A beloved Toronto pizzeria serves design with real crunch

(Image credit: Photography by David Dworkind)

This may be North of Brooklyn Pizzeria’s eighth Toronto location, but it is arguably its slickest yet. Set in the city’s western district of Etobicoke, the venue has a spatial complexity that elevates this much-loved hotspot for New York-style slices.

North of Brooklyn Queensway, Toronto

The new outpost is designed by MRDK – the Montreal studio behind several of Toronto’s most distinctive restaurant interiors, including North of Brooklyn’s Avenue Road outpost – and guests enter beneath a lightbox to find a crisp white takeout area. Bathed in natural light, the space is wrapped in Dtile moulded tiles, creating a continuous surface that runs from wall to ceiling.

Upstairs, the room takes cues from nostalgic Italian design but pushes it towards a more contemporary edge, centred around a low-rise bar clad in tumbled-marble mosaic with a zinc countertop. Above it, a fluted pendant by In Common With casts a warm wash of light.

The 40-seat dining room is defined by a sensual and intimate colour palette of dark wood, green and red. ‘To maximise natural light, we cut new windows into the side façade, aligning them with walnut dining tables that cantilever from the walls and nest within the niches,’ MRDK explains. Each table is paired with a version of Joe Colombo’s ‘Tube’ chair.

North of Brooklyn Pizzeria Queensway is located at 1180 The Queensway, Etobicoke, ON M8Z 1R5, Canada.

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Sofia de la Cruz is the Travel Editor at Wallpaper*. A self-declared flâneuse, she feels most inspired when taking the role of a cultural observer – chronicling the essence of cities and remote corners through their nuances, rituals, and people. Her work lives at the intersection of art, design, and culture, often shaped by conversations with the photographers who capture these worlds through their lens.