Meet David Mattachioni, Toronto's Sandwich and Pizza Master

After 14 years as a pizza maker at the Toronto institution Terroni, David Mattachioni borrowed from friends and family to open his first restaurant. Transforming a former 3,000-square-foot bakery into a dining space with a custom-built lunch counter, his eponymous Mattachioni initially offered a bit of groceries, basically making his dishes’ ingredients available to customers. But the business’ bread and butter was lunchtime sandwiches and nighttime pizza.

After laying off the staff at the start of the pandemic, but maintaining the menu for take-out, employees gradually returned. Seeing the lineups at nearby supermarkets, they pulled out the counter and moved the groceries to the store’s front where people could see the tomatoes, pepperoncini, pickled beets, homemade yogurt, sausages, terrines, Bolognese, zeppole filled with pear butter, lemon curd bombolini, and bread through the window.

Sales are now back up to 90% of prepandemic levels. Groceries now comprise 60% of revenue, and some customers don’t even know that they make pizza. After five years of operation, an opportunity for a second location opened up on the other side of town. So, in January of this year, while every other restaurant was struggling to stay afloat, Mattachioni expanded. Oh, and he makes a killer mortadella sandwich, which he tells La Cucina Italiana about in this Q&A.

What makes a great mortadella sandwich?

The thinness of the mortadella. The thinner it is, the easier it will be for the fat to melt in your mouth.

What’s in your version?

It’s just meat and cheese. There’s olive oil, salt, and pepper. And mozzarella. We don’t have mustard. We don’t have any mayonnaise or aioli at the store. Not because I don’t like it. Only because I get nervous about people going insane with it. If they want extra extra extra mayonnaise, then what’s the point? I wanted people to have a nice, basic sandwich that you would have in your school lunch.

What about the bread?

When we started, the mortadella was always served on the tomato focaccia. Unless the customer wanted it on sourdough. The bread is important. Whether it’s something with a crust, like a kaiser, or soft, like focaccia, but so long as it’s quality, it’ll make your sandwich better. Just remember to slice the mortadella thin.

I’m a donut fiend. And I find that cake donuts are good all day, but yeast donuts have a shelf life of a few hours. How long are zeppole or bombolini good for?

They should be made fairly frequently. At the west store, we only make them once a day. We make them in the morning and they’re gone by noon. We do the zeppole in the east store, six at a time, every half hour or so. You don’t want them to sit for more than a few hours because they become a little bit heavy. Like canoli, whatever they’re stuffed with, will start to absorb into the dough. It will be soggy and mushy.

Are you strictly pick-up or are you using any third-party delivery platforms?

Strictly takeout. Once upon a time we had Uber and Foodora. But we stopped using them a couple years ago. It was never a big part of our sales. And I didn’t want to work for them. We opened our own store so we could work for ourselves. Their whole business model, which is great for them and their partners, just means they’re piggybacking off us busting our asses.

Tell me about your relationship with the anti-hunger non-profit Mealshare.

When you contribute to Mealshare, you choose a menu item and increase it by a dollar. You put in an explanation on the menu. And that dollar goes to feeding youth in need. We do a special pizza Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. It’s margherita, marinara, and Napoli. Initially they were $10, to increase sales on slow days. You always get nervous increasing prices. We increased it to $11 and that extra dollar goes to Mealshare. No one ever had a problem with it. If we sell 500 in a month, they send us an invoice for $1 times X and we send them a check. They make it easy.