Walking into Casareccio, a tiny storefront in Kitsilano, is like entering an Italian Nonna’s kitchen. A pot of ragu that takes two men to lift has been simmering for six hours, a sheet pan of lasagna cools on the counter, and there is a Nonna, too, gently coaxing fresh pasta into nests.

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Maria Clarkson rolls her hands across the wood table to demonstrate how her grandmother made bucatini, a long pasta with a hole in the centre — her favourite.

From the time she was five or six, Maria was learning to hand roll pasta from her Nonna Carmela in her hometown of Mammola, Calabria. Maria cooked on a wood fire stove for her six younger siblings as soon as she was tall enough to stir the pot.

“Food was the centre of our home,” says Maria, 66.

She is tiny and bursting with smiles, warmth and comfort, but she is not your average Nonna. Around her wrist curves a tattoo of a rosary, in honour of her mother, and other tattoos that represent resilience: “I am enough” and “everything happens for a reason.”

Maria was 19 when she immigrated to Canada. She made $3.10 an hour working as a seamstress in a life-jacket factory, did laundry at a nursing home — exhausting, heavy work — then as a janitor with the Vancouver school board, while raising two children.

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There were joys, and struggles: two children, a divorce, grandchildren, a remarriage. What remained constant was food, and somewhere deep in her soul a longing for home that never really went away.

At 57, Maria got a foot in the door cooking at Bibo, a traditional pizzeria on West Fourth Avenue. Eventually, she became a partner.

In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic shut down the restaurant. With no one to cook for, and unable to see her grandchildren due to restrictions, Maria felt lost.

“We were sad every day. Everybody was struggling.”

Bibo was relegated to takeout. At the end of the night, over wine, she would talk with Alexandro Cascia and Simone Tarallo, her pizza chef and line cook. A couple of kids, really, both in their early 20s, both recent immigrants from Italy.

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They talked about uncertainties, and dreams. “We could see where everything was going with takeout, and we didn’t know when things would open up again,” said Maria.

“We decided to try it, at my house. We didn’t want to take over the kitchen and disturb my husband. So we set up shop in the spare bedroom.”

She gave the boys a house key. They showed up every day at five or six in the morning.

Soon they were plumbing sinks into the bedroom, setting up tables, pulling lasagna sheets that were two metres long, making sauces, and grinding their own meat — just like back home. And they were laughing. The sadness rolled away.

“I felt young again,” said Maria. “These two boys changed my life.”

Tarallo documented their escapades on Instagram, and soon the orders started coming in. First from friends, then strangers.

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“Oh, what a feeling when an order would come in,” said Maria. “Before I knew it we were delivering orders all over the city.”

On one of their pre-dawn walks to Maria’s Kitsilano home, Cascia spotted a little coffee shop on Vine Street that had closed. The boys had an idea: a little shop of their own. They would call it Casareccio, which means homemade.

“They came to me like two little boys on Christmas, their eyes sparkling,” said Maria. “The place had a hood fan and a walk-in freezer — it was perfect.”

Maria knew everything would rest on her shoulders. In the middle of a pandemic this would be a huge risk. They wouldn’t be able to take salaries, and they would work harder than she had sewing life-jackets, doing laundry or washing floors. But, she said, “This was our dream.”

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The trio renovated the 1,000-foot space themselves, with touches of rustic Italy: the boys taught Maria to mix cement, lay tile and mortar a brick wall.

“We would work all day, then pick up a couple of beers and work late into the night,” said Maria. “We had so much fun.”

Neighbours came around, curious.

“Everyone thought we were crazy to open a business at that time.”

In August 2020, the doors opened to the 11-seat restaurant that, two years later, has a lineup every day, a liquor licence, a booming takeout business, and a plan in the works for a wholesale market on Venables Street.

At Casareccio, where Maria’s pasta machine is positioned so it faces the door, she makes tagliatelle and fettuccine and spaghetti every day — the way her mother and her Nonna did.

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“This is my happy place,” she says.

It is also home, for Maria, for the two boys who made her laugh again, and for anyone else lucky enough to walk in.

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