Nonna's Spoonfuls

Nonna's Spoonfuls means what it says. The recipes behind the Fergus counter belong to a specific grandmother — Catina Anselmini, whose Calabrian cooking Natasha Mahdi learned young and now runs as a restaurant on St. David Street North. The clearest proof is on a plate: a Chicken Parmesan Sandwich of breaded chicken, tomato sauce, and melted cheese on a fresh bun, built to carry a lunch on its own and pulled straight from family practice rather than a supplier's binder. It is the sharpest item on a menu Mahdi keeps short on purpose.

The hot-sandwich lane is where the kitchen spends most of its attention. Alongside the chicken there is Veal Parmesan and Eggplant Parmesan, plus an Italian Cold-Cut that leans on cured meats, provolone, giardiniera, and vinaigrette for its contrast. The Meatball Sub arrives with beef-and-pork meatballs under tomato sauce and melted cheese; Sausage on a Bun keeps a lunch order plain. The pasta side is shorter but no less concrete. Beef Bolognese Lasagna layers ricotta, parmesan, and mozzarella into the strongest sit-down plate on the board, a rotating Pasta of the Day keeps the regular order from turning automatic, and a Meat, Pasta and Salad plate — built around cutlets, sausage, meatballs, or eggplant — rounds a sandwich stop up into a full meal. Garden Salad, Garlic Bread, and olives handle the edges.

What stands out is the restraint. In a town without many traditional Italian alternatives, a menu this size could have chased a broad regional survey and settled for a generic Italian catch-all; instead it holds to a handful of dishes a family kitchen actually made and repeated. The sandwiches, the single lasagna, the changing pasta — each reads as something cooked many times over before it ever reached a customer. That is the difference between a restaurant borrowing an idea of Italian comfort food and one carrying a specific version of it down from a particular grandmother in Calabria.

The path to St. David Street ran through several homes first. Mahdi's grandparents left San Giorgio Morgeto, in Calabria, and arrived in Canada in the 1930s, settling first near Hamilton and later Guelph, and the recipes travelled with them — learned, by the family's account, next door after school. Mahdi began cooking them for other people during the pandemic, running an at-home catering operation in 2021 before committing to a permanent address. Four months of renovations followed, and Nonna's Spoonfuls opened its Fergus doors at the end of August 2023.

Beyond the counter order, the storefront is built to flex. Online reservations hold a table, and catering trays — offered on weekdays and Saturdays — let a home or an office order the same food at volume. The hours stay tight: weekdays only, lunch into early evening, closed through the weekend except for catering. It is the rhythm of a small operation that would rather do a short menu well four days a week than stretch itself thin across seven. For a group, the practical move is to keep the order shareable — lasagna, a few sandwiches, salad and garlic bread — rather than chase a long tasting-style meal.

Dessert stays in the same register: Cannoli as the direct classic, seasonal Italian gelato for a lighter finish, and cakes that change with the week, with espresso and Italian sodas to round out a meal. It is a short list, and a fitting one. None of it wanders far from the sandwiches and the lasagna, and that is the point. What Mahdi carried out of a home kitchen is more or less what she is still cooking on St. David Street.