Casa Paco: A Love Letter to Old-World Europe in a Little Italy Row House

There are restaurants that feel new, and there are restaurants that feel timeless. Casa Paco, tucked inside a yellow house on Clinton Street in Little Italy, belongs firmly to the second category. Step through the door and you could be in a small family restaurant somewhere in Venice, or a neighborhood trattoria on a side street in Mallorca — the kind of place with oil paintings on the walls, warm wood everywhere, and food that makes you forget what city you’re in.

The remarkable thing is that Casa Paco has only been open since February 2023. The even more remarkable thing is that the entire operation is run by just four people.

Four People, One House

Chef Robert Bragagnolo and his wife Caroline Chinery are in the kitchen. Thomas (Tommy) Conrad is behind the bar. Ailbhe (pronounced Alva) McMahon runs the floor. That’s it. No dishwasher. No cleaning company. No extra hands. Everything — the cooking, the service, the cocktails, the cleanup — is done by these four, who are equal partners in the business.

Bragagnolo’s family is from Venice. He and Caroline spent a decade living in Mallorca, where they ran restaurants and absorbed the rhythms of Mediterranean cooking. When they returned to Toronto and closed their previous, larger restaurant Labora on King Street West after the pandemic made that scale unsustainable, they went looking for something different: a space small enough to run as a true family operation, intimate enough to feel personal, and warm enough to evoke the old-world restaurants that had shaped them.

They found it on Clinton Street — a location that had been cursed for years, with restaurant after restaurant failing in the same spot. They built it out themselves — cutting wood for the walls, hanging oil paintings, designing every detail without a professional designer. The result is a room that feels like it’s been there for half a century, in the best possible way.

Two Rooms, Two Experiences

Thursday through Saturday, Casa Paco welcomes 24 guests across two distinct experiences. In the dining room — an intimate space that feels more like a private dinner than a restaurant — there’s a chef’s tasting menu of five savory courses that changes with the seasons. The cooking is seafood-driven and deeply rooted in Bragagnolo’s years in Spain and his Venetian heritage. Expect shellfish — lobster, crab, mussels, clams — alongside whatever is extraordinary right now: black truffles in winter, the best Ontario vegetables in summer. For the main course, guests choose between fish and meat.

In the bar room, the mood is more relaxed. A three-course prix fixe ($45 per person) is built around a more casual, grill-forward sensitivity — Spanish-influenced, with starters like pan con tomate and charred rapini, and a shared main course that might be anything from seafood paella to braised short rib.

Both menus share the same philosophy: seasonal, ingredient-obsessed cooking that lets the products speak for themselves.

Sunday Is for Paella

Sundays at Casa Paco are a different affair entirely. The restaurant opens for an afternoon paella service — a three-course set meal that begins with an amuse-bouche, moves through a course of Spanish tapas (tomato bread, olives, roasted padrón peppers, house-cured tuna, grilled artichokes), and culminates in a paella cooked to order.

Guests choose their paella: seafood, roast chicken, or a vegetarian version built around whatever mushrooms are in season locally. For those who want to go further, there are add-ons — jamón ibérico, cured fish, shaved truffles, extra shellfish. It’s the kind of Sunday meal that feels like an event, and at $63 per person, it’s one of the best values ​​​​in the city for cooking at this level.

The Wagyu That Takes Six Months

If there’s one dish that captures the spirit of Casa Paco, it’s the house-cured Ontario Wagyu beef. Bragagnolo sources the beef from a single family farm about two hours from Toronto — a limited supply that comes in only every few months. He cures it the way you’d cure jamón or prosciutto, but with beef instead of pork, aging it for roughly six months until it’s silky, concentrated, and deeply savory. It’s sliced ​​paper-thin and brushed with preserved Périgord black truffles — truffles he buys during the season and preserves in-house to use year-round.

It’s the kind of dish that sounds simple on paper but takes extraordinary patience and sourcing to pull off. And it’s been on the menu since the beginning, because guests won’t let it go.

The Bar and the Cellar

Tommy Conrad’s cocktail program is unlike anything you’ll find in the neighborhood. He makes everything from scratch — his own liqueurs, his own juices, his own distillations. His signature Clean Martini is a case in point: Manzanilla olives are pressed, the resulting oil separated from the juice. The oil is used to wash the gin, and the juice is used to season the cocktail — delivering tones of floral olive flavor without any of the usual salty brine. Right now, there’s also a cocktail built from squash that he’s juiced, cooked down, distilled, and clarified into a transparent liqueur. He has a serious non-alcoholic program, too, built with the same care and complexity as the boozy side of the menu. The approach is closer to cooking than bartending, and every drink reflects it.

The wine list, curated with the help of Certified Sommelier Gary Danaie — currently enrolled in the Italian Wine Scholar program, an extensive specialist certification focused on the diverse wines and wine regions of Italy — focuses on unsung regions and lesser-known grape varieties, aiming to introduce new options to wine enthusiasts. The strong wine pairing program blends regional classics, such as Fino Sherry with pan con tomate and anchovies, with more innovative choices. The list leans into the Mediterranean — Spanish and Italian bottles primarily, with some Portuguese and natural wine selections rounding things out. Pairings are available every night, and every bottle is there for a reason, chosen to complement the food rather than impress with breadth.

Why We Love It

Casa Paco has climbed to #53 on Canada’s 100 Best Restaurants in just three years, and critics have called it an obvious candidate for the next Michelin Guide. But what makes it truly special has nothing to do with accolades. It’s the feeling of being welcomed into someone’s home — a home where the food is extraordinary, the wine is thoughtful, the cocktails are handmade, and the four people running the place care about every single detail because it’s theirs.

In a city that loves big restaurants, Casa Paco is a reminder that the most memorable meals often happen in the smallest rooms.

Written by Daniel Neuhaus


Updated on August 28, 2026

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