Impasto

About Impasto

The porchetta at Impasto is Gaspor milk-fed pork, rolled around its own herbs and roasted until the skin shatters, and the recipe belongs to a grandfather rather than the chef. Michele Forgione, a pastry chef by training, opened the room on Rue Dante in July 2013 with Stefano Faita, who grew up behind the counter of the family's Dante hardware store two doors down. Twelve years on it sits at 48 Rue Dante in the centre of Little Italy, a short walk from the Jean-Talon market. Canada's 100 Best ranked it No. 50 in 2017, and the kitchen has held that line since.

For more of the city's tables, see our Montreal dining guide, or compare the charcoal grill and pasta at Nora Gray and the natural-wine list at Mon Lapin.

The Kitchen

Forgione makes the pasta by hand and it shows. The spelt gnocchi are nutty and faintly chewy, a different animal from the usual potato pillow; the tagliatelle has run with saffron and salt cod as readily as with a Bolognese. Charcuterie is cured in-house, proteins go over charcoal, and the menu stays short and shifts with what the Jean-Talon market has that week. None of it is invention for its own sake. It is Italian cooking by a cook who learned the sweet side first — doughs proofed properly, fat rendered rather than rushed — and brought a pastry-cook's patience to the savoury. The wine list leans hard into Italy's regional growers.

Best For: First Date

Book Impasto for a first date because the room does the work the occasion needs: warm light, tables close enough to talk over, a menu you can share without negotiation. Order the porchetta and the gnocchi for the table, let the server steer the wine, and you have ninety easy minutes. It reads as considered without trying to impress, which on a first date is the whole game. Reserve for the weekend; the small room fills.