Long before the days of Internets and Tiktok, I had to rely on my own given abilities to remember the things I loved. Sometimes, I would lug around a big heavy 35mm camera and moments could be captured on film. But that became a burden. And because there was no Google tracking my every trip, some details got lost.
Like in 1997, when I worked at a coffee manufacturer called Columbia Coffee, which is no longer in business. As a summer student, I helped their head office with bookkeeping. Actually, I can’t remember if it was bookkeeping. Everything is so vague without my life documented through Instagram.
But somethings you never forget. You just can’t.
During one lunch, my boss took note of the sad meal that I had packed. Remember, I was a student. He decided to take me out for lunch, as he put it, “to his favourite deli.” We got into his car and drove around in what seemed like circles. A dozen rights; two dozen lefts. We ended up deep inside a residential neighbourhood. And in this neighbourhood was a tiny plaza that occupied a handful of shops.
Everything is a blur. I don’t even remember going in. But, I do remember I didn’t get to order and that my lunch cost $3. For some reason, I remember the kaching of the cash register as they punched in the prices for each item.
My boss handed me a foiled rapped thing that weighed about five pounds and was the size of André the Giant’s fist, may he rest in peace.
I think he called it a calzone.
When I opened it up, it looked like a stuffed sandwich. The smell is what I remember most. Cooked prosciutto, mozzarella, olive oil, and some sort of red gravy. And the bread had the oil soaked crunch of a deep fried crispy focaccia. It was the first time I ever experienced instant pizza love.
I was 19 years old.
But I never went back! Not because I didn’t want to. I didn’t know where it was. And even if I asked for directions, it would be useless. It’s not like how it is now. Back then, people gave left-right, right-left type of directions. Used landmarks when describing where to turn. Football fields as units of measurement. How did anyone find anything?
And no. No one knew addresses. Actually we still don’t know address; besides your own address, we just rely on searches through Maps.
I have never served in the military. Is this what it feels like to fall in love while serving overseas, and never seeing your love again once the war ends? This sandwich might as well have been in Italy.
Summer was over. I went back to school in a different city. And after graduating, I moved even further away and further degrading my memory of the location of that first food love.
Since then, my travels have allowed me to fall in love with many things pizza. It is a remarkable food. Recognizable. Adaptable. Affordable. Even a dollar slice from the bowels of New York City has a place in my pantry of good memories. And through this journey, I have learned that this stuffed sandwich that I had in 1997, was most likely a stromboli, a rolled and stuffed pizza.
Strombolis are very difficult to find. Next to impossible in Canada. Documentation points its roots to Philadelphia, but because pizza is so adaptable, it’s very difficult to award a single source of origin when it involves a variation on a theme. But I didn’t care what it was called. Calzone. Stromboli. It just needed to be in my mouth.
I recall this story every time someone mentions calzones or strombolis. It is one of my favourite memories.
And then in 2022, the Great COVID Move had me coming back to the place that started this Stromboli journey. And one afternoon, while working from home, someone on a Zoom call mentioned calzones. And then it happened. The realization that it may be possible for me to relive that memory, 25 years later.
I was on a mission. Technology had advanced enormously since that summer of pizza love. Google has mapped every single street in every single country in the world. Surely I could find it. I just needed to invest the time.
After that Zoom call I cancelled all my afternoon meetings and went full-send on a web hunt. I screen-walked every turn combination starting from the former location of the Columbia Coffee head-office using Google Maps. Two hours later, I was ready to vomit from all the zooming and panning.
But there it was. Brioni Supermarket. 169 Gary Drive, Toronto.
It had thirty-seven, five star, Google reviews. Only thirty-seven and it’s over 70 years old. This was truly a secret. Only known by locals. Physically hidden in an old residential neighbourhood. Clicking through the half-dozen online photos that I managed to find, I saw that it survived a giant fire in 2011 that could have ended everything. It looked beaten. It looked old.
It looked beautiful.
The very next day, I got in my car and drove 50 minutes across the city to reunite myself with the sandwich.
I was so nervous.
All I could think of was how inaccurate childhood memories can be. How things that we think are amazing becomes a huge letdown when we experience it again decades later. Either our preferences mature or it was never good to begin with. Or maybe the owners changed hands; perhaps the recipe evolves.
I was so nervous.
When I walked in, it was like entering a time capsule. It felt like a movie set of a 60s Italian supermarket. The photos weren’t wrong. There is so much patina. But I was still right.
It was beautiful.
And then it hit me. That smell. The smell of that red gravy.
In my excitement, I had arrived too early. Only a couple of their hot lunch menu items were ready.
The nice lady behind the counter said:
“The calzone will be ready in about an hour”
So it was a calzone.
But it wasn’t like any calzone I had ever seen anywhere else.
There was no seating at the supermarket so I patiently waited in my car. Patiently with a veal parm sandwich. The red gravy was dynamite.
Thirty minutes later, I took another tour of the supermarket giving myself a chance to walk-off the sandwich appetizer. But my short walk was interrupted by a freshly made rectangular pan pizza. So I got back into my car to patiently wait again with two slices of square pepperoni pie. It felt like Jersey.
In the hour that I spent loitering in and out of the store, the owner made me feel like a regular. As lunch time approached the locals in-the-know began filling the supermarket to pickup their usual orders. But one customer was clearly not a local because he didn’t realize its a cash only establishment. He was picking up an order for a half-dozen people; he mentioned something about a workshop.
It was a big order. It would have taken all of his hands and even mine to be able to carry it out.
He asked if there was an ATM near by, and without hesitation the owner replied:
“Just take the food and come back with the cash after the workshop.”
This really was a time capsule.
The man seemed surprised at this response as much as I was. He turned his head to look around in a way that said “where am I? What is this place? The two of us looked at each other and we could do nothing else but smile.
Everyone was so sweet.
And then it was time for the main event.
Brioni Supermarket is a family business. But these folks are one in a million. They are saints. They are geniuses. They are my heroes.
Coming back to this place, 25 years later, a lot could have gone wrong.
But that calzone that doesn’t look like a calzone and more like a stromboli or even a stuffed sandwich, might be the best kept secret in the City of Toronto. I will live and die by these words.
When I opened up that foil and took my first bite after 25 years, I was nineteen again.
Thank you to my old boss for introducing me to Brioni Supermarket. Thank you to the owners of Brioni Supermarket for being you. And to the people of that West Toronto neighbourhood, you are truly lucky to be so blessed.
