Taso's Restaurant and Pizzeria

Before Taso Hatzianastasiou opened a restaurant under his own name in Peterborough, he learned the trade from uncles who had been running pizzerias in the city for years. Local reporting at the time of the opening traced the path: out of Greece at eighteen, into family kitchens connected to Pizza Villa and The Pizza Factory, then into his own dining room in 2019 with a menu that did not have to choose between the two halves of his apprenticeship. Souvlaki plates sit beside an eight-layer lasagna; a stone-baked pepperoni pizza shares the page with a gyro pita and a Village Greek Salad. The Lansdowne West dining room sits a few minutes off Peterborough's downtown core.

The Greek side has a clear anchor. The Chicken Souvlaki Dinner is flame-grilled chicken on a skewer with lemon roasted potatoes, rice pilaf, Greek salad, tzatziki, and pita — the most complete plate the kitchen sends out, a full Greek meal under one order. The lunch version compresses the same lineup into a midday plate, and both function as the calibration order for a first visit. The Italian side carries an eight-layer lasagna that local food writing flagged as a standout in the opening week and that has stayed on the mains list ever since. Pasta also runs through a baked spaghetti, and the lunch menu adds a chicken parmesan sandwich and a spanakopita-and-Greek-salad combination. Pizza is its own list — stone-baked, with the Bronx Tale (triple pepperoni, mozzarella, Parmesan, oregano) reading as the natural house order, and a cauliflower crust available for diners who need one. Baklava handles dessert, and gluten-free notation runs across several of the Greek plates and salads.

The breadth could read as a hedge — a Greek kitchen that also does pizza, a pizzeria that also runs souvlaki — but the two lanes share a single register. Everything on the menu is hearty, plated to feed someone who has been waiting for the meal. Greek Fries are the clearest small-plate version of the same idea: fries built with Greek-style toppings like feta and tzatziki, the Greek and Italian sides of the kitchen collapsed onto one starter. The Greek Burger and the calzone do the same kind of cross-pollination on a different plate. A single table can end up with souvlaki, lasagna, a calzone, Greek Fries, and a stone-baked pizza, and no two plates feel like they came from different kitchens.

Local reporting at the opening framed the kitchen as an extension of family work rather than a new venture. Taso came over from Greece at eighteen and came up inside his uncles' pizzerias — including kitchens connected to Pizza Villa and The Pizza Factory — before opening with his own Greek menu attached. Both pieces still show in the daily operation. Greek ingredients are imported, the family recipes are the ones the owner grew up cooking, and the dining room is small enough that he is most often on the floor himself when a table sits down. The restaurant takes the owner's first name, and the regulars who order souvlaki and lasagna know whose family these recipes belong to.

All of which makes Taso's read the way it is most often described in Peterborough — a family restaurant whose menu has earned the 'worth the drive' tag some out-of-neighbourhood diners attach to it. The lunch list is built around full plates: a souvlaki lunch, a baked spaghetti, a chicken parmesan sandwich, a chicken Caesar wrap. The dinner side carries the heavier orders. The pizza list closes the gap when a group of mixed appetites cannot settle on a lane. Closed Mondays and open late only on Fridays and Saturdays, the rhythm asks for a little planning — and a table that does the planning gets a Greek dinner and an Italian one on the same bill.