Mamma Teresa Ristorante

Giuliano Boselli opened the Somerset Street dining room with his mother and named it for her. Mamma Teresa was Teresa Boselli — Giuliano's mother and the family cook — and the restaurant they opened together in 1970 has carried her name and her food forward without much editing. The red-brick building at Somerset and O'Connor sits inside Chinatown's western edge, a few blocks from the Hill, and the dining room inside it has held the shape of an Italian dinner the city already knew how to use. Her name is the one on the awning.

The pasta page is where the place opens up. Lobster Ravioli arrives in a rosée sauce. Gnocchi sits under creamy Gorgonzola. Tortellini Giuliano — the founder's name on the order — comes with cream, prosciutto, and mushrooms. Cannelloni al Forno is stuffed with veal and spinach, Manicotti Gloria with ricotta and spinach, and Lasagna Bolognese keeps a long-standing house slot. Past the pasta page sits a chicken or veal scallopine section that still runs five preparations side by side: Marsala with mushrooms and wine sauce, Gorgonzola, Fiorentina, A la Mamma, and Parmigiana served alongside spaghetti Bolognese. Fish steps in with sole and salmon. The antipasti side carries calamari, shrimp cocktail, mussels, and smoked salmon, with garlic bread and a Caesar salad sitting at the easy entry points before the pasta. Dessert keeps the kitchen's habits in plain view — Tiramisu Della Casa, Mamma's Cake, Tartufo, Lemon Sorbetto, Crème Caramel — and the names point at who the kitchen still cooks for.

What the menu leaves out is also part of the reading. There is no tasting flight, no small-plate format, no rotating eight-course ode to a single ingredient. The shape is antipasti, soups, salads, pasta, scallopine, fish, grill, dessert, in that order, served the way an Italian dining room served it before the rest of the city decided the format needed rescuing. Service has stayed inside the same posture: evening hours only, dinner first, regulars greeted by face. The character cues that hold across the Somerset dining room — impeccable service, family-style hospitality, old-school Italian elegance, romantic atmosphere, historic character — read more like a service portrait than a marketing line. The Tortellini Giuliano is still on the menu under the founder's first name.

The ownership story is part of the continuity. According to local reporting, longtime employees Walter Moreschi and Frank Schimizzi took over the business in 2008 — both had worked at the restaurant for decades before the transition — and opened a second Mamma Teresa in Chelsea, Quebec, in 2016. The line that explains the operating philosophy, recorded in the same coverage, is the one about first dates returning as families: staff trained to remember names, regulars greeted before the order arrives. The Chelsea expansion was the only kitchen move that needed a new address — the Somerset menu kept the same shape it had before the change.

The Somerset address tells you how to use the place. Doors open at four-thirty every evening, with later closes at ten-thirty on Friday and Saturday, and the dining room is built for a planned dinner rather than a casual drop-in — the anniversary table, the birthday booking, the celebratory work dinner, the visiting family that wants the Italian restaurant the locals already know. Local reporting notes the Ottawa location can seat around two hundred, which is partly why the restaurant takes on so much group and special-occasion work without losing the regular-table feel. What the kitchen does well is hide the discipline underneath the menu: open the meal with the ravioli, build a scallopine into the middle, leave room for one of the desserts that carry her name. The kitchen is still hers.