Piazza Monte

As with most Friday evenings, exhausted from the work week and limited food prep time prompted me to I finally try that new Italian eatery located in the Port Union/​Lawson plaza.” Pizza Monte” I ordered the large 3 topping pizza and the two types of Lasagna.(dinner for 2) that included 2 side salads ans garlic bread. The guy serving me suggested I get the three meat topping (Italian sausage, hamburger meat and bacon) He also accommodated my request to have ¼ of the pizza cheese only for my son.
I was initially impressed to see the old style «large pizza box» but certainly was disappointed with the quality of the pizza. The amount of meat was shockingly sparse and was lacking a generous portion of cheese and sauce. you know you going to be disappointed when you can count the sausage slices on one hand. I was left thinking, my homemade pizza is much better.
At a $ 25 price point one would expect generous portions of toppings. With the always busy, Pizza Pizza a few blocks south serving a great PIE, you better get it together or the For Sale sign will be up. You can only burn someone once serving crappy pizza. Most customers won’t return.
On a brighter note, I enjoyed the meat Lasagna. The sauce was very tasty.
The Caesar salad was a huge disappointment as well. Some creativity please… Romaine lettuce and old Store bought croutons with a bland dressing just didn’t make the grade. Try serving up larger portions, extra sauce/​meat along with some real old country flavor. Momma Mia!!!
I’m going to be back to try the veal sandwich for lunch this week. Fingers crossed.

We just had the best lasagna from this place. It was catered and we just put it back in the oven just to heat. It was sooooo good! Homemade pasta sheets and the sauce was just superb. Too bad we live downtown or else I would have loved to go and try everything on the menu.

Piazza Monte opened its doors just this past week and is definitely a welcome addition to this sleepy West Rouge plaza. After seeing their «opening soon» sign for months, I was happy to see their sign was finally lit and was eager to try out their food.
Piazza Monte occupies a very small space and there are only 2 tables (8 seats total) so you may not want to dine in. More than half of the eatery is occupied by a drink fridge, hot table and a cash counter and the layout is a little awkward for lining up. I’m guessing it’ll probably be more so if the place got really busy.
The family serving behind the counter were actually Italian. It seemed like the whole family was there from the young grandson who was helping out with the Arancini balls and the cash to the nonna who was assembling our veal sandwich and a lasagna lunch. To me, if a nonna is serving up my take out lasagna, that usually signals an above average meal already. I liked that I could actually peak into the kitchen and see that everything looked clean and tidy as well.
The veal sandwich comes with the choice of mushrooms, peppers, onions and hot peppers as toppings (2 free toppings). The breaded veal cutlets are kept in their light tomato sauce in a shallow hot table tray so don’t expect the Mustachio’s or even the California sandwiches’ occasional crispy crunch to the sandwich. But the veal is not pounded too thinly like that of Sinatra’s so even a single cutlet for a sandwich didn’t seem too skimpy. However, my meat loving hubby mentioned that next time, he would like to get the double sandwich. The sandwich could have used a little more sauce for our liking but that is strictly a personal preference and something they’ll easily accommodate.
The lasagna is your usual square cut stack of noodles and meat sauce with cheese. Extra Bolognese is served over the lasagna and the flavourful sauce is well balanced and meaty. Occasional appearance of roughly chopped pieces of carrots and mushrooms made the homemade sauce seem tastier. Lasagna is served with 2 pieces of «garlic bread» which are baked up pizza dough with dry herbs and parmasan cheese. I definitely prefer these to the greasy garlic breads dripping with garlic butter.
Our first lunch from Piazza Monte was good and we can’t wait to try out their other offerings soon.