Arriving as a brick-size slab, within a thin moat of sauce, the Giusti spring lasagna can easily feed two.
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On a spring Tuesday evening Giusti is full, noise level raised to cacophonous. Barely six months old, the Mount Pleasant restaurant seems to be attracting a solid cohort of locals — small groups and first (or maybe second) dates fill the tables. The background music can barely be heard in the high-ceilinged room, previously home to Bar Sisu and, prior to that, neighbourhood institution The Whip.
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Since opening in October in the century-old building on the corner of 6th and Main, Giusti has been serving regional Italian recipes, or la cucina Italiana. Signatures include handmade pasta (or, as they say on the menu, “pasta fatta a mano”), and antipasti with lots of vegetarian options. Food is meant to be shared — and that’s what you’ll be doing if you order the lasagna.
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Arriving as a brick-size slab, within a thin moat of sauce, the Giusti spring lasagna can easily feed two. Garfield would find nothing to complain about here.
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Start with an antipasti — such as the asparagus topped with a fried egg and Grana Padano, as we did — and you might even be taking some home. And yes, it was even better for lunch the next day.
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Chef Mark Perrier, who helped open another rustic Italian restaurant with Savio Volpe, has constructed a towering edifice with nearly 20 layers. The pasta sheets are green, thanks to the addition of a little spirulina. A ragù of pork, beef, and veal, cooked with pancetta, lard, Parmesan rinds, and prosciutto ends, takes about 24 hours to complete. It’s definitely the star of this dish.
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“Mark generally likes to explore lesser-known Italian dishes,” Giusti co-owner Miguel Quezada told us later.
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“He has this huge library of cookbooks — not just contemporary ones, but very old Italian cookbooks. Through that, he’s been able to really dive into regional, rustic Italian cooking. That’s usually what inspires him. But with this, he was excited to try something different — something more familiar — so he decided to do a lasagna. He modelled it after a classic Emilia-Romagna lasagna, but with a bit of a twist: mainly in the number of layers.”
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The traditional lasagne alla bolognese from Italy’s Emilia-Romagna region is typically made without ricotta or mozzarella.
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“North American versions tend to have a lot more sauce — the sauce-to-pasta ratio is higher — and there are often additional elements, like spinach or ricotta mixed in,” Quezada said. “This one is much more focused: pasta sheets, ragù bolognese, and béchamel. That’s it.”
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Ours arrived cooked to perfection, crispy on the outside and with a chewy centre made rich by the ragù, satisfying on its own.
