Toronto chef Kaitlyn Lasagna (better known as @thedonlasagna) has the kind of name that’s almost too perfect for the job.
Raised in an Italian household where food was at the centre of nearly everything, Lasagna has spent years cooking and working through some of Toronto’s most beloved kitchens. Now, she is stepping into something of her own with Buon Riso, a new pop-up concept bringing Roman-style supplì to the city.
This new chapter officially begins on June 14 at Pasta Forever, where Lasagna is currently working. The plan, at least for now, is to start slow: pre-orders will open the Monday before, with a few extra pieces available for walk-ins and the possibility of a Sunday residency throughout the summer (everybody cross your fingers — and toes).
“I’m not rushing into this business,” she says. “I’d rather try and fail than not try at all.”
And rush she is not. Buon Riso was born out of her sister’s trip to Italy nearly two years ago, where she first tried supplì — Roman street food made of fried rice balls filled with sauce and mozzarella, crisp on the outside and molten in the middle. The difference between supplì and arancini? Both are breaded, deep-fried rice balls, but they differ in origin, shape and filling. Supplì are smaller, oblong Roman snacks with sauce and mozzarella at the centre — often called al telefono for the cheese pull — while arancini are larger Sicilian rice balls, typically round or conical, filled with saffron rice, meat and peas.
For Lasagna, the format offers room to play. Buon Riso will feature classic flavours, but also Toronto-inspired ideas rooted in memory.
“I want to make something that feels comforting to people,” she says. “Something where people are like, ‘Oh my God, this flavour is so nostalgic.’”
One early idea is a Kraft Dinner-inspired supplì — a slightly elevated take on the fluorescent pantry staple. She also imagines future collaborations with chefs across the city, pulling from different cuisines and childhood memories. A jerk chicken version could happen with the right collaborator. A fried lasagna version is also on the table. “Who doesn’t love fried foods?” she says.
After first hearing about supplì through her sister’s travels, Lasagna didn’t think much of it. Then she started to hyperfixate. The name Buon Riso came from a brainstorming session with her sisters. It loosely translates to “good rice” — though she laughs, noting she often gravitates toward Italian names that don’t quite hold up grammatically.
“I just liked the way it sounded in my head,” she says. “Four letters and four letters.”
That instinct says a lot about her. Throughout the conversation, she moves easily between childhood memories, restaurant stories and Toronto food opinions, without needing to over-explain the connections.
That sense of food being central started early. Growing up, it anchored everything — weddings, funerals, birthdays, holidays and Sunday dinners. Her father owned bars and restaurants, while her mother and nonna shaped much of her earliest relationship with cooking.
“Growing up in an Italian household, food is the centre of everything,” she says. “It’s how I show love.”
She remembers watching her mother and nonna cook, where recipes were instinctive rather than written down. A cup was not a cup, but the cup in her nonna’s kitchen. A pan was the one that lived through every Sunday.
One dish that still lives vividly in her mind is her nonna’s Sunday sugo, cooked low and slow with different cuts of meat until the sauce became rich, silky and unmistakably Sunday.Cooking was always tied to home, though it wasn’t initially a clear career path. School was difficult, and culinary school felt like one of the few options that made sense. But once she enrolled at George Brown, everything “clicked.”
Her first job was assisting one of her chefs with cooking classes at Loblaws before moving to her cousin’s restaurant on Harbord Street — a place tied closely to her family history. It had once been her uncle’s burger shop, and she grew up in the house attached to it. Her career later moved through several Toronto kitchens, including Woodlot and Robinson Bread, before Tutto Panino, where she helped shape the menu before stepping away earlier this year to focus on Buon Riso.
Woodlot, she says, influenced her more than almost anywhere else. Working on King Street, she would walk past it each night with a friend, watching the overnight baker through the window loading the wood-fired oven.
“He’d be there at like one in the morning, mixing dough by hand with the fire going behind him,” she says. “I just thought, that’s so cool.”
And eventually, she did it herself. After joining Woodlot, she moved into bakery work and trained under Patty Robinson of Robinson Bread. The work was physical and demanding, but it stayed with her.
“I think I cried every night the first week,” she says. “But it shaped me.”
With Buon Riso, she is pulling all of that together — the Italian table, bakery discipline, years in kitchens and an instinct to feed people.
Eventually, she hopes it becomes a small production space and storefront, supplying restaurants and bars around the city.
“I want it to be something that feeds people and brings people together,” she says.
In her ideal future, Buon Riso shows up at a bar, warm behind the counter, ready to be eaten with a glass of wine — food that makes people put their phones down.
“That’s how you know it’s good,” she says.
For a chef named Lasagna, a fried rice ball project feels almost inevitable — rooted in tradition, deeply Italian and exactly the kind of comfort Toronto doesn’t have enough of.
