no modifications, no substitutions.

WORD OF MOUTH
NO MODIFICATIONS,
NO SUBSTITUTIONS.
Phil Caravaggio
COSIMO MAMMOLITI OF
TORONTO’S BELOVED
TERRONI RESTAURANTS
TALKS TRADITION,
TOMATOES AND WHY
IF YOU HAVE A SPECIAL
REQUEST, YOU’D BEST
GO SOMEWHERE ELSE
FOR DINNER.
18 spezzatino.com Volume 1
Cosimo Mammoliti isn’t afraid
to say no to a customer, even if
it means turning away business.
Just the previous Saturday,
he tells me, a customer unfamiliar with the philosophy of
his Terroni restaurants left
unhappy after being refused
balsamic vinegar to mix with
the bowl of extra virgin olive oil
provided at each table.
Mammoliti is clearly pained
by the episode. He has no stomach for confrontation. He’s a
people person, jovial with an
infectious passion for food.
I was told I’d only have 45
minutes with him; he was in
the midst of opening a new
restaurant, and had opened
two others in the past year.
Free time is something he
doesn’t have a lot of.
But over the course of the
interview, countless employees
and customers alike walk past,
and he greets every one of them
with a smile and a genuine interest in their lives. He answers
every question I have with his
trademark enthusiasm, never
checking his watch or getting
distracted. And he stays to talk
with me for nearly two and a
half hours, until the batteries in
my recorder burn out.
“Our olive oil is made by a
family friend in Italy,” he says,
by way of explanation. “It’s all
from their family’s olive trees
– he makes it just for me. It’s
100% coratina olives. I see it
PHOTO BY
Stephanie Palmer
picked, I watch it pressed.”
He tells me that despite all
the diehard regulars and the
sterling reputation, even one
negative comment is enough to
ruin his week. But this morning
there is no such negativity to be
seen. Just people enjoying a cappuccino or an early lunch, chatting affably with one another
and with the staff. For many
dip their bread in, I mean, some
people don’t understand. To put
a balsamic vinegar in it, it’s like
pouring water into a fine bottle
of wine. You’re killing it.
“I just won’t do it.”
Mammoliti claims he didn’t
start with a plan to make to Terroni as big as it has become, and
that much seems true. But one
can’t help but get the sense that
TERRONI IS AS MUCH AN IDEOLOGY AS
A RESTAURANT; THE CREED IS ONLY A
SENTENCE FRAGMENT PRINTED AT THE
BOTTOM OF THE MENU, BUT ITS EFFECT
IS FELT EVERYWHERE.
people, coming to the original
Terroni on Queen Street West
in Toronto is as easy as coming
home. The restaurant has brick
walls and closely packed tables,
with photos and tomato cans all
arranged just right: not so organized as to be formal, but just
enough to feel cared for.
“I go to great expense and effort to get that olive oil, to give it
to my customers,” he continues.
“The quality of olive oil that I
give away for free for people to
he’s driven by his convictions,
and that’s planning enough.
***
Terroni is the type of place
that resolves disputes. In downtown Toronto, heated arguments over where to spend a
Friday night dinner often end
up here. Doorstep indecisiveness, the dreaded where-doyou-want-to-go-I-don’t-know
cycle, doesn’t last long around
these parts; someone will quick-
Volume 1 spezzatino.com
19
WORD OF MOUTH
ly play the Terroni trump card
and all will be well again.
Such is the special character
of this place. “Traditional Southern Italian Food,” says the menu,
which is filled with underpriced
meals and sometimes drastically
underpriced wine. But it may as
well read: “No Corners Cut.” The
marketing is word of mouth, and
over the last 16 years the word
has spread.
At the original location on
Queen Street, the sign is so
“It doesn’t make me happy,”
he says. “I hate to see people
waiting an hour. I don’t want
people saying, ‘Oh, I don’t want
to go there, we’ll have to wait an
hour and a half.’”
But when pressed on the
issue, he admits that seeing a
packed house still gives him
goosebumps.
“I honestly never imagined
it would get to where it is now,”
says Mammoliti. “I knew I wanted to be in this business, and I
southern Italian staples.
“When we opened, it was
rough down here,” he recalls.
“There was nothing. Nothing.
In the beginning, we made
more money from the calcetto
[foosball] table than we did
from the store.”
Mammoliti had dropped out
of school and was determined to
make a go of it in the restaurant
business. The only problem was
that he and Scoppio didn’t have
the money for it. So they started
SUCH IS THE SPECIAL CHARACTER OF THIS PLACE.
“TRADITIONAL SOUTHERN ITALIAN FOOD,” SAYS THE MENU.
