Pronto was the restaurant I took every meaningful girlfriend of my teen and early adult years to dine in. It was as close to a restaurant in Bergamo or Rome as Toronto had, and I loved it. To be clear, I love very few Italian restaurants outside of Italy and generally avoid them like the plague. But the memories I have of Pronto are indelibly etched in my brain and will keep me company until my last breath is exhaled. Only one other restaurant, Grano, holds a similarly important place in my life spent in Canada.

Anybody who lived in Toronto in the 1960s and early 1970s knows all too well what the dining scene was like then. But anybody who came back to the city in the late 1970s and 1980s would have been hard-pressed to recognize it, and a great deal of merit must go to Prevedello. Although his landmark achievement in the restaurant world is generally considered to be Centro, it was with an earlier creation, Pronto, that the man’s genius, talent and passion struck me like no other Toronto restauranteur before, save for a few of French training, observance and derivation (Le Provençal, Winston’s, Fenton’s Garden). Prevedello was also keenly able to recognize and mentor talent: working with chef Mark McEwan, who was long at the helm of Pronto, the two helped that address become one of the city’s six or seven best restaurants in no time. Simply put, before Pronto, there had never been before neither as good nor as authentic an upscale Italian restaurant in Toronto. It was a defining moment for the city, since after Pronto’s arrival on the city’s dining scene similar restaurants began springing up everywhere like mushrooms in the forest after an autumn rainshower.  But had it not been for Pronto, well…

Over his long and distinguished career Prevedello launched and ran more than twenty different successful restaurants. The list, a veritable “who’s who” of fine Toronto dining institutions, includes the likes of Acqua, Acrobat, Biffi, Bindi, Carbon Bar Centro, Nota Bene, the Ontario Pavilion at Expo 86, Pronto, Quo Vadis, Splendido, and Terra. Prevedello was not just about quality ingredients and authentic Italian recipes: his dining spots were professionally serviced and beautifully designed: to be clear, wood fire pizza ovens and open kitchens became a thing in Toronto thanks to him. Wine also and always played a huge role in his restaurants. At a time in Toronto when Soave Bolla (a perfectly respectable wine) was considered to be the best one could do in Italian white wine, Prevedello crammed his list with iconic bottles that now everybody knows well but that at the time were essentially unknown. In fact, while he started out as a restauranteur, Prevedello eventually began importing Italian wines to Canada himself, creating the Prevedello & Mathews wine agency, before taking the full plunge, and becoming a wine producer (he made a Prosecco from the prestigious Asolo denomination in Italy).

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Prevedello is survived by his wife, Barbara Prevedello (Jackson), daughters Bobbie and Kate Prevedello, sister Teresa Rossi, brother Antonio Prevedello and many other family members. Born in Asolo (Italy) in 1946, he was a graduate of the hotel school in Stresa (Lombardy); as was common at the time, he earned and honed his craft by working in Germany and on cruise ships, before immigrating to Canada in the 1960s, where he met his future wife. In Toronto he worked at some of the city’s most famous and important restaurants, including La Scala and Winston’s. With his wife, he established Toronto’s first food-recovery program, called Second Harvest. And while he was the meritorious recipient of the 2024 Rosanna Caira Lifetime Achievement Award by Foodservice and Hospitality magazine, his greatest achievement and legacy is the numerous chefs and restauranteurs he trained and, in so doing, turned Toronto in one of the world’s finest dining hubs.