Buon Appetito Toronto!
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Buon Appetito Toronto! Buon Appetito Toronto! ICCO/Mansfield Press Toronto/Milan/2013 Copyright © Italian Chamber of Commerce of Ontario 2013 All rights reserved Printed in Canada Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publi- cation Buon appetito Toronto! / edited by the Italian Chamber of Commerce of Ontario. ISBN 978-1-77126-032-9 (pbk.) 1. Cooking, Italian. 2. Food—Italy. 3. Italian Ca- nadians— Ontario--Toronto--Food. I. Italian Chamber of Commerce of Ontario, editor of compilation TX723.B86 2013 641.5945 C2013-906564-4 Mansfeld Press Inc. 25 Mansfeld Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M6J 2A9 Publisher: Denis De Klerck www.mansfeldpress.net “We ate in this town as we usually do...” Fr. Pier Giorgio Di Cicco Table of Contents Buon Appetito Toronto! tutti a tavola! Rosanna Caira / 8 Magnotta Winery Rossana Magnotta / 131 Mother Elegy Luciano Iacobelli / 15 il gatto nero / 137 Papa’s Tripe Gianna Patriarca /15 Fabbrica Mark McEwan / 139 The Italian wine experience Tony Aspler / 17 inniskillin / 145 Er piatto preferito de papa` Mistura Massimo Capra / 147 Bruna Di Giuseppe-Bertoni / 21 la paloma / 153 muskoka pasta Domenico Capilongo / 21 Noce Guido Saldini / 155 Bar Italia Eugene Barone / 23 Paganelli’s Risotteria Gabriele Paganelli / 163 bar mercurio / 27 Jan K. Overweel and Emma Food Importers Bertozzi Importing Elvira Bertozzi / 29 Pat and Arthur Pelliccione Sr. / 171 b espresso bar / 35 mercatto / 177 Biagio Ristorante Biagio Vinci / 37 Pizzeria Libretto and Enoteca Sociale cafe diplomatico / 43 Max Rimaldi and Rocco Agostino / 179 Buca osteria & enoteca Robert Gentile / 45 nota bene Franco Prevedello / 187 california sandwiches / 53 Pizza Nova Domenic & Sam Primucci / 195 Campagnolo Craig Harding / 55 sicilian ice cream / 201 Coppi Alessandro Scotto / 63 Pusateri’s John Mastroianni / 203 Faema Mike Di Donato / 71 vesuvio / 209 camarra / 75 Sotto Sotto Marisa Rocca / 211 Trattoria Giancarlo via allegro / 217 Eugenia Barato & Jason Barato / 77 Terroni Cosimo Mammoliti / 219 commisso bakery / 83 Unico and primo foods John Porco / 227 Grano Roberto Martella / 85 zaza / 233 Italpasta Limited Joseph Vitale / 93 Zucca Andrew Milne-Allan / 235 continental noodles / 99 sponsors / 242 La Fenice Rocco Fosco / 101 acknowledgements / 247 .gelato simply italian / 107 Lettieri and Hero certified Burgers John Lettieri / 109 gio rana’s really really nice restaurant / 115 Liberty Entertainment Group Nick Di Donato / 117 Longo’s Anthony Longo / 125 Buon Appetito Toronto! Buon Appetito Toronto! is the story of how Italian food culture has evolved in the city and how its infuence has helped defne our perceptions of what con- stitutes a good meal. Trough interviews with twenty-eight of the city’s most important chefs, restaurateurs, importers and Italian cuisine icons, Buon Ap- petito Toronto! gathers together the people that set the standard for an Italian culinary experience and changed the culture of a great city. Buon Appetito Toronto! is about the meeting point of Italian food and Ital- ian-Canadian creativity and the development of a culture that is about conviv- iality and lifestyle. It is about a city that has embraced the values of simplicity and beauty, with passion and dedication, marrying them at the altar of taste. With Buon Appetito Toronto! Te Italian Chamber of Commerce of Ontario celebrates its ffth editorial project and dedicates its work to all the Italian communities abroad and especially to the one in Canada. Corrado Paina George Visintin Executive Director ICCO President ICCO Photo Courtesy of Piera Pugliese Vesuvio Circa 1963 TUTTI A TAVOLA! By Rosanna Caira In 1974, Joanne Kates’s frst restaurant review open had to contend with archaic liquor laws. appeared in Te Globe and Mail and only then be- As Italians settled into their newly adopted coun- cause she had convinced the feature’s editor that try they shared homes with like-minded paesani, there was a need for a food critic and a weekly found jobs, and earnestly began their new lives. restaurant review in this city. Tat inaugural review, Food remained central: moving beyond sustenance of George Minden’s revolutionary restaurant Noo- and transcending social joy, it symbolized success. dles on Bloor Street West, marked a new era in To- In Italy many of these immigrants struggled to put ronto’s dining scene. Kates wrote, food on their tables. But here, where jobs were plen- “Tanks to Noodles, Toronto’s Italian food is no tiful, they could suddenly buy much of what their longer limited to lasagna and pizza with side trips hearts, and stomachs, desired. to veal marsala and fettuccine a la carbonara. At “We should not forget,” John Dickie states in Noodles there’s shrimp and green pea soup, fresh Delizia, “that most of the people who emigrated Dover sole in a delicate anchovy, capers and tarra- did so precisely