DINING OUT: Ardor Park Artisanal Pizza
New Canandaigua Restaurant Just as Good as Rochester Original
By Jacob Pucci
Ardor Park Artisanal Pizza
123 S. Main St., Canandaigua, NY, 14424 | 585-522-2835
Hours: Open Sunday, Monday and Thursday, from 11:30 a.m. to 8 p.m. Open Friday and Saturday, from 11:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. Closed Tuesday and Wednesday. .
www.instagram.com/ardorparkartisanalpizza
If one top-notch wood-fired pizza place is good, two have to be better, right?
Ardor Park Artisanal Pizza quickly built a fan base across the Rochester area after opening its first restaurant on Park Avenue in the spring of 2024. The concept is simple and the menu, which features a dozen pizzas, a couple of salads and a few shareable starters, is short and straightforward.
Clearly, it’s working.
Ardor Park opened a second location on South Main Street in Canandaigua in December. Like the Rochester location, the new Canandaigua spot is simply adorned, with the open kitchen and pizza oven serving as the restaurant’s centerpieces. There are fewer than 10 tables, which were mostly open during our midafternoon, early spring visit, but will certainly fill during Canandaigua’s busy summer season.
Pizzas range from $16 to $20 for a 12-inch pie that’s easily big enough to split, especially if you add a starter like the spinach artichoke dip ($14), a thick, decadent dip served in a sizzling cast iron skillet and studded with enough whole cloves of confit garlic (garlic slowly cooked in olive oil until soft, sweet and mellow) to make even the strongest vampire squirm. Topped with grated parmesan cheese and fresh basil, it’s easily one of the best versions of spinach artichoke dip you’ll find anywhere. It’s served with a bowl of store-bought tortilla chips, which served their role as vehicles to scoop the dip, but brought little else to the table.
A generous amount of diced house-made wood-fired meatballs is joined by even more garlic confit on the meatball pizza ($18). With its tomato sauce base and mozzarella cheese topping, the pizza looks typical and familiar. And in many ways, it is, even if you’re not likely to find whole cloves of garlic on your average meatball slice from your local pizzeria. But the sauce, made with tomatoes roasted in the wood-fired oven and the mozzarella cheese pulled in-house, are testaments to the thoughtfulness paid to every ingredient that together create something exceptional.
Somehow, I didn’t realize the shortsightedness of ordering the Black Garlic & Funghi pizza ($18) until both pizzas arrived at the table and the wafting, now-all-too familiar aroma of yet even more garlic, hit. Thankfully, the garlic on this pizza, slowly cooked over weeks until pitch-black and the flavor earthy and akin to balsamic vinegar, was different enough as to not totally overwhelm. Despite the pizza’s name, it was the onions, roasted to almost a similar darkness and melting into the pizza like a sweet and savory jam, that proved to be the star. At first glance, you might think they’re burnt. Trust me, they’re not.
Desserts (all $8) are made in-house at the Rochester restaurant. There were only three options — French lemon custard, tiramisu and the chocolate tart we ultimately ordered — but I’d much rather have a few great options than many mediocre options. The chocolate tart, made with rich chocolate ganache on a toasted nut crust, finished with butterscotch caramel, was livened with a drizzle of bright, grassy extra virgin olive oil and a sprinkling of flaky sea salt.
There’s a short, rotating list of wines and canned local beers — this afternoon, it was Canandaigua’s own Frequentem Brewing and Other Half Brewing, located only a few minutes outside of town. While I appreciate the local focus, the cheapest pint on the menu that afternoon was $12, which, if you’re just looking for a cold beer you don’t have to think much about, feels out of reach. Keeping it local, perhaps we could get a $5 (or less) can of Genesee on the list? If college taught me anything, it’s that there’s no problem a cold can of Genny can’t fix.
While fine dining in its ingredient sourcing and attention to detail, at its heart, Ardor Park is a simple pizzeria producing pies with ingredients largely familiar to most diners. There’s a classic margarita, a white garlic parm and a Charmander pizza, a nod to the fire-breathing Pokémon that includes pepperoni and a triple spice threat of jalapenos, chili flakes, and hot honey on a blush sauce base. There’s even a Hawaiian pizza called the La Pina Loca, which replaces the usual soggy chunks of canned pineapple found on lesser pies with fire-roasted pineapple and joins it with pancetta (a big improvement over the usual deli ham), pickled jalapenos, red sauce, mozzarella and hot honey.
Like a window shopper strolling down Fifth Avenue, part of the experience is walking down South Main Street and looking through Ardor Park’s front windows and getting a front-row seat to watch the dough tossed in the air, the wood fire stoked and the pizzas coming in and out of the oven. For the full experience, of course, it’s best to head inside.