What’s on the menu at Cafe Elte, an Italian restaurant and wine bar inside a North York furniture store
Couch purchase not required to dine
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Name: Cafe Elte
Contact: 80 Ronald Ave. (inside Elte), elte.com/pages/cafe-elte
Neighbourhood: North Fairbank
Owners: Elte (Andrew and Jamie Metrick)
Chef: Mauro Ritacca (Cucina Mauro)
Accessibility: Fully accessible
Last winter, a salesperson at Elte—a fourth-generation family-run home-furnishings showroom in an industrial park near Dufferin and Eglinton—had a meal at Cucina Mauro, an Italian lunch counter nearby. She raved about the food to Andrew Metrick, one of Elte’s co-owners, who just happened to be in the process of reimagining the store’s café component.
As anyone who’s been sofa shopping knows, buying furniture is serious, tiring business that tends to make one peckish—which is why Elte has always had an onsite café. But, when the store was closed during the pandemic, they started thinking about partnering with a chef to overhaul the café‘s simple offerings.
Enter Mauro Ritacca. In 2016, he quit an office job and started Cucina Mauro on the back of a handwritten recipe book passed down by his mother, Francesca. Over the years, the cozy counter café bloomed into a beloved neighbourhood staple, complete with loyal regulars and a rotating selection of specialties like lasagne calabrese and eggplant parm. For the Metrick brothers, Ritacca was a perfect fit—he knows the neighbourhood, he downs espresso shots with regulars and, with his deft understanding of southern Italian cooking, he had the right culinary sensibility for their vision.
The food
While Cucina Mauro leans casual and rustic, with a menu inspired by Ritacca’s childhood favourites, Cafe Elte takes cues from its parent furniture company, with slightly more refined and composed dishes. This food is not about breaking new ground—there’s familiar brown-butter sage gnocchi, crisp arancini stuffed with melted provolone, and ciabatta paninis layered with rapini and crisp oyster mushrooms. But the magic is in the execution. There’s not so much as a misplaced salt crystal on these plates, and glossy finish notwithstanding, you can taste the deep roots they’re grounded in. Can’t stay? A grab-and-go section offers things like Roman-style pizza, freshly filled cannoli and adorable individual cups of tiramisu.
The drinks
No Italian café would deserve the designation without very good coffee, and between its drip and standard espresso-based bevies, Cafe Elte does not disappoint. (The decaf is, somehow, also top-notch.) There’s also whole-leaf tea and a tight selection of Italian vino and beer, including a refreshing pale ale from Rome’s Linfa Brewery and a floral lager by Piedmont’s Menabrea.
The space
Between stone-topped tables, leather seating and a neutral palette with black oak panelling, the room is sleek, chic and understated—all the better to make the food pop. It’s more or less seamless with the furniture showroom, though set a ways back from the front, and more than comfortable enough for a full-fledged meal—regardless of whether you’re in the market for a top-of-the-line dining table.
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