BUT IT MAY AS WELL READ: “NO CORNERS CUT.”
unassuming that first-timers
often miss it completely. On a
busy night, patrons sitting by
the front window are treated
to a show of drivers craning
their necks and checking their
navigation systems to make sure
they’re in the right place.
Regulars, of which there are
many in this city, know that the
best strategy is to arrive early
and stay late. When I suggest to
Mammoliti that the lines to get
into his restaurants are a good
problem to have, he doesn’t
quite agree.
20 spezzatino.com Volume 1
was prepared to work as hard as
it took. But never in my wildest
imagination did I think people
would line up to get in.”
***
The times weren’t always as
good on Queen Street.
Mammoliti co-founded Terroni with good friend Paolo
Scoppio in 1992. At the time,
the Queen Street West area of
Toronto was rundown and in
decline. The two friends rented
a small storefront shop and sold
imported olive oil and other
out with a modest four-stool
bar where locals could get a
good espresso and buy a panino
for four bucks. And people
loved it.
“After the first year, we got a
little money, and we installed
the pizza oven,” says Mammoliti. “We renovated, put in about
25 seats. Then after a little while
we got our liquor license, and
things started picking up.”
Soon they would renovate
again, moving to 40 seats, and
eventually building a outdoor
patio and taking over the second
“All our sauces are made from true
organic San Marzano D.O.P. tomatoes,
canned just for us,” says Mammoliti. “Not
everyone knows the difference. But I know
the difference.”
The San Marzano tomato is widely praised
as the very best sauce tomato in the world,
and to use the name the tomato must come
from a specific region of Italy and must be
grown according to strict regulations,
typically by small-scale producers.
floor of the building as well.
“The menu just grew and
grew and grew. About four years
after the first place had opened,
we opened a second location
on Victoria Street, and we went
from there.”
As Terroni grew to be a sort
of anchor tenant in a neglected
part of town, Mammoliti’s
parents questioned his sanity
and wondered openly about the
prospects of the new endeavor.
So they got involved to help
him out.
“My mother always wanted to
help out, and still to this day she
makes our biscotti, our cornbread, and for one restaurant,
all the handmade ravioli,” he
says. “She was doing the ravioli
PHOTO BY
Jason Grenci
for all of them, but we got to be
so big that she couldn’t keep up.
My dad is in his 70s and he still
makes 100 kilograms of homemade sausage for us every week.”
Now Queen Street West is a
bustling neighborhood lined
with boutique stores and new
condo developments, and while
Mammoliti modestly plays
down his contribution to that
change, his love of the area is
obvious.
He refers to the original
restaurant as though it were a
second home, as though it were
a part of him. Photos documenting the history of the place and
its various incarnations line
the walls, under the shelves of
homemade fruit preserves and
jams. He expresses a fondness for
a well-worn table in the corner
upstairs, and notices an undusted windowsill beside me, making
a note to rectify it later. He tells
me he eats lunch here every day,
and if it weren’t for his wife’s intervention, he’d be eating dinner
here every day too.
Today Terroni has four
locations, including one in Los
Angeles and a gorgeous flagship
location in the financial district
of Toronto, with a fifth spinoff restaurant on the way. I ask
Mammoliti why people love his
restaurants so much.
“It’s simple food. I’m not
doing anything big; it’s just
that I go to great efforts to get
the right products, the fresh-
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21
WORD OF MOUTH
est ingredients. That’s what we
do. We don’t mess around with
traditional recipes,” he says,
breaking into a laugh, “which is
challenging for some people to
understand.”
***
The mineral water
is imported directly
from Bologna. The
olive oil he puts
on the table for
bread dipping is
made exclusively
for him; Mammoliti
travels to Italy
each Christmas to
watch it processed.
Ten vineyards
from around Italy
devote their entire
wine production
to Terroni, giving
the restaurant its
unique wine list,
packed with obscure
gems unavailable
anywhere else.
22 spezzatino.com Volume 1
Cosimo Mammoliti loves
to talk ingredients. These days
he’s far removed from spinning
pizzas and making cappuccinos;
most of his time is spent sourcing the right products for his
restaurants. And those products
are the essence of Terroni.
French cooking, the source of
haute cuisine and the gourmet
movement, emphasizes the art
and the technique; Italian cooking emphasizes the simplicity
and quality of the ingredients.
Mammoliti leaves no doubt as
to where his heart lies.
“Materia prima.” The raw
material. “Materia prima, that’s
what it’s all about. My wife is
from Italy, so she spends the
summers there with the kids.
