During the pandemic, pizza has been a permanent addition to our COVID bubble. We frequently order from Maker Pizza and when their delivery times are too long, moved onto chains like Dominos and Pizza Nova. As much as I love Maker Pizza, being a flexitarian meant I had limited options from their abbreviated COVID menu - there’s only so much Margarita or So Mushroom I can enjoy. As luck would have it, we discovered Moto Via while walking around the neighbourhood and they were soon added to the bubble.

Moto Via offers a dizzying number of items, but if you’re looking for something to have right away, order carefully as anything that’s not pizza or part of their “snack table” arrives frozen. Even the Nutella tiramisu ($8.99) arrived as a block of ice and required some thawing before having as a late-night dessert. The creamy part of the tiramisu was nice, a great thick combination of Nutella and mascarpone. But it was a shame the espresso element was missing from the lady fingers, so the sweet ends up more like mousse cake than tiramisu.

Even the Parmigiano nodini ($0.50 each) need a bit of prep. While they are a cheap add-on, they also arrive hard by the evening meal. So, they needed a quick nuke in the microwave to soften enough to enjoy.

What Moto Via does well is their pizza. The calabrese ($20) is a great combination of mild soppressata topped with roasted red peppers and green olives, all bound together with Crotonese cheese. While the olives can sometimes overpower other ingredients on a pizza, these were fresh Calabrese green olives so despite being scattered in large chunks, they weren’t overly salty. Just carefully pick up the first slice - when it first arrives, the hot melted cheese tends to slide off with all the other ingredients.

The deliveries are quick, the pizzas arrived nice and hot., which allowed to the edges of the crust to remain blistered and chewy. Although, the middle does get a little soft with the tomato-based pies. A slightly soggy centre is a trade-off I don’t mind as their San Marzano tomato sauce is deliciously fresh and not too acidic.

It also gives the pizza flavour as I found the Zucca ($18), a white pizza, a tad bland. There isn’t a lot of oil on the crust, which means it’s probably healthier, but with white pizza you need that drizzle of oil and salt on top to make the pie pop. The dish has good bones: lovely fresh mozzarella, ribbons of zucchini, and thinly sliced rosemary potatoes that all blend together nicely. With a bit more oil and seasoning, the Zucca would be amazing.

When in doubt, you can always make your own pizza, there’s tons of toppings to choose from. Moto Via also allows you to customize the crust type between a thin wood burning, Southern style (a thicker crust cooked on a pizza stone), or having it folded into a calzone. One thing’s for sure, the pizza consumption in this household is going to continue throughout the winter, now that we’re blessed with choices abound.