Most people spend their retirement slowing down. Gianni Bardini spent his deciding to open a restaurant — despite having zero prior experience in the industry.
Bardini spent decades as an Italian diplomat, posted in Tunisia, Australia, Brussels, Colombia, Mozambique, and eventually Canada. Born in Tuscany, he built a career introducing the world to Italian culture, and when it came time to retire, he decided pasta was the natural next chapter. As he puts it, Italian cuisine embodies one of the country’s defining traits: the ability to turn simplicity into art.
The restaurant, Pasta Basta, is slated to open in Toronto’s newly developing Mirvish Village this fall. Bardini’s read on the city’s Italian food scene is a sharp one: Toronto has excellent fine dining Italian restaurants, and no shortage of fast-casual pizza and sandwich spots, but comparatively little in between — high-quality pasta, served in a comfortable, unpretentious setting, at a fair price. That’s the gap Pasta Basta is designed to fill.
To bring the vision to life, Bardini has tapped chef Dario Tomaselli, a respected name in the city’s Italian culinary circles and an instructor at George Brown College, to lead a menu built around classic dishes — carbonara, pesto genovese, and other staples — made with care and quality ingredients, in the tradition of home cooking rather than fine dining theatrics.
The choice of Mirvish Village was deliberate. Bardini was drawn to the tree-lined, pedestrian feel of Markham Street and its historical roots as the former home of Honest Ed’s, where generations of new immigrants once shopped. For Bardini, that sense of layered history mirrors the deep cultural roots pasta itself holds in Italy.
Pasta Basta is targeting an October 2026 opening at 595 Markham St. — one more reason to keep an eye on Mirvish Village as it comes to life this year.