Dillon's Wood Fired Pizza

A pizza takes minutes in a wood-fired oven; the idea behind Dillon's took sixteen years. Ricky Dillon carried the concept that long before opening on King Street in the spring of 2016, and the wait reads less like delay than like someone holding out until he could do it his way. What he built is a compact pizzeria in downtown Midland, a few blocks up from Georgian Bay, where hand-made wood-fired pizza is the whole argument and the dining room is small enough that dinner usually means calling ahead.

The craft starts well before the fire. The dough is cold-fermented for forty-eight hours and shaped by hand; the flour is Double Zero Caputo, milled fine the way Neapolitan kitchens insist on; the tomatoes are San Marzano, pureed in-house rather than poured from a can. On the Margherita, that foundation carries fresh Fior di Latte mozzarella and basil and nothing else — the version that tells you whether a pizzeria can actually cook. The Classic adds cup-and-char pepperoni that curls and crisps at the edges. The Deacon piles on Genoa salami, pancetta, chorizo, and caramelized onions, the order for the table that wants everything at once.

Where Dillon's loosens its tie is the house-named pizzas, and they carry the personality of a kitchen that plainly enjoys itself. The MAC rebuilds a cheeseburger on a crust — ground chuck, old cheddar, dill pickles, tangy aioli. Ste-VEN!! runs cup-and-char pepperoni and chorizo under pepperoncini and a five-pepper hot oil. MINA!! trades tomato for a Caesar-dressing base. C U Down Under loads up on Genoa salami, smoked ham, and Kalamata olives; Mama Mia goes Mediterranean — roasted chicken, spinach, Kalamata, and sun-dried tomato pesto — while Boom Boom keeps a vegetarian table covered. The non-pizza menu keeps the same hand: wood-fired chipotle ribs in plates of six or nine, handmade roasted-garlic meatballs in San Marzano sauce, a Daily Cheese Dip that shifts with the cook's mood and arrives with pitas pulled straight from the oven, and a bruschetta toasted in the same fire under feta and balsamic. None of it reads like a pizzeria padding its menu.

The kitchen does not stop at the oven's mouth. Salads carry real composition — the Chop is loaded with Kalamata olives, pepperoncini, pancetta, and a red-wine Dijon vinaigrette; the Caprese leans on fresh mozzarella, tomato, and basil under balsamic. Penne alla Vodka comes in a creamy San Marzano sauce with a garlic crostini, and the tomato-basil soup is built from the same crushed San Marzano tomatoes that anchor the pizzas. The drinks hold up their end too: an Aperol Spritz, an espresso martini built on maple cream liqueur, and mocktails like the Georgian Bay Sunrise for the table that is driving home. Gluten-free crusts and plant-based cheese quietly turn most of the menu flexible, no separate page required.

The day runs at two speeds. Lunch, served until three, shrinks the pizzas to half sizes and adds paninis — The Robbie stacked with Genoa salami and smoked ham, The OG with old cheddar and grainy mustard — plus The Duo, a soup-and-salad pairing for the noon hour. Dinner is the slower, fuller sitting; the patio, when the weather turns, stays first come, first served, and takeaway goes by phone, placed and picked up rather than dispatched through an app. From the counter, the pizzas are stretched, topped, and slid into the fire in full view, and some evenings bring live music alongside.

That is the throughline at Dillon's: a small kitchen that does the unglamorous parts properly and lets the fire handle the drama. The forty-eight-hour dough, the in-house tomatoes, the cheeseburger that somehow works as a pizza — they add up to a pizzeria running on conviction rather than turnover. Sixteen years of waiting bought Ricky Dillon a downtown storefront he could run his own way, a few minutes' walk up from the bay.