chunks of raw onion (note that raw onion is not used for Neapolitan-style pizza, likely because the time in the oven is not enough to cook out the acidity–if you have to add it you need to shave it super thin). As for the promised roasted red peppers, well, I couldn’t find them. Maybe the first lesson in topping a pizza is taking attendance.

There was an inkling of this lack of attention to quality in the appetizer. Described as a ”rustic Romaine salad with Mediterranean anchovies” it  was (as I had surmised) an approximation of a Caesar salad. A Caesar salad, yes, but the Caesar salad of a 70s housewife: mayo-based dressing  and industrial croutons mixed with chunks of parmesan and topped with whole anchovies. Not too hard to put together, but the dressing had a puckering acidity from too much lemon juice . Maybe “rustic” should be translated as “thrown together based on an old Good Housekeeping recipe”. The only good thing was the homemade cookie, a chocolate chip and oatmeal job which inspired me to consider that this place might re-open as a bakery.

Apart from the food, Pizzeria Magpie was nice. There was a short but adequate selection of  beer and wine by the glass (although there is something off putting about a $10 tumbler of wine).  The decor is the (now) time tested rustic chic that predominates in Montreal: pressed tin ceiling, distressed/recycled lights, unfinished floor, kitschy signage etc…Not offensive but nothing worth writing home about. Service was friendly but quite erratic. Magpie has a short menu consisting of simple dishes, so you would think the plates would fly out of that kitchen. But even when the restaurant was mostly empty the food came out very slowly. But, if you ask me,  the service is the least of their concerns. With pizza like that, I can’t honestly see myself eating at this place again. There’s already a Tratorria de Mike’s just two blocks from my house.

Pizzeria Magpie
16 Maguire
514.507.2900

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