How an Italian import shop ended up in Norfolk County
I grew up in a house where nobody had to ask what was for dinner, because you could smell it from the driveway. The cooking, the language, the way a table gets set when someone is coming over. All of it came over with my parents, and none of it got left behind.
What changed
For years, if I wanted the olive oil I liked, or a dress cut properly enough to still look right in three summers, I got in the car. Hamilton, sometimes Toronto. Ninety minutes each way and no promise the thing I went for would be on the shelf when I got there.
At some point it stopped making sense. If I was going to that much trouble, other people around here were doing the same, and most of them had probably given up. So I started bringing it here myself.
My dad was as Italian as it gets
Both of my parents were born and raised in Calabria, and I grew up surrounded by the traditions, the flavours, the style, and the simple pleasures of Italian life. So much of that came through my father, who carried his love of where he was from with him his whole life.
Since losing him, those memories and traditions have come to mean more than they used to. Bella Dolce is a tribute to him and to the roots he gave me, and my way of honouring where I come from.
He would have loved every part of this. The boxes stacked in the hallway, the phone calls to Italy, and he would have had strong opinions about which pasta I carry.
HOW I CHOOSE
Everything I carry is made in Italy.
That is the one rule I do not bend on, and it is the reason the shop is smaller than it could be. I would rather stock one platter I would put on my own table than six that fill up the page.
When something new arrives it is because I found it, tried it, or asked someone I trust over there about it. I still have family and friends in Italy and I speak the language, and that has turned out to matter more than I expected when you are trying to find the real thing rather than something dressed up to look like it.
WHO THIS IS FOR
You do not have to be Italian to shop here.
I want to say that plainly, because it comes up. If you like good food, and clothes that were made by someone who knew what they were doing, and a table that looks like you made an effort, there is something here for you that you cannot buy up the road.
Running Bella Dolce from Norfolk County
I run Bella Dolce from Norfolk County, where I live with my family and three dogs who supervise the packing and contribute nothing. Orders get wrapped at my kitchen table and go out from here to anywhere in Ontario, usually with a lemon on the box somewhere.