The notebook belongs to Carmela Conti. Her handwriting, going back to 1942, when she was learning to cook in her mother's kitchen in Varenna, on the eastern shore of Lago di Como. Ragù recipes. Pasta ratios. Notes on which tomatoes are too watery and which hold their structure in a braise. Gabriele found it in the back of a drawer in 2006, the year he told his family he was leaving for Canada.
He moved to Toronto in 2007. Spent a year cooking in other people's kitchens, learning the city's rhythms, finding the suppliers he trusted. The St. Lawrence Market on Saturdays. The farms in the Niagara Peninsula. The fish importer on Spadina who gets whole sea bass on Tuesdays. In 2008, he signed a lease on Mill Street and opened with 32 seats, a menu that changed twice a week, and a pasta board he built himself from a single piece of maple.
Sixteen years later, the notebook is still in the kitchen. Laminated now, held together with tape. The ragù recipe has not changed. The pasta ratio, how much semolina, how much durum, how many eggs per 100 grams, has not changed either. What has changed is the room. We now have 52 seats. Valentina, Gabriele's daughter, runs the front of house. The team has been together for most of those sixteen years.
People ask us what kind of restaurant we are. The honest answer is: a trattoria. A place where the food is serious and the service is not stiff. Where you are welcome to stay for three hours or leave in ninety minutes. Where the chef comes out not to perform but to check.
Gabriele grew up in Varenna and trained at the Pellegrino Artusi school in Forlimpopoli. He cooked in Milan for six years before moving to Toronto. He runs the kitchen and the menu. He does not use a timer for pasta. He says he can hear when it is ready.
Valentina grew up between Como and Toronto. She studied hospitality in Montreal and came back to run the room in 2016. She knows every regular's name, and most of their usual orders. She is also responsible for the wine list, which is entirely Italian and does not try to cover every region.