Toronto NIMBYs are coming for your favourite pizzeria
We must protect Pizzeria Badiali at all costs
If you’ve passed by the corner of Dovercourt and Argyle in the past four years, you’ve likely seen a lineup down the block. Since opening in 2021, Pizzeria Badiali has become one of the west end’s favourite pizza places. This year, it was even awarded its own flavour of Miss Vickie’s.
But apparently not everyone appreciates that obscenely delicious, worth-waiting-for spicy vodka rosé sauce.
At a Toronto Planning and Housing Committee meeting last week, a neighbourhood resident complained that Badiali’s popularity has affected the area’s quality of life.
“It’s a huge issue, and it’s been an issue for the church across the street. They’ve had to block off their stairs because of garbage issues,” said a member of the Beaconsfield Village Residents Association. Others on Reddit have echoed those frustrations, accusing pizza patrons of littering and parking in front of their driveways. If that’s the case, get it together, Badiali customers. Please act like you’ve purchased pizza before.
But it’s more than a little baffling to expect—or want—the Trinity-Bellwoods neighbourhood to be placid. A member of the association specifically bemoaned that the award-winning pizzeria attracts people from out of town. Last we checked, Trinity-Bellwoods is not a gated community.
The residents ultimately got their way, and the committee voted to scale back a proposal that would have permitted more coffee shops and convenience stores to operate on residential corner lots.
As reported by Toronto Today, the chair of the Beaconsfield Village Residents Association, Randy Kerr, wrote in a letter to city council that “neighbourhood interiors were never intended for commercial activity.”
People, this is downtown Toronto. Unfortunately, you will have to endure the horror of hungry civilians buying lunch close to where you live.
Carly Lewis is a journalist whose work has appeared in the New York Times and the New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, Wired, Interview Magazine, Pitchfork, Elle, and Maclean’s, where she is a contributing editor. Her work has been recognized by the National Magazine Awards and the Digital Publishing Awards. She reports on city life, culture—including what people do online—politics, art and crime. She received the Dave Greber Freelance Writers Award for “The Murder of Ashley Wadsworth,” an investigative feature about a Canadian teenager who was killed by a man she met on social media, published by Maclean’s.