And at my father-in-law’s
property, they get fresh food
off their land every day. Fresh
tomatoes, zucchini flowers, zucchini, eggplant. There you eat
what’s in season.
“You eat everything the same
day. The fish comes off the boat
in the morning, and it’s eaten
that day. The mozzarella is
made in the morning and it’s
eaten that day. You don’t eat the
mozzarella the next day – that’s
not how it’s done. There you can
even eat raw squid, raw clams,
raw mussels, because it’s fresh.
“That’s the challenge we have
here,” he acknowledges. “Getting the freshest ingredients.”
Indeed, everything at Terroni
is made in-house. The pasta is
made fresh each day, and what
can’t be sourced locally is sourced
in Italy. The lengths to which
Mammoliti is willing to go to stay
true to southern Italian tradition
– to get the materia prima – are
extraordinary. When he talks of
them, his cadence picks up and
his words ring with enthusiasm.
Those efforts are a source of immense pride.
Because of Terroni’s buying power, he tells me, he’s able
to secure products that other
restaurants simply cannot. The
mineral water is imported directly from Bologna. The olive
oil he puts on the table for bread
dipping is made exclusively
for him; Mammoliti travels to
Italy each Christmas to watch it
processed. Ten vineyards from
around Italy devote their entire
wine production to Terroni,
giving the restaurant its unique
wine list, packed with obscure
gems unavailable anywhere else.
And while most restaurants
mark up their wines by 200%
to 300%, Mammoliti usually
marks them up by only 100% to
keep them accessible to all and
to encourage his customers to
go beyond the Chianti Clas-
sico and Pinot Grigio brands
into all the other undervalued
wines indigenous to the land.
He’ll find a great wine for $20 a
bottle and sell it for $40 in the
restaurant. At $60 or $80 he’d
price his best customers out of
the game, and he’s clearly not
willing to raise the price or
lower the bar on quality.
“Our tomatoes are San Marzano D.O.P. tomatoes,” he says
proudly. The San Marzano tomato is widely praised as the very
best sauce tomato in the world,
and to use the name the tomato
must come from a specific region
of Italy and must be grown according to strict regulations, typically by small-scale producers.
THERE CAN’T BE MORE THAN A HALF
DOZEN INGREDIENTS IN THE SAUCE, BUT
IN HER HANDS IT’S MAGIC, AND WHEN
I’M DONE I CAN FINALLY ARTICULATE
WHAT MAKES TERRONI SO SPECIAL. IT’S
A THOUGHT THAT HAS NEVER CROSSED
MY MIND IN ANY OTHER RESTAURANT.
HERE, IT TASTES LIKE HOME.
“I want my customers to have
the best,” he says. “If it means I
have to make a little less to keep
it available to everyone, then
that’s what I do. I just can’t imagine having it any other way.”
And what of the tomatoes, the
foundation of nearly every Southern Italian recipe? Cans of his
own brand are stacked on shelves
throughout the restaurant.
Mammoliti has his tomatoes canned just for him in a
small town outside of Naples,
where the fertile volcanic soil
is a perfect match for the San
Marzano variety. By ensuring
the tomatoes are canned at the
height of their freshness, he
gets the perfect sauce tomato in
quantities that would otherwise
be impossible to obtain.
“These tomatoes cost twice
as much as the ones we used
before we had this kind of
buying power. But it’s a true
organic San Marzano tomato, so
to me it’s worth it. Not everyone knows the difference. But I
know the difference.”
Later that day, head chef
Giovanna Alonzi prepares a
spaghetti al pomodoro for me,
using those very tomatoes, and
I discover the difference for
myself. So much for slow food; I
finish the whole plate in about
a minute and fifteen seconds.
There can’t be more than a half
dozen ingredients in the sauce,
but in her hands it’s magic, and
when I’m done I can finally
articulate what makes Terroni
so special. It’s a thought that has
never crossed my mind in any
other restaurant.
Here, it tastes like home.
***
Terroni has a strict policy: no
modifications, no substitutions.
You order what is on the menu,
just as it is, because great care
has been taken to make it just as
it has always been made. Want
the olives taken off a pizza, or
chicken added to your pasta?
Sorry, we don’t do that here.
Mammoliti and Scoppio had
this in mind from the beginning. Terroni is as much an ideology as a restaurant; the creed
is only a sentence fragment
printed at the bottom of the
Volume 1 spezzatino.com
23
WORD OF MOUTH
menu, but its effect is felt everywhere. The word terroni itself is
a derogatory term used by northern Italians to insult southerners, long considered ignorant
peasants. Here the term has been
repurposed, transformed into a
source of pride. This is reverence
served on a plate.