because they were excluded from gon butter.... Pasta is made from scratch every day Italy’s civilization of the table. Polenta and other and then cooked to order … You won’t fnd a fresh- dishes of the poor were miserable daily reminders er noodle in Canada today. Or tomorrow, probably.” of that exclusion. Food certainly shaped the identi- (Globe and Mail, April 22, 1974.) ty of peasant emigrants from Italy, but envy, anger In the 1950s, the period of the biggest wave of and ambition—not nostalgia—marked their at- Italian immigration, the city afectionately known titudes to eating when they departed, and those as “Hogtown” was a culinary landscape of roast beef, feelings turned food into a badge of who they were potatoes and canned peas and soft white bread. Te once they arrived.” So, while many immigrants had city’s few restaurants closed nightly by 10 p.m. and if rarely eaten meat in Italy because they could not you had a craving to dine out on Sunday—well, most aford to, once in Canada, eating meat meant they of the restaurants were closed, and the few that were had fnally arrived. 9 Italians quickly turned to the neighbourhood sopressata, pancetta and prosciutto curing in their grocery store run by fellow Italians for foodstufs basement cantine? Te self-consciousness they may that reminded them of home, and in doing so in- have felt could not dislodge the memory of the food troduced the city to a vast array of new products. they loved. Tey may have been new Canadians but Pasquale Bros. on King St. W., the precursor to to- their culinary allegiance was unshakably Italian. day’s ubiquitous specialty store, opened in 1917. And so, a distinctly Italian restaurant culture Owned by Edward Pasquale and his son-in-law, emerged and Italian food quickly became an intrin- Henry Madott, the family-run business was one sic part of city dining. One of Toronto’s early pio- among the frst to provide Italians with their pre- neers was Vesuvio’s, the frst pizzeria and spaghetti ferred cheese, olives and antipasti. And in the heart house. Rocco Pugliese and his sons, Domenic and of Little Italy, at College and Ossington, grocery Ettore, opened Vesuvio in 1957 on Dundas St. West stores such as Johnny Lombardi’s and White Rose, and almost overnight it set the standard for tasty owned by brothers Joe and Rocco Bertucci, were ex- pizza in the city’s west end. Te family arrived via amples of places where Italians could fnd staples such as pasta made by Lancia-Bravo, Unico canned tomatoes or dried legumi that would produce cheap and plentiful meals like the pasta e fagioli they had at home. As they migrated north to St. Clair, estab- lishments like Ferlisi emerged selling prosciutto, salumi, giardiniera and olives, and a bounty of fruit and produce that Italians missed and could scarcely get elsewhere. Italians wasted little time before transplanting their tried-and-true traditions to the new land. As they saved enough money for their frst homes, the resourceful new Canadians found a solution to the lack of favourful produce they eagerly sought: man- icured lawns were replaced with abundant vegeta- ble gardens (orti) that included the beloved tomato, zucchini, eggplant, and peppers, vegetables the av- erage Torontonian of the time had never heard of. Later, as Italians returned to Italy they would smug- gle radicchio, arugula and Swiss chard seeds, multi- plying the variety of their harvest. Teir Canadian neighbours must have looked on in wonder at the wooden stakes supporting tomato plants, and that wonder into perplexity as zucchini vines climbed and fowered into strange golden blossoms collect- ed, battered, fried into crisp morsels, and (gasp!), eaten! And how to describe their reaction at dande- lions picked from city lawns and parks that would be tossed into salads? Or the homemade sausages and 10 New York and, not surprisingly, popularized the city’s original Little Italy, Il Gatto Nero and Re- New York-style ‘pie’ they had learned to make from gina’s Pizzeria became beloved fxtures. And San a New York bakery called Vesuvio’s. Te two broth- Francesco Foods and California Sandwiches gave ers infuenced half of Toronto’s restaurant industry birth to the transcultural cult of the Italian veal in some way with their introduction to the secrets sandwich, a breaded cutlet with tomato sauce spill- of pizza making. ing out of a crusty bun, inspiring urban myths of fe- Others quickly followed. Camarra opened in dexed sandwiches to New York City. Further north 1958 on Duferin Street, south of Lawrence, in on St. Clair, crusty Italian bread emerged from the what was quickly becoming a suburban Italian en- ovens of Tre Mari, and dolci and gelato were pro- clave. Te restaurant, started by Elisa Camarra duced at La Paloma. Long before Starbucks creat- Valentini, her brother Livio (who went on to open ed cofee culture for the masses, Italian men sat in Maestro), and their mother Domenica, highlight- cafes.