George Qua-Enoo
It's a blue-sky afternoon in late September and Cosimo Mammoliti is seated comfortably at the summit of his empire. We're at the uptown location of Terroni restaurant, on a resort-like rooftop terrace designed with mini-orange and pomegranate trees in chic planters, a white teak bar, and banquettes with cushions the colour of the Mediterranean. At 1:30, the lunchtime throngs are dawdling, many of them Lexus-driving, Rosedale raviners who play tennis at the upscale club down the street. Mammoliti owns six restaurants in the city (three of them Terronis), plus a new bakery and a wine agency. All eight venues plus two Terronis in Los Angeles thrive on delivering the verace Italia experience, with a menu listing more than two dozen pizzas and a décor scheme that's simultaneously contemporary and hot-blooded. Mammoliti may be a self-identified terrone (the loose translation: peasant), but he's also one of the most prolific and sophisticated entrepreneurs in the city.
This much he's mastered: a ruthlessly consistent adherence to authentic Italian food styles. Essentially, he's taken a mass-market, fast-food concept (your meal is the same across all Terronis) and applied it to what is an authentic Italian experience; he has also provided one of the first great mid-priced dining options in Toronto and staked roots in key, high-density real estate pockets.
Terroni began as a four-stool panini store in 1992 on then-unrefined Queen Street West. Less than a year later, the shop acquired a pizza oven and, eventually, four stools turned to 35. Though not by means premeditated, Mammoliti and his team subverted the notion of Italian food, providing a more meaningful alternative to alfredo sauce and thick-crusted pizza. Terroni was real. For an entrepreneur, that was a key flag to plant.
The other was a point of obstinacy: There is, for example, a strict no-substitutions rule. "It's not that we're trying to be difficult," says Mammoliti. "It's just that's how we do it in Italy." Mammoliti brings in his chosen mineral water from Bologna. His extra-virgin oil is pressed from a family friend's olives in Puglia. His orange eggs are from Manitoba—the colour turns Terroni's house-made pasta into a requisite yellow hue. "Some places fake that colour using saffron," he notes. His wine program reflects a few dozen exquisitely sourced Italian producers.
Mammoliti's greatest asset may be his "inherent uncompromising nature," says Jamie Drummond, senior editor and director of programs at the web-based Good Food Revolution. Drummond is an admirer of the no-modifications policy. "It's ballsy, perhaps, but it pays off in the long run. In North America, ordering 'off menu' has become almost a sport, with too many diners viewing a menu as simply an opening negotiating position. That's just plain wrong."
Mammoliti has prospered on ruthless consistency, built up over time. For the better part of its lifespan, Terroni was the only rustic Italian player in the city. Challengers are expanding into multiple restaurants, but Mammoliti isn't worried. Business isn't slacking, which helped him in his decision to open the second eatery in L.A. in July. As Jamie Drummond observes, "Cosimo has a talent for hiring the very best people, from the top down, so he's able to maintain consistency across the Terroni empire. And he has pretty damn high standards."
After 20 years, too, Italianness takes on a whole new meaning. Mammoliti brings his flour in from the Marches region of Italy, his tomatoes from a San Marzano producer whom he knows first-hand, and his wines from small suppliers deep within the Dolomites, in Piedmont and Sicily and points in between. "That's my job: to give people wine and food that they can't get anywhere else." In the process, he may even surpass the experience back home. "In a restaurant in Puglia, for instance, they tend to focus on only regional Pugliese wines. In Rome, they push wines from Lazio. We serve all the best wines." Authenticity takes on an outsized dimension in the restaurantbusiness. Terroni might even be more Italian than Italy itself.