Lidia Bastianich Visits Toronto to Promote New Product Line

TORONTO — Lidia Bastianich, the doyenne of Italian cooking in America, travelled to Toronto late last week as part of a promotional tour for her new line of Italian food products. Bastianich’s claim to fame has come through a series of successful restaurants she owns in the U.S., including four in New York (Felidia, Becco, Esca and Del Posto) as well as Lidia’s in Pittsburgh and Kansas City. She’s also the star of her own cooking show as well as a best-selling author, with seven cookbooks to her name.  

The down-to-earth chef recently added supplier to her long list of credentials, having developed and launched a new line of tomato sauces and pastas, which she premiered at All the Best Foods store in Toronto last week.

Fans of her cooking show were treated to a book signing, co-sponsored with The Cookbook Store, which allowed fans to get a chance to meet the culinary dynamo.  

In addition to launching her new line of eight different cuts of pasta, produced in Italy, and eight different tomato sauces, including the popular artichoke marinara, Bastianich also produces, along with her son Joe, award-winning wines at Bastianich Vineyards in Friuli and La Mozza Vineyards in Maremma, Italy (the wines are available in Toronto via the LCBO consignment program through The Vine, Robert Groh agency, www.robgroh.com). 

And if that’s not enough to keep the beloved star busy, a year ago on August 31, Bastianich, along with her son Joe, celebrity chef Mario Batali and Italy’s Oscar Farinetti, opened Eataly, the largest artistanal food and wine marketplace in New York City, transforming 42,500 square feet of space in the Flatiron District into the city’s premier culinary mecca.