The team behind Bernhardt’s, Dreyfus and Vilda’s just opened an Italian restaurant
NL Ginzburg is Little Italy’s new outpost for Italo-Jewish cuisine
Name: NL Ginzburg
Contact: 548 College St., nlginzburg.com, @nlginzburg
Neighbourhood: Little Italy
Owners: Zachary Kolomeir, Carmelina Imola and Tristan Eves
Chef: Zachary Kolomeir (Dreyfus, Taverne Bernhardt’s, Vilda’s)
Accessibility: Fully accessible
Little Italy’s new outpost for Italo-Jewish cuisine is the latest project from husband-and-wife team Carmelina Imola and Zachary Kolomeir. The restaurant—named for Italian anti-fascist activist couple Natalia and Leone Ginzburg—challenges notions of authenticity. “I’m Italian,” says Imola. “Zach and I travel to Italy every year, but we aren’t trying to be authentic here. Our food will never taste like it does in Italy. We don’t have that sun, and we don’t have that soil. It’s a losing battle.”
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The food—unfussy, delicious trattoria-style Italian dishes with some Jewish diaspora influence—is an amalgam of the owners’ backgrounds. “Here, we are about the integrity of the ingredients and capturing a feeling of an experience—maybe something from childhood or a restaurant in Italy we’ve eaten at—rather than trying to imitate it,” says Imola.
The Food
Dishes like silky eggplant with pesto or stewed lentils with tomato and sofrito are, as Kolomeir puts it, the perfect bridge between Italy’s cucina povera and Jewish staples. There’s also pasta, like house-made tagliatelle tossed in a light yet comforting ragù of local duck. And steak here means bistecca alla Fiorentina, a Fred Flintstone–approved 40-ounce T-bone simply seasoned with salt and pepper, grilled over charcoal and finished with rosemary oil.
The Drinks
Despite Ginzburg’s Italian lean, Imola stays true to the ethos she’s carried through all her restaurants. “I’m not interested in building an exclusively Italian list of wines,” she says. “I don’t care where the wines come from. My interest always lies in small farms, organic practices, relationships with my producers—and, of course, how they taste.” The cocktail card gives spritzy dolce vita vibes, leaning heavily on farm-fresh produce and seasonal ingredients. “The idea is to work within the cocktail styles typical of Milan and Turin and to use local ingredients wherever we can,” says Tristan Eves, partner and general manager. The standout here is the vesper, an ice-cold martini made with Ontario strawberry–infused gin and Lillet Blanc.
The Space
The dark, moody room is decked out in warm millwork, terrazzo floors, vintage banquettes, original 1980 Simonetti chairs and an eclectic art collection: Italian movie posters, religious oil paintings and portraits of dogs.
Erin Hershberg is a freelance writer with nearly two decades of experience in the lifestyle sector. She currently lives in downtown Toronto with her husband and two children.
