Toronto's newest pizza joint has a menu item and message for Karens
District Pizza, the new pizzeria in Toronto's Distillery District, is slinging up some vegan pies dedicated to the Karens of the world.
The new spot for 'za and chicken wings from the Distillery Restaurants Corp. is currently doing takeout and delivery out of the old Greg's Ice Cream spot on Gristmill Lane.
Their menu, which includes 10 different kinds of topping combos, include some out-there pizza nomenclature.
Among some of the obligatory cultural references to the Wu Tang Clan or Cheech and Chong is one pie named after 2020's most wrung out perjorative of all: Karen.
With a name like Dear Karen, A Love Story, I can't see this being the most popular order at District.
The $21, 13-inch pizza comes with a gluten-free crust option (for an extra $5) topped with an assortment of veggies like sunchokes, smoked carrot, and Impossible Meat.
The kicker is that this particular pizza also comes with a note for you, dear customer, who is cheekily addressed as Karen (because apparently only white women who arbitrarily call the cops on BIPOC folks order vegan pizzas.)
"2020 has been a rough one for all of us, but we feel you may have been hit the hardest when your name entered the global lexicon with a really negative connotation," reads the note.
"As chefs, we couldn't resist brainstorming who a Karen would be in our restaurant. We came up with the guest who is super picky, had questionable allergies, was on every diet du jour and couldn't order anything at brunch without making a bunch of changes."
"In order to accommodate you Karens, we created a pizza that was meat free, dairy free, nut free, and could be made gluten free. But it was flavour full!... You got a raw deal this year so this is now a tribute to you and all the Karens around the world."
The note is exceptionally odd, fluctuating between imperceptibly ironic but sympathetic, all the while reminding us that, yes, 2020 had come to naming menu items after a racist phenom with dangerous, real-life implications outside of pizzaland.
District Pizza
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