Since opening in 1989, Paese has been serving up Italian fare in North York for over 25 years.
Paese is owned and operated by Tony Loschiavo, who also owns L-eat Catering. He came to Canada from Italy as a young child and grew up with a passion for food. The menu here is inspired by their philosophy: “Inspired in Italy, made in Canada.” Using quality ingredients, including some fresh herbs and vegetables from Loschiavo’s farm, and traditional techniques, they’ve created dishes with a modern appeal.
Their extensive menu is divided into several sections: salads and antipasto dishes ($9 to $16), pastas ($17 to $25), pizzas ($15 to $18) and fish/meat dishes ($26 to $33) which includes a whole fish which changes daily.
Paese also has an impressive wine collection with over 800 labels from all major wine producing regions. But if you’d prefer to BYOW, there is no corkage fee on the first bottle from Friday to Sunday. The corkage fee on additional bottles and on Saturday’s is $25.
Last week, we were invited to dine at Paese and had quite the feast. Here’s a look at some of their offerings:
Complimentary Bread
Warm Goat Cheese Salad – baby kale, grilled zucchini and sweet potato spaghetti with toasted pine nuts and mint pesto vinaigrette ($14)
Meatballs – house ground short rib, sirloin and brisket with thyme and pecorino, braised in tomato sugo ($15)
Grilled Shrimp Linguini – roasted pepperoncini, garlic and tomato arrabiata sauce ($25)
Laabroni Pizza – lamb sausage, goat cheese, spinach, caramelized onions and tomato sauce ($18)
Rapini – garlic, lemon & extra virgin olive oil ($6.50)
My personal favourites were the goat cheese salad and laabroni pizza. The salad was lightly tossed in a tasty dressing and the goat cheese definitely made it a little heartier. While we were trying to decide which pizza to order, our server highly recommended the laabroni, which, in all honesty, we weren’t thinking of ordering. Lamb and goat cheese are pretty powerful flavours and we were pleasantly surprised to find that neither flavour was too overwhelming. With the combination of the spinach and sweet caramelized onions, this pizza was a definite hit.
Open for lunch Monday to Friday and dinner every night, come by to see why Paese has been over for 25 years!
*This was a complimentary meal. The opinions in the post, as always, are my own.*
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