The Olive Press

The Olive Press describes itself as a red-sauce joint, and it treats the phrase as a standard to cook up to rather than a label to live down. The food is Italian Canadian comfort in the fullest sense — saucy pasta, thicker-crust pizza, plates built to leave leftovers — served in a Bronte Village dining room that has been independent and Canadian-owned since it opened in 2007. The name reaches back further than the restaurant itself: it comes from an olive mill in the family's ancestral village. That lineage sets a tone the menu spends the rest of the night confirming, plainly and at volume.

Pasta Fritti is the fastest way to read the kitchen — Italian nachos, built on pasta chips with Italian sausage, Alfredo, tomato, olives, peppers, onion, cheddar, mozzarella, marinara and a finish of sour cream. It is playful, unapologetically saucy, and unmistakably the house style. From there the menu widens in every direction. Seafood Honeymoon Spaghetti folds mussels, shrimp and scallops into a tomato wine cream sauce thickened with lobster stock, chilies and green onion, the pasta list at its richest, while Nonna's Meatballs of beef and pork return over imported spaghettini for the traditionalists. The pizzas arrive on a housemade double-rise crust, from the all-meat Meat Market to a Mushroom Funghi built on pesto and gorgonzola. The mains lean hearty — slow-roasted Italian beef ribs under a dry rub, Tuscan lamb chops with salsa verde, hand-breaded chicken or veal Parmesan — and the antipasti reward grazing, from mushroom arancini with porcini and truffle oil to warm olives served three ways, a quiet nod to the name over the door.