Alimento

This is such a glorious space!!

Love the rustic feel, the beams, the walls and the flooring!

So spacious too!

Alimento does make a great shopping experience if you are into Italian groceries!

Things for sure is on the more pricier side, especially compare to the Italian grocery stores I frequent.

Great to browse around and shop if you live in the area!

This grocery store/dining place has an amazing setup. My review applies to the grocery area as I didn't get a chance to try the food here.
The grocery area focuses on Italian items. Decent variety of cheese and pastas etc. The setup is very inviting and is well lit with tons of space.
However some of the items come with a sticker shock if you do comparison shopping like moi.
The cheese selection though vast lacks in some areas such as prepackaged items (mascrapone, ricotta) as there was only a single offering of those. The pasta selection though impressive didn't have much variety as well.
The biscotti selection was impressive and priced well. The espresso selection was limited as well.
I guess I am spoiled by the flagship longos as the selection didn't impress me much. 3 Star for the grocery area.

Dining Experience: Opening Day Store Visit
Venue: Alimento
Specialty: Retail and Dinning establishment
Menu items: Burrata Cheese and Rosemary Italian Flat Bread

Alimento, a recently opened Toronto spot in the King West area, is an enchanting gastronomic emporium - a retail and dining establishment where style meets food.

Tonight on our way home, a couple of co-workers and I decided to stop by Alimento as we noticed it was finally opened!
With a retail space covering over 2,500 ft of real estate in the corner of King and Brant street, one can not help but stop to take a peek at the immensity, luminosity and variety this Italian inspired retail and dining place offers.

I was pleasantly surprised to see that Alimento caters to the on-the-go, dining and coffee drinker crowds. During lunch and dinner time, it offers a breadth of options from pizza, pasta, salads and sandwiches, all with an Italian hint to it, mostly coming from the fact that the majority of ingredients used are directly imported from Italy.

One of my colleagues grabbed a pre-made pasta to take home and noted it was pretty good considering it was not freshly made.
I, on the other hand, decided to take advantage of my unique opportunity to try as much cheeses and charcuterie as possible (they were offering all kinds of samples on opening day); and admittedly so, my favourite spot from this emporium was the cheese counter...and the random Cheese displays.

As a Foodie, I can not just visit a place without taking something home with me. So my Alimento goodie bag (and tonight's dinner), included a succulent - out of this world - Burrata Cheese accompanied with Rosemary Italian Flat Bread.

As I take a sip from a glass of Italian wine, eat my Italian Rosemary Flat Bread spread with the Burrata Cheese (all 200 gr of it); I can not help but wonder how my waste line will manifest itself in a weeks' time. Foreseeing what it might do, is the least of my worries; having the pleasure of indulging in such Italian delicacies is what makes me happy, so I will stick with the latter. After all, what is eating but a creative exercise!

Alimento's cheese kinds are quite unique and rare, in the sense that they have a ton of variety and flavours I have yet to see in other stores. I guess its because their specialty is Italian. That said, Alimento does seem to want to cater to the high-end crowds, so price wise it will be interesting to see how the market reacts to this emporium and whether it embraces it or dismantles it. I honestly think this place will succeed given its location. It might just need to make an even larger presence in the foodie scene and offer some free samples (hint hint) to ensure its the talk of the town!

Until next time Foodies!

Buen Provecho,
Viviana.

I volunteered to cook dinner last night and on my way home saw Alimento. At first I thought it was a restaurant but saw ham hanging inside. Yup I'm talking full legs of dead animals! My attention was all Alimento's now.

When you walk in you are in a restaurant/cafe area and to your right is the market. I walked into the market and the space is very large. You are greeted with a large fresh cheese section. There is a lot of different cheeses at very decent prices, some better than the chain supermarkets.

Walking around some more it clicked in that I was in an Italian food store. The front section of the store has fresh cheeses, antipasto bar (nice selection), a great deli stocked with import and local meats and some fresh italian pastries and breads. In the back there are more pantry items, bottled and canned items as well as local and imported pasta. It's true that there are some ridiculous priced pasta from Italy...but if you check out the front they also have fresh pasta for $3-$5 and honestly that is a fantastic price for 2 servings of fresh pasta.

I picked up a few items and was on my way to making a pretty solid dinner.

For the Ottawatonians this place is like La Bottega in the market with a larger focus on fresh local items.

Stellar ! It is the word that describes such a wonderful place.

Myself and my friend both had Calzone's and they were wonderful.

Love the space, the service was fantastic and the food was great !

