The future of food may lie with those who cannot eat it.  This morbid speculation is fuelled by Hilary, one of my oldest friends, calling to say that she and her husband Jerry, who live in Pennsylvania, are passing through Toronto and want to eat Italian.

She adds, remember I’m a celiac – I can’t eat wheat.

Once I would have scoffed at such an idea : I like many others was skeptical of food allergies. I’d never even heard of celiac disease which was considered rare and difficult to diagnose. It took three years of agony – a celiac has only to eat a scintilla of wheat to have their gut thrown into convulsions – before a new DNA test confirmed that Hilary had the genetic, auto-immune disease.  The offending protein in wheat is gluten which bonds with yeast to make bread rise so deliciously.
Hilary’s global overview is comical wide-eyed indignation now inflamed by the need to apologize all the time for not being able to eat and  her discovery that wheat is hidden in so many things, a thickener/stabilizer in processed food, in soy sauce! In the glue on envelope flaps.  Atleast one percent of the population – and rising – has been diagnosed as celiac and has the potential of changing the way we live. Italy, for example, acknowledges it’s almost impossible to avoid wheat and won’t let celiacs join the army.
 I reckon that an Italian restaurant will be alert to celiacs.  Toronto is full of Italian places but it’s hard to find a restaurant that evokes  the informal genius of Italy’s regional food. Italians play food by ear and in Italy, local and seasonal has real meaning.  I had my first taste of Italian food as a teenager when I first visited Olivia, Hilary’s mother, who lived in a pinkwashed villa  high in the  hills above Alassio, a languourous 19th century resort on the Ligurian coast. The food was austere.We lived off pasta’asciutta,  spaghetti with tomatoes and green salads of weeds long before North America had discovered arugula, and figs gathered from the trees on scented terraces of olives and lemons.. When I opened the faded green shutters first thing in the morning and  saw the  iridescent mermaid scales that lapped the bay and smelled the potpourri of citrus, basil, rosemary, lovage I thought I was in paradise. Like so many Northerners, I fell hard and forever for the South.
I had these fragrant memories in mind when I chose Tutti Matti for our dinner. I’d heard  good things about Alida Solomon, its owner-chef who spent six years cooking in Montalcino, a gastronomic hub in Tuscany. Now I realize I should have taken the resto’s name “Everyone’s Crazy” literally.
OMG, the location! Spadina and Adelaide is hardly catnip for tourists. Food’s gotta be terrific. Welcome isn’t. A  shirtsleeved maitre d’ exhales boredom and seats us in the window. Siberia! The only agreeable seating in this cold room is the long banquette opposite the bar and open kitchen and it’s saved, I see, for a few regulars. Hilary brandishes her celiac card which lists all forbidden foods. She’s just had a funny experience in Montreal where the restaurants were always helpful but not always right. Just as she was about to taste something that smelled wonderful, a waiter dashed over crying “Don’t eat it,!”  
My heart sinks at way the bored one  sighs and beckons over a very young chef Andrew who nods but doesn’t take Hilary’s card. Hilary says that sympathetic chefs often adjust a dish for her.  Here no one offers to go through the menu with her. She wants  faggottini, a chickpea flour crepe stuffed with asparagus, radicchio, mixed Italian cheeses and truffle honey. No good calls out the chef. Blameless chickpea is mixed with wheat flour.
Wait a minute –I bet a Tuscan chef would have been happy to whip up a chick pea-flour only crepe for a celiac – take him less than ten minutes. After all the resto’s empty.  I wonder where Alida Solomon is? “She’s gone out for a while” mumbles the bored one. “She’ll be back”.  Mamma mia!
The antipasti include cured trout, beef, smoked duck, smoked venison, all pleasant enough. The wine list is impressively loaded with Brunelli del Montalcino that start at $125 a bottle. I ask  the bored one’s advice. “Pinot Grigio” - and without discussion he  brings us the cheapest bottle available.  Jerry eats pasta Norte Americana, aka  the taste of pasta – the whole point of eating pasta -  drowned in roasted boar sauce. I don’t feel like eating game or roasted veal on a summer night, so I settle for Insalata della principessa which features unripe peaches. Hilary defensively chooses the only fish. Black cod cooked uninspiringly.  Some days I think black cod is the only fish on any Toronto menu. I send an immediate sonar signal to sea lions on the West coast to start ethnic cleansing  sablefish which is what its called when it is smoked and when, I must add, it tastes a lot better.
Three desserts are flourless – they are all excellent, particularly panna cotta with a trio of chocolate, amaretto and caramel sauces. Jerry says where’s the gelati? When we were kids, Hilary and I would come off the beach and head for Giacomel’s to eat blackberry gelato now enshrined in memory. (Amazingly Giacomels is still spooning it out today). Our hopes rise when pastry chef  Ian Penny brings out Chinotto sorbetto which tastes like campari,  olive oil  and pistachio gelati – a real taste of Italy. If only we’d met Mr. Penny earlier.
* 1/2 Tutti Matti…364 Adelaide St. W. 416-597 8839  Dinner for two: food/taxL $130/ Italian wine list. Wheelchair accessible.