This is one of Toronto's best old-school pizza and wing joints. But its charm goes beyond its food

Like so many Torontonians, I’m captivated by restaurants that can be both nostalgic and new, which is why I have such a soft spot for places like Parkdale’s Cici’s Pizza & Wings (1596 Queen St. W.). The city is flooded with different takes on pizza, however at Cici’s pies are done in the style that I, and perhaps most non-Italians in Toronto, were first introduced to decades ago.

These are the pizzas I remember at childhood birthday parties, field trips and school lunches: sturdy enough to hold the weight of the toppings; a bit chewy; golden brown on the bottom with slight, non-blackened blisters along the edges, but not so delicate that they shatter like a potato chip. Add to that an order of wings and it takes me back to the time when pizza and wings were the only delivery option in my neighbourhood.

Toronto may not be known for having a signature pizza style, but nonetheless it is a pizza city. Driven by dining room shutdowns and chefs having to come up with menus that could survive a delivery trip during the pandemic, there has been a boom in pizzerias over the last three years.

There are now pies topped with curries and shawarma; pizzas emblematic of other culinary regions be it Italy, America or Canada’s East Coast; and slices that maintained the thin crusts from the early aughts obsession with certified Neapolitan pies but are now topped with whatever ingredient the cooks feel like using that week. But my baseline for pizza will always be these takeout spots with the tiled floor, a fridge where you get your own drink and walk-in combo deals.

“What do you usually like?” asked Diana Huynh, owner of Cici’s Pizza & Wings, trying to assemble an ideal combination of toppings. No house-made marinara or pesto. The dough is to be simply brushed with olive oil so I can better taste the crust and, since it was a summery Thursday, I figured I should keep things light. “You decide,” I answered.

Huynh’s pizza choice for me hit the spot: thick-cut juicy zucchini, fresh tomatoes, mushrooms, mozzarella and crumbled fennel sausage. The slight bittersweet grassy flavour of zucchini combined with the sweet acidity of tomatoes is like a preview of warm weather crops to come, while the fennel sausage adds a salty anise pop to each bite.

I added an order of dry-rub Cajun wings with hot sauce as well as a second pizza, the Augustino — named after a customer who, in Huynh’s words, “liked salty things” — topped with marinara sauce, pepperoni, hot peppers, bacon, mushrooms and black olives.

“I’m always nervous that I’m not participating in the trends,” said Huynh, sitting at the window of her pizzeria just before a rotating cast of delivery drivers dropped off cases of pop and unfolded pizza boxes. She said the pizza here is what you had 10 years ago and what you’ll have 10 years from now.

Huynh is the second-generation owner of Cici’s. Her parents, Minh Huynh and Kim Le, bought the business in 2007 and kept the pizzeria’s name (Huynh still has no idea why it’s called Cici’s).

Huynh said her father, Minh, was originally a steelworker and contractor, who helped fellow Vietnamese immigrants with home renovations when the city saw an influx of new residents in the ’80s following the war. One day he saw the pizzeria was up for sale in the local Vietnamese paper and bought it with the idea that Huynh’s brother would want to run it. Turns out, he didn’t — he instead became a mechanic — so her parents learned to make pizzas from the previous owners. Huynh held a corporate job in human resources at the time, but helped when she could by answering phones and taking orders.

When it was time for her parents to retire and sell the business, Huynh, having lost interest in the corporate world, asked to take over the shop in 2016.

“It took a few months of trying to learn the recipes. They weren’t written down, so it was just watching my dad and trying to follow him. He’s still not happy with the crust,” she said with a laugh. “He’s supposed to be fully retired, but he still comes in. The pizza is still the same pizza from when mom and dad were here.”

While the recipes went unchanged, Huynh did update the business to keep up with the hipness of Parkdale: creating a social media presence for the pizzeria, including a sister account that chronicles the pets of Cici’s customers; getting local raccoon muralist Emily May Rose to design a new logo that now adorns boxes and hats; and ditching the delivery apps and hiring her own driver after Huynh watched a courier force a large order of party-sized pizzas and wings onto his bike.

Still, this is a place where you can walk in and get a big cheese slice for $4, or a large one-topping pizza for $12 (the specialty pizzas start around $16 for a small, six-slice round).

Last summer the pizzeria relocated from its original location a few doors down into a former doughnut shop after Huynh said the building got too old to make it worthwhile to maintain.

However, there was no question that Cici’s would stay in Parkdale. For one thing, many of the existing clientele have been coming to the pizzeria for so long that there are menu items named after them. Along with the Augustino’s, there’s the pesto-based Gunnar’s pie, named after another regular who always requested pesto on his pizza. Finally, a new pie was put on the menu under his name.

Another reason to stay close is that the neighbourhood gives Huynh a sense of purpose.

“We really put down our roots here and our purpose is to serve the neighbourhood,” said Huynh, who previously sat on the Parkdale Business Improvement Area. “You have to be aware of the economics of the neighbourhood. It’s not super high end and you can’t ignore seeing people going to the food bank.

“I can’t afford to give a free slice to everyone who comes in, but we make a weekly donation to the Parkdale Food Bank. We also do pizza lunches at the nearby school where I’ll also be speaking as part of a career series. In September we’re hosting a market for local artisans and a food drive. These are the small things I can do.”

Correction — June 1, 2023: This article was updated to correct the spelling of Kim Le. A previous version of this article erroneously spelled her name Kim Lee.

Karon Liu is a Toronto-based food reporter for the Star. Reach him via email: karonliu@thestar.ca