Peter Catarino has spent his career building loyal followings uptown, first with Spuntini and later EVOO on Avenue Road. His newest project, Y Not Italian Food-Bar, takes that experience and plants it squarely at the intersection of Little Italy and Little Portugal — a corner of the city with plenty of culinary heritage to live up to.
The new spot sticks close to the classics that built Catarino’s reputation in the first place: handmade-style pastas, seafood, and meat dishes, rounded out with Mediterranean-leaning starters like beef carpaccio, grilled sardines, and mussels. It’s a menu built for repeat visits rather than novelty, leaning on technique and consistency over flashy reinvention.
The space itself reflects that same unpretentious approach — a cozy, communal-style dining room where separate tables sit close enough to spark conversation with neighbours, accented by details like an ornate bar mirror, wine boxes repurposed as shelving, and old-school art pieces that lend the whole space a lived-in, rustic charm. At the centre of it all is an elevated open kitchen, where Catarino himself frequently works the pass and checks in on tables in what regulars describe as a genuinely hands-on, old-school hospitality style.
For a stretch of the city that straddles two of Toronto’s most storied food neighbourhoods, Y Not Italian offers a distinctly personal, restaurateur-led alternative to some of the area’s more corporate newcomers.
Looking for a reliable neighbourhood Italian spot with real pedigree behind it? Y Not Italian Food-Bar is open now at the corner of Harbord and Manning.