Toronto’s Mirvish Village gets a Roman-style pasta bar

Pasta Basta is moving into 595 Markham Street in Mirvish Village with a Roman pasta bar built around walk-in service, no reservations and made-to-order plates. The restaurant’s website points to a summer 2026 opening and says the exact date will go to its mailing list first.

Gianni Bardini, a retired Italian diplomat born in Tuscany, is behind the project, and he has cast Pasta Basta as a fix for what he sees missing in Toronto: high-quality pasta in a comfortable atmosphere at prices that stay accessible. Dario Tomaselli, a George Brown College instructor, is running the kitchen. Early menu cues point straight at the Roman lane, with carbonara among the signatures and the concept anchored by fresh pasta, quality ingredients and a stripped-down promise of “Fast. Fresh. Simple. Nothing More. Nothing Less.”

That simplicity is the point. Pasta Basta describes itself as a Roman pasta bar serving pasta “the way it is eaten in Rome,” with a format that is as direct as it sounds: walk in, choose your pasta, choose your sauce. For a city where Italian dining often means a long sit-down meal, the draw here is speed without feeling like fast food.

The address also matters. Mirvish Village sits on the former Honest Ed’s and original Mirvish Village site at Bathurst and Bloor, stretches across almost four acres and is steps from Bathurst station. The development includes about 900 purpose-built rental homes and roughly 200,000 square feet of commercial space. Its retail mix is built around a 19,000-square-foot food hall, restored heritage storefronts on Markham Street and a pedestrian-first strip, which gives a compact pasta bar the kind of built-in foot traffic that can make a no-reservations model work.

Bardini’s bet lands in a neighborhood that is still taking shape but already has momentum. City traffic documents had Markham Street construction and access work scheduled for the middle of April 2026, with the block set to run one-way northbound between Lennox Street and Bloor Street West. With Book Bar and Pizzeria Badiali also moving into the area, Pasta Basta arrives as part of a cluster that could make Mirvish Village a real food destination instead of just another redevelopment on a map.