famiglia baldassarre toronto

Someone has been stealing tomatoes from one of Toronto's most popular restaurants

There's a tomato thief at large in Toronto! And the culprit isn't who you might expect.

It turns out the tomato bandit is an elderly lady, caught on Geary Avenue restaurant Famiglia Baldassarre's security cameras stealing tomatoes from their garden at night.

The restaurant posted the footage to their Instagram story, asking followers what they should do with her and asserting that this was no sweet, fuzzy-minded old Nonna innocently taking the tomatoes because of some kind of misunderstanding.

"A nonna knows what it takes to grow a garden, and a nonna respects another's garden," Famiglia Baldassarre owner Leandro Baldassarre says to the camera in the story.

"This is not the behaviour of a poor old nonna," he continues. "I know this person. A couple of weeks ago we caught them in the garden, which is all on video too, and we said, 'hey, do you mind not taking these tomatoes?' And they said, 'oh, I'm so sorry, I didn't know.'

"What did she do? She came back, night after night, in her car, parked on the sidewalk right in front, scooted in with empty containers and filled them up. Now that's premeditated."

He continues, "She even comes here for lunch, so that's a double slap in the face."

Baldassarre is willing to strike a deal with the "criminal."

"I'm a nice guy, I'm going to give her a chance. You can come back here, you can bring me a flat of local heirloom tomatoes every day for the next week, and I'll forgive you."

He says otherwise he "can think of a few people who'd be interested in" the video evidence he has.

In the meantime, according to the Instagram story it would seem an agency that shares the building with the restaurant came to the rescue with a few tomatoes.

Baldassarre also later posted to the story, "We got some heirloom field tomatoes and some field cherry tomatoes coming in from Bosco Farms which I'm really excited about too."

So, you can get excited again for pomodori on the menu at Famiglia Baldassarre today. 

Lead photo by

@famiglia_baldassarre


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