After 50 years of selling some of the city’s finest noodles, business is still booming at a family-owned pasta shop in Toronto’s west end.
At Continental Noodles, located on Jane Street near Lawrence Avenue West, pasta is still made the old-fashioned way, using the same machine Franco Liberatore used when he started the business in 1965.
“That’s something special,” Liberatore said.
People come from all over the GTA for Liberatore’s pasta.
“I came from northwest Brampton,” said one customer. “This is where I come for my noodles.”
The holidays are a particularly busy time at Continental Noodles. This week alone, workers say about 12,000 eggs will be cracked to make about 25,000 kilograms of fresh pasta.
When the store first opened in 1965, it had just two employees. Now, 15 people work there, including three generations of the Liberatore family.
“I remember when I was a little kid, I would come here after elementary school and I would do my homework on the semolina bags,” said Sarah Liberatore, Franco’s granddaughter. Now, Sarah works for the family business.
While the business has grown over the years and now sells to gourmet grocery stores and high-end restaurants, many of the customers have been shopping there for decades.
“They’re like homemade noodles like my mom used to make,” said one of the customers.
