Dominic Caracciolo never intended to open a restaurant. When Caracciolo launched Mercato as a specialty Italian market in Mission in 2005, he wanted to continue the legacy of the market his parents opened in Bridgeland in 1974. But small businesses sometimes have minds of their own, and, in Caracciolo’s case, his market wanted to be a real grown-up restaurant.
More than 20 years later, Mercato is still thriving as one of Calgary’s favourite spots for a date night, business lunch or special dinner.
Like any good Italian tale, Mercato’s story spans a couple of generations. It starts in 1974 when Caracciolo’s immigrant parents, Victor and Cathy, who, along with his uncle, opened the Italian Centre Meat Market, an Italian specialty food shop. While there were other Italian markets in Calgary at the time, Caracciolo says most catered to newcomers on a budget — primarily Italians with the old-country cooking skills to turn cheaper ingredients into gold — whereas his family’s store brought in the best of the best olive oil, balsamic vinegar and prosciutto, among other delicacies.
“We come from a place where you came in and bought 200 grams of mortadella and prosciutto, and we sliced it for you,” Caracciolo says. “My parents taught us to sell quality.”
With the 1970s and ’80s boom in gourmet culture, the store was a success, and eventually Caracciolo’s sister, Franca Bellusci, and her husband, Peter, opened a prepared-foods shop called Italian Gourmet Foods across the street (picture it: Italian Gourmet Foods was where Blue Star Diner sits now, while the Italian Centre Meat Market occupied the present location of Shiki Menya). Eager to make his own mark, Caracciolo bought both businesses in 2001, and in 2005 replanted them in Mission as a single business dubbed Mercato. While his parents were no longer owners, they still provided guidance and acted as ambassadors for the new shop (Victor passed away in 2017, but “Mamma” Cathy remains a regular presence).
This is where the unintentional restaurant part comes in. Content to simply expand on the Italian mercato concept, Caracciolo hired now-celebrity chef Nicole Gomes to whip up prepared foods and modest café items, but eventually people wanted to come in for a more lavish lunch. And then dinner. Simultaneously, Italian ingredients became available at regular grocery stores and places like Costco. Caracciolo needed a new business plan.
“My intention was to open up something like what the Italian Centre Shop is now,” he says. “But I learned pretty quickly that a restaurant was the way to go.”
General manager Nicole Simpson started working with the Caracciolo family back in the Bridgeland days. “In the beginning we were 40 seats, with servers pouring the wine for tables,” says Simpson. Eventually, the restaurant side doubled in size, taking up half the space. The other half remains a market and café with a deli counter and house-made grab-and-go items.
“It all really happened organically and from the heart,” Simpson says.
At the time, Mercato was a revolution in the local restaurant scene: loud and full of bravado, with an open kitchen positioned like a stage bursting with flames from the grill and sauce sizzling in pans. The restaurant continued the Caracciolo tradition of using only the best ingredients and impeccable service. It was a more upscale Italian restaurant than many Calgarians were used to at the time. But, looking back, Mercato was ahead of its time.
Today, the restaurant feels like an old, but enduringly vivacious friend. Gomes may not be in the kitchen anymore (that job now belongs to chef Rasna Dhillon), but old favourites like house-made pappardelle with wild boar and beef ragu, enormous platters of Fiorentina-style bistecca, and what’s probably the best caprese salad in town still dominate most tables, although newer dishes do appear on the menu to keep things current. Most importantly, that buzzy energy from the early days prevails — quite a feat 21 years down the road.
Caracciolo’s family legacy continues to grow: his niece, Alessia Bellusci, is behind the Dolce and Veloce cookie brand (available within the Mercato markets and at other local retailers), and he has cousins and extended family in every corner of Calgary’s Italian-restaurant scene.
Caracciolo has expanded his own business over the years, but, after opening and closing restaurants like Wurst and Bocce and putting Mercato West in the hands of Franca and her husband (Alessia is the general manager), he’s happy to channel his attention into the original Mercato. He believes Mercato’s glory days have only just begun.
“Internally, we use the term ‘hyperfocus,’” he says. “The quality and the experience are going to continuously get better and better over the next few years. We are hyperfocused on that.”
2224 4 St. S.W., 403-263-5535, mercatogourmet.com, @mercato_mission