By the desk · Profile · 1,200 words
Luca Varese was born in North York, grew up on minor-league hockey and his mother's Friday cappelletti. From 2014 to 2017 he worked at BMO Capital Markets analysing Canadian mid-cap energy equities. He was pretty good at it. He also ate a lot of bad office lunch pizza.
In the summer of 2017 he burned out — quietly, without drama — and booked a one-way flight to Napoli. He thought he'd stay a month. He ended up working under Gino Sorbillo on Via dei Tribunali for twenty-one months, starting by washing dishes and leaving as a pizzaiolo who could hit a 90-second bake six out of seven times. The pay was roughly a tenth of what he made in Toronto. He was happier.
He came back in late 2019 with a plan to open something small on College Street. The lease on 892 signed on 14 March 2020. Four days later the first lockdown began. He opened anyway — only for takeout, only on Fridays and Saturdays — on 18 April 2020. The pizza was good, word moved quickly, and by the time restaurants could reopen dining rooms in September Luca had already built the shape of what this place was going to be.
His partner Sofia Marchetti, a Neapolitan artist who had been his classmate at language school in Napoli, moved over in early 2021. She runs the front, handles the wine list, and most weeks she's the person answering the phone when you call to ask whether we're open on Monday. (We're not. We've been closed Mondays since day one and we're not changing that.)
More stories →
