Anyone who has ever been plagued with a soggy pizza (and who hasn’t) could find redemption with coal-fired pizza, a style that has been popular in the States for a long time but hasn’t quite caught on in Canada (except for in Winnipeg).

Angelo’s Coal Fired Pizza, an import from Quincy, MA, is set to open on Front Street this June. The restaurant is known for its thin-crust pizzas, which are flash-baked in an oven fueled with anthracite, a relatively clean-burning type of coal. 

Chef Nick Ruggiero, who will be in charge of the kitchen at Angelo’s Toronto (he previously worked as a sous chef at Byblos), says coal burns more evenly than wood, resulting in a pizza with a crispier crust.

“You’re not going to get a soggy pizza coming out of this oven,” he says. “You’re going to get more of a char.”

The U.S. version of Angelo’s has a bit of a sports-bar vibe, but the Toronto location will have a greater focus on food. Pizza offerings will include The Goodfella — tomato sauce, fior di latte, caramelized onions and roasted peppers and garlic — as well as a margherita.

In addition to pizza, Ruggiero plans to offer house-made pasta and bread, along with sandwiches. Pasta — such as orecchiette with sausage, rapini chickpeas and chilies —will be served in large steel pans to encourage family-style dining.

Angelo’s is set to open on June 19 at 106 Front St. E., where Paganelli’s (and its former incarnation, Romagna Mia) operated for nearly two decades. And if Toronto likes the concept, more locations will likely spring up in the near future.

But won’t coal destroy the environment? The answer is probably not, but Grist has a more thorough look at the subject here.