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Restaurant

Radici Project

Little Italy·588 College St·Opened June 15, 2025
Intimate Italian-Japanese fusion restaurant with natural wine bar
Address

588 College St

Neighbourhood

Little Italy

Cuisine

Fusion

Opened

June 15, 2025

Website

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"Radici" means roots, and this College Street newcomer is built on two very specific ones — chef Emiliano Del Frate's Italian training and sake sommelier Kayo Ito's Japanese one, fused into a single 44-seat room rather than kept on separate menus.

The space is split in two: a casual natural-wine bar up front for walk-ins and a snack, and an intimate tasting-menu counter in back for the full sit-down experience. About 70% of what lands on the plate is sourced locally, filtered through technique both chefs picked up in Michelin kitchens across Paris, Rome, Copenhagen and Tokyo.

The food

Expect Italian forms — pasta, crudo, char-grilled proteins — finished with Japanese precision: dashi where you'd expect stock, koji where you'd expect salt cure. It's a genuine hybrid rather than a novelty mashup, built by two chefs who actually worked the stations they're now drawing from.

The wine and sake

Del Frate and Ito treat the front bar as a real destination on its own, not just an appetizer for the tasting counter — natural wines alongside a curated sake list, poured by the glass for anyone who just wants a seat at the bar and a plate to share.

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