Family recipes are funny things. Some come with impeccable provenance. Ours comes with rumours. Everyone credits my grandmother, but nobody seems to know where she got it. Since then, every generation has quietly “improved” the recipe until the finished product bears only a passing resemblance to whatever she was actually making in the first place.

Our spaghetti sauce has been in the family for generations. It is almost certainly pushing one hundred years old.

According to family lore, someone in my family, perhaps my grandparents, perhaps my great grandparents, lived above an Italian restaurant in Montreal. The owner supposedly shared the recipe. At least that’s what my mom always told me.

Naturally, I assumed I’d uncover some wonderful story about an old neighbourhood trattoria, a generous Italian cook and a treasured handwritten recipe.

Instead, I found absolutely nothing.

I spent countless hours digging through census records, city directories, birth certificates, immigration records, newspaper archives and old Montreal addresses trying to identify this mysterious restaurant. I uncovered plenty about my family.

The restaurant? (more…)