A narrow miss with tragedy transformed into a new livelihood for the owners of one Toronto pizzeria that’s been serving award-winning slices to comedy fans in the city ever since.

Pizza is, it can be easily argued, the ultimate comfort food. It’s the de facto food of celebrations big and small, and, on bad days, it serves as the ultimate cheese-covered, crispy-crusted shoulder to cry on.

That’s why, in 2018, when Toronto resident Adam Ward and his wife, Sasha Warunkiewicz, narrowly escaped an arson attack committed by their superintendent — which tragically killed four animals but, mercifully, spared human residents — they turned to pizza as they began rebuilding their lives.

“The [fire] made us re-evaluate what we were doing with our lives,” Ward tells blogTO, and the couple turned to cooking as a form of therapy. They focused their thoughts and efforts on perfecting their pizza recipe.

Eventually, Ward and Warunkiewicz put their pies on Cookin under the name Hooray for Pizza Day, and word quickly began to spread. Before long, they were selling anywhere between 20 and 40 pizzas out of their condo every day. 

“Our entire 9th floor smelled like a pizzeria,” Ward says.

A burgeoning pizza business can only go so far within the confines of a Toronto condo, though, and a welcome stroke of luck came when Comedy Bar co-founder Gary Rideout Jr. began searching for a high-end pizza and bar food business to open at Comedy Bar’s Danforth location.

“We had a really great reputation from the Cookin app, and I knew Gary from my early days of doing comedy,” Ward explains. “After sitting down with Gary and [fellow Comedy Bar co-founder James Elksnitis], it just seemed like everybody was on the same page.”

On March 13, 2023, Hooray for Pizza Day officially opened at Comedy Bar Danforth, exactly five years to the day after the fire.

Now serving scores of hungry comedians and their fans, Hooray for Pizza Day has become a local staple, with Ward even landing in second place for Canadian Pizza Chef of the Year at the 2026 Toronto Pizza Summit.

So, what makes Hooray for Pizza Day’s slices so special? Seeing as the pizzeria is a Detroit-style operation, it’s all about the dough.

Created on a base of 48-hour-fermented sourdough that’s baked fresh to order, the pizzas are then loaded with artisanal, hand-made ingredients.

“Our sauces are made daily from scratch, we shred the mozzarella in-house, and everything we serve is locally sourced.  It’s a real act of passion for the end product,” Ward tells blogTO.

On the eve of their third anniversary at Comedy Bar, Ward tells blogTO that he and Warunkiewicz hope to further expand Hooray for Pizza Day’s footprint in the city, and are already exploring their options for opening another location.

“We would like to have a secondary location at this point. We’re in our third year at Comedy Bar Danforth and have been able to figure out how to do that properly. We’re looking for investors and partners and hoping to keep growing as we have been,” Ward says.

Hooray for Pizza Day is open from 5:30 to 10:30 p.m., seven days a week, at 2800 Danforth Ave.