Pizzeria Via Mercanti

A lovely Italian restaurant in Kensington Market. The atmosphere is authentic, as much as the food. The pizza is a real deal!

Authentic Napolitano pizzas and pastas done the original southern Italian way! The wood-fired oven makes for a quick cook and lends the char to the fluffy dough characteristic of Napoli. Fresh ingredients from local producers is a no brainer. Service was friendly and efficient, the pizzaiolo is a pro running it like clockwork. The pizza that I ordered to takeaway was hand-made in front of me and ready to go in 10 minutes. Having lived in Rome for 3 years and visited Naples many times, I can say this is the real deal. È buonissimo.

Ate lunch today with my cousins. The food was great, the servers were polite and professional. We did not feel rushed to eat and leave nor were we pressured to get drinks or desserts.

A light-hearted impromptu moment occurred while the next table beside us was being served their food. Our server and another server was carrying all of that table's orders. The server called in to assist the main server accidentally turned to serve us their plate but we pleasantly re-directed her to the other table.

That server was embarrassed but it was all in good fun since miscommunications happen. After properly serving the plate she turned to me and I just gave her the "ok" hand symbol. She reciprocated with her "ok" hand symbol and smiled pleasantly.

Basically these little social, impromptu interactions is what makes an activity more memorable, enjoyable and basically personable.

I will deduce that she is allowed to have these light moments with patrons because she feels comfortable and relaxed in her job. That comes from management and is a reflection of the entire restaurant (for good or for bad). For me, at this moment, at that time, it is good. I would most certainly come again.

The food was "lights out"! So good, the gnocchi quattro sauce was creamy, the gnocchi itself was firm and forgiving, the lasagna tomato sauce was a good balance of tarty and sweet flavours, the pizza was flavourable with crispy crusts (wood stove oven!) and our main meat was so tender!

Thank you for capping off a fantastic time with my cousins with a great meal to share!

One of the best Italian restaurants downtown! We really liked their Arancino di Riso, nice and crispy on the outside and cheesy inside. Their meatballs were great as well, the tomato sauce is delicious. Highly recommend their Romolo's pizza, you get the best of both sides.

Good crust on the Diavola, but below average overall compared to other restaurants in Toronto. Was with a group of 10 and service was slow and inattentive, especially with the baked-in 20% gratuity. Took forever to get the bills on a Monday evening.

We had a great Margarita pizza! The dough was amazing! A little more sauce would have been nice. Pizza came fast.
The only downside was the washrooms were quite dirty

Food and pizza were great, thin crust, chewy, the only thing was that the toppings fell off the slice. It’s more of a knife and fork type style of eating pizza, however the flavours were delicious.