It was a quick lunch on this my first visit to Alimento and will not be my last.

Can not wait to return and check out a few other menu options.

The market on the other side of the restaurant is fantastic !

Great concept, wonderful design of the restaurant and market.

So, I've bought cheese, groceries, had coffee and food at this place regularly. It's a few steps from my office.

I absolutely love it. I love everything about it.

If you are buying a cheese selection, just tell them what do you like, and what's your budget, they will try to keep UNDER your budget. That's so nice! The results are always amazing, I want to buy cheese there every day.

I have ordered the beet salad, which is beautiful and delicious, and their pizza is incredible, thin crust, house made tomato sauce. I've seen, but never ordered, the cheese and charcuterie board, and it looks so beautiful, I have to go there just for that.

All the orders come with their own bread selection, olive oil, nodini cheese and ask for the house hot sauce!

If you have any questions about the menu, ask Andrea, the manager, he's super friendly and will love to talk to you about the food they make. There's someone who loves their job and is very dedicated to their customers.

Alimento also offers samples of their food in the grocery so you can taste before you buy (or... you can be easily convinced to buy everything because everything tastes SO GOOD), and that's how I decided I'm totally buying their olive oil - BECAUSE IT'S AWESOME.

Seriously. I love this place. These italian dudes, they know their stuff. I give them all my money.

This is for the restaurant part.

Let me tell you - worst service ever. We came in a group of at least 15 people for lunch (good money spent). Just as the waiter brought our drinks, he spilled Orangina all over my blazer. That's fine, stuff happens. But I was surprised that the waiter just said sorry and didn't even brought a towel or napkin to wipe it off! I reminded him and asked if he will do anything about it, he said ok and run away forgetting about this.

It was really sticky and I had to go home change before going back to the office. What pissed me off the most is that he knew how bad was it and he totaly ignored it. He didn't wipe it off, he didn't offer a dry cleaning, he didn't even offer a free drink!!!! To be honest I was expecting a free lunch. But no, nothing ....

bad, bad, bad...

I stumbled in here for lunch on their first day/sort of soft launch. Alimento is splitting it's space in two with a restaurant/cafe on one side and a small market on the other side.

From what I've seen so far they seem to be focusing on meats, baked goods and cheese but I'm sure there will be plenty more to go with it.

I grabbed a porchetta sandwich on fresh from the oven focacia and it was very nice. It was a bit salty for my tastes but the peppers and porchetta were very nice. From there I grabbed a slice of potato pizza. It was a nice size and a decent price but I liked their explanation of how they are going to serve pizza in the future. You will be given a choice of how large a slice you want and then be charged by the weight. That sounds like a really good idea to me as I end up with portions so large I can't finish them more often than not.

This converted warehouse space looks nice and kind of cozy with all the exposed wood. There's a tonne of natural light and everything looks to be laid out nicely. I'm really looking forward to seeing how it all comes together in the next few days.

The dining half of the floor looks like it will probably seat forty or so customers comfortably but it looked like there was only seating for twenty or so. I'll let you know if they add more seating.

So far, I'm impressed and will certainly be going back.

- this review is only for the small market - more specifically, the cheese counter.
- the market takes up half the space (i went on their 2nd day of operations, and the resto side wasn't really up and running)
- first off, i asked for suggestions to go with the soppreseta i had in hand.... the younger cheese monger turned me the direction of his "mentor".
- didnt catch the gentleman's name, but the fact that he was from the region of italy that the soppreseta came from, and a monster accent, AND the fact that he was wearing heavy eye liner.... told me i should listen to this man regarding cheese.
- he recommended me the cour di fieno and borgoiolo..... and frak me. they were just right. so good.
- very happy i have a place to get cheese on my walk home from work now.

I was been watching and waiting and watching and waiting and hoping this place will open.. FINALLY!

I went there yesterday to stock up on some cheese / olives and I was not disappointed. The location is ideal, very central to everything. The building oozes with Italian flavour. The floors are old and rickety, the walls lined with amazing olive oils, cheeses, olives, biscotti, breads, pasta. If you're concerned about buying something you will hate, doesn't sweat it, they have samples of almost everything. If there aren't samples available, chances are they will pull something out for you if you request it.

Something I found that was unique was the ability to grab a bottle and fill it with Olive oil from a big vat. Once you're bottle runs dry, you can just head on back for a refill.

They also have a flower section in case you forgot to pick something up for a dinner party.

If you aren't looking for a groceries but a snack, they have a full cafe/ sandwich joint. The sandwiches looked great. I cannot wait to go try it out for lunch.