Christmas Shopping in Woodbridge
Woodbridge is a suburb north of Toronto and home to a large Italian-Canadian community. It is then not surprising that there are many good Italian restaurants, grocery stores and Italian specialty food stores in the area.
For a couple of years now, we have been going to A. Bertozzi Importing Inc., a wholesale Italian specialty food distributor for our Christmas shopping. It is in the middle of the industrial areas, and is very unassuming from outside.
Bertozzi is a family owned business and currently managed by the mother-daughter team, Elvira Bertozzi and daughter Patricia Bertozzi. Elvira is one of the most elegant and gracious ladies I know.
Shopping at Bertozzi is a unique experience. We are allowed to walk inside the 30,000 square feet warehouse to pick our goodies. It was very overwhelming at the beginning. There are rows of boxes of Panettones, boxes of different types of cookies, chocolates, tomato sauces, pickled vegetables, olive oil from all over Italy, Balsamic vinegar from Modena, and more. The warehouse also has two butcher cold rooms hosting cheese and salumi. We bought almost everything when we went the first time.
Almost all the merchandise is imported from Italy and is very high quality. The shopping experience is made very special with Elvira’s guide on the products. She is extremely knowledgeable and explains us how the products are made, from whom, how they are used in the Italian cooking, and what we expect to taste.
We need some authentic Italian food experience to pair with all the shopping. San Antonio Seafood & Oyster Bar seems to be a perfect match. It is a family-owned seafood shop with a restaurant. The surroundings of the place do not show anything remotely related to Italy. It is in an old style mall in the middle of nowhere, next to a gym. But the moment we step inside, we feel that we are transported to somewhere in Italy. The place feels like a European neighborhood fish market, where the shop owner knows customers’ names, their orders and their families.
Everything is freshly caught the day before and shipped in mainly from Europe. On display are sea bream, salmon, live lobster, crab, tuna, fresh anchovy and sardines.
The adjacent restaurant is busy at lunch. The bread comes with caponata di pesce, literally caponata with fish. Amazingly, the caponata doesn’t taste fishy at all. Instead, the taste is more intense and less acidic than normal caponata.
Everything on the menu looks good. We started with calamari fritti and crab cakes (not adventurous enough, I know). Both are very good. The calamari fitti is perfectly fried with very light batter.
Our main courses are papardelle scampi and zuppa di pesce (seafood soup) with white wine sauce. The papardelle is cooked perfectly al dente. However, the scampi (large shrimp) are not deshelled. The dish would have been great if you are willing to get your hands dirty and get all the bites and pieces from the shell.
The portion of the soup is sizable. All the seafood in the soup is super fresh and the soup is very tasty with a hint of spice. We feel that the soup is a better choice.
Our lunch is finished with a nice surprise. The owner insists on giving everyone a shot to send us off. What a perfect spot to complete our Italian Christmas shopping experience.
