Basilio Pesce’s popular pasta venture has surged through Toronto since its soft launch in October 2020, becoming increasingly unavailable due to its tendency to sell out in a matter of seconds.
Porzia’s Lasagne is a once-a-week operation that is currently running out of Osteria Rialto, a stylish Italian spot in the Paradise Theatre complex. Toronto’s most sought after lasagne has been mentioned in numerous headlines since the end of 2020, which in turn, has made it very hard to secure yourself a tray.
“I never thought that they would be this popular,” said Pesce, who is the executive chef at Osteria Rialto.
Porzia’s lasagne is no new item in Toronto; the dish originates from 'Porzia', a popular Parkdale restaurant and Pesce’s first turn as a chef and owner, which shuttered in 2015. The original lasagne was also a once-a-week affair back then and has been a tradition that has carried through to the lasagne’s second-coming.
Pesce says that he began making the lasagne’s again in the summer of 2020, when restrictions on dining out were a little more loose and their patio was open. Though amidst the scorching heat and COVID cases continuing to rise again, the lasagne operation was halted indefinitely, before picking back up in October.
“Who really wants to eat lasagnes when it’s 40 degrees outside?” Pesce said. “The timing was just a little bit bad.”
The idea to sell them at a smaller, more condensed scale came to fruition when a friend had reached out to Pesce asking for a tray of lasagne for a birthday celebration.
“Since it’s easier for me to make 10 than it is for me to make one, I’m just gonna sell them,” he said. “Let’s see what happens. It just started to steamroll from that.”
Almost immediately, the trays of lasagne began selling out in less than 30 minutes. That time began decreasing as word spread every week for the next drop until sellout times reached a trifling 20 seconds, according to Pesce.
The demand for Prozia’s is not the only value that makes it so difficult to get your hands on. The entire operation is currently a one man show––and is done in a kitchen that doesn’t have the resources to produce the volume of orders that would be present if not for Pesce’s lasagne cap of two dozen trays per week.
“It’s not like I have a team of little lasagne elves,” said Pesce. “And to make like, 500 of these a day, I would need a wall of ovens.”
Five hundred trays a day may seem like an excessive estimation, but it is relatively close to what the demand is like right now. Pesce said that the website, where all the ordering takes place, recently had close to 800 users at one time eagerly waiting to buy one of an available 24 lasagne trays.
In the upcoming year, lasagne fanatics can look forward to more accessible trays from Porzia’s. Though there is no immediate plan to take his lasagne business to the next level, Pesce says that scaling up is in the works.
“I think I’d be stupid to ignore the attention or the momentum or whatever you wanna call it,” he said.
Although there is no way to remedy your lasagne cravings yet, have a little bit of faith––Pesce’s dedication to this perfect lasagne takes time and a lot of effort. He says the last thing he wants to do is let people down.
“I really, really wish I could make a lot more,” he said. “I just don’t want people to be frustrated or disappointed because of something I did."
You can keep an eye out for his next lasagne drop through Instagram or on Prozia's website. Who knows, maybe you’ll be the one lucky clicker.
