Saluti or greetings from the world of “gustologia”. This term I have come to coin has all to do with the subject of taste and the study of it. Taste can be an individual’s perception, but it can also be analyzed, and dissected and judged on various merits if we wish to get more analytical or cerebral.

It’s no coincidence that an Italian term was chosen as these are my deep roots, which go back to my grandfather who was a producer of Parmigiano-Reggiano in Parma, Italy, my father Adriano’s birthplace. This exposure to cheese making would become my father’s business idea to emigrate to Canada, to found A. Bertozzi Importing Inc. with a “partita di Parmigiano” which is basically a small fortune in aged cheese! My father unknowingly became a pioneer like some of his contemporaries of the 1950s, by bringing his Italian food culture to an unknown land, and to a Canadian market that knew nothing of his province of Emilia-Romagna, or its authentic Italian food.

My mother Elvira was also an immigrant, and desperately escaped from a war torn zone of Istria. Both my mother and father met and married in Montreal, which was the largest urban centre of Canada. She refined our taste in both food and fashion, with her delicate demeanor and stellar chef-like cooking in my childhood home. I was to find out later that she was shipped off to Italy to learn by her mother-in-law’s side all the secrets of classic Emilia-Romagna dishes! And she was an excellent student both in the kitchen, as well as in her beloved studies of literature at the University of Toronto.

A laughable childhood story etched into my memory is one of a hot Toronto summer day, playing with my amichetta on our neighbourhood street. We went inside my kitchen to the fridge, searching for a glass of something cold, and what did we find but a bottle of typically fizzy, salty, San Pellegrino mineral water, which in the sixties my father's business imported. We drank this water regularly at home. Once my friend tried it, her face puckered, she spat it out, and exclaimed, “What’s that?” It was at that moment I started to realize that food that was perfectly “normal” to me like little gherkins, or formaggini or Chinotto (or mineral water!), or eating Bertozzi canned octopus or sardines for lunch, were just part of the unusualness of my family life at the table. We ate pretty much everything on our plate, we did not drink Kool-Aid, and we never knew the likes of Cheez-Whiz. Our bread (we called them Michette, a term from Emilia-Romagna) came from St. Clair Avenue, and we ate salad after dinner as a third course, but never as an appetizer. For my father, a shot of espresso (no cappuccino in the afternoon hours) was a ritual after a leisurely Sunday lunch.

Weeknight dinner usually began with my father’s arrival home from work, often after visiting his best client and friend, Nick Ventola, of the then famous Italian café in Toronto, La Sem. Occasionally my dad would take me out in his big Oldsmobile, with the eight track and leather interior, to visit a client or go for an afternoon ride. I closely watched his personal relationships at work and I knew that this was sincere, it was the old school way he preferred to conduct business, and his word, his integrity, and his goodwill meant everything.