Daniel Costa (Bar Bricco, Rita Trattoria): Edmonton's Italian street
In 2022, after two years of pandemic closures, Daniel Costa made the choice that defined the next chapter of his career.
He decided not to reopen Corso 32.
His original restaurant had been running since 2010. It was dark, loud, and ranked among Canada's best. "We definitely didn't close Corso because of a financial issue," Costa told Taproot Edmonton. "We thought it was the right move. Corso closed on a high note."
Most restaurateurs run things into the ground: habit, debt, sunk costs, ego. Costa closed his most celebrated restaurant while it still meant something. That kind of decision takes more than discipline. It takes a clear picture of what you're building and why.
That picture starts a long way from Jasper Avenue.
Devon roots, Italian soul
Costa grew up near Devon, Alberta, on a family acreage with an Italian father from Campania and a German mother. Food wasn't something they talked about: it was something they did. Wine made by hand, vegetables preserved in the fall, regular trips to the family's village of San Pietro al Tanagro in southern Italy. By nine, Costa was preserving alongside his father. In junior high, he had stacks of cookbooks by his bed and skipped school to watch cooking shows.
When he enrolled in NAIT's culinary arts program in 2002, the French technique curriculum clashed with everything he'd grown up with. Methodical, hierarchical, focused on classical mastery — it felt at odds with the way Italian cooking actually worked in his experience. Halfway through school, Costa spent three months in Campania: hunting porcini mushrooms with his uncle, working in a bakery heated by hazelnut shells, learning how ingredients were made rather than just how to use them.
That's where the philosophy locked in. "This is good," the Italian approach said. "We've tried every single different way to make this dish and we're not going to change it." Restraint as discipline. Simplicity as rigour. Source