Three Italian restaurants, one 91-year-old nonna’s recipes
CTV
During the Second World War, in a mountainous coastal town in the South of Italy, Rosina Taverniti began rolling gnocchi and kneading bread for hungry soldiers.
“I was 14-years-old,” she told CTV News Toronto. Now, at 91, she is the nonna of three Italian restaurants in Toronto serving the recipes she first sunk her hands into as a teenager.
In 1956, Rosina left home, but her gnocchi, lasagna, tiramisu and dozens of other recipes landed with her when she arrived in Canada on a white Christmas eve. Soon, she was standing at a podium in front of a crowd of hundreds of factory workers in Toronto teaching them how to make pasta.
Growing up, Rosina’s children woke to the smell of ripe tomatoes simmering into sauce. In Rosina’s son Domenic’s eyes, his mother’s food was unmatched and he wanted to share it with the rest of Little Italy.
In 2011, they opened Trattoria Taverniti at College and Clinton with a four burner stove.