“The other day I ran into an
old friend who was one of the
biggest restaurateurs in Toronto,” explains Mammoliti. “And
he said to me, ‘I bumped into
some old customers of mine
who ate at your place, and they
were upset that you wouldn’t
give them balsamic vinegar,’
and stuff like that. He tells me,
‘Just give it to them� These guys
are worth millions of dollars.
Just give them whatever the
hell they want. They’ll come
back again and again, and spend
all kinds of money.’ You know
what? Those kinds of guys, they
don’t come here, because they
know they won’t get it. I won’t
do it. They go to the high-end
places where it’s $150 a head,
because those places will do
whatever they want.
“That’s who those places cater to, and that’s great. I cater to
people who want the tradition.
I would never be able to break
these traditions just because
a guy has money and thinks it
should be a different way.”
That faithfulness has come
to define Terroni, and there is a
certain nobility to Mammoliti.
24 spezzatino.com Volume 1
He’s no missionary, no evangelist; he’s not interested in converting people to the cause. He
simply wants the food to be the
way it has been for generations.
HE’S NO
MISSIONARY, NO
EVANGELIST; HE’S
NOT INTERESTED
IN CONVERTING
PEOPLE TO THE
CAUSE. HE SIMPLY
WANTS THE FOOD
TO BE THE WAY
IT HAS BEEN FOR
GENERATIONS.
He seems uncomfortable even
talking about it, because he’s
aware that to most people, this is
just food. Swimming against the
current has taken its toll on him;
to Mammoliti, this matters.
To him, it’s not just food.
“My whole thing is to stay
grounded in what we do, to stay
true to this tradition,” he says.
“And it’s challenging. There
are people who don’t get it.
People don’t get why you don’t
cut their pizza. People don’t get
why they can’t put parmigiano
on their pizza. People don’t get
why they can’t have parmigiano
in their seafood pasta. We don’t
allow it here. And they freak out.
“Well, I’m sorry. But if this
guy starts doing this, and the
next guy starts doing that, suddenly… I might as well be like
every other restaurant. There
are lots of places that do that
kind of stuff and cater to those
demands, and that’s fine. And
people who want that should
go to those places. That’s what
they’re in business for. This is
what I’m in business for.
“I want people to enjoy this
for what it is, because it’s what
I love, it’s my passion. I can’t
imagine seeing someone in my
restaurant putting parmigiano
on seafood pasta. It just doesn’t
go. ‘But I’m the customer�’ they
say. I know you are, but this is
my restaurant, and this is how
it’s done. Traditional southern
Italian food. Traditional.
“You can’t find anything traditional any more. Well, I want
to keep it going. It’s just a little
thing, but in my little corner of
this world, my little corner of
this city, I’m going to keep it going, out of respect for everyone
before me who worked so hard
to keep it alive.”
RIGATONI
ARCOBALENO
Giovanna Alonzi, Terroni
If you can’t make it to Terroni to experience traditional
southern Italian food in person, then here is a favorite
recipe from the restaurant that
you can try at home. Arcobaleno means “rainbow” in Italian,
and this, like many of the best
southern Italian dishes, features a spectrum of colors and
classic ingredients: tomatoes,
basil, extra virgin olive oil and
Mozzarella di Bufala.
PHOTO BY
Jason Grenci
WHAT YOU’LL NEED
WHAT YOU’LL DO
360 gm of rigatoni, cooked very
al dente
Heat oil in large pan. Add onion
and sautée, being careful not to
burn it; if necessary, you can prevent this by adding a little chicken
stock or pasta water. Once the extra liquid has evaporated, add the
zucchini. Allow to lightly brown.
Add the cherry tomatoes and fry
for 2 minutes. Add the tomato
sauce, bring to a boil and add salt
and pepper. Add the rigatoni and
allow the pasta to absorb the sauce
in the pan over medium heat for
two minutes. Add the basil, the
grated Parmigiano and half of the
cubed Mozzarella di Bufala. Keep
over heat just until the mozzarella
begins to melt. Plate and garnish
with remaining mozzarella and
fresh basil leaves. Lightly drizzle
with extra virgin olive oil. Enjoy.
Serves 4.
2 tbsp of extra virgin olive oil, plus
some more for finishing touches
2 tbsp of minced red onion
1 small zucchini, cut in very fine
rounds
1 pint of cherry tomatoes, cut
into halves
1/4 cup of plain canned plum
tomatoes, blended
salt and pepper to taste
fresh basil
2 tbsp of grated Parmigiano
Reggiano
1 fresh Mozzarella di Bufala
Campana, cubed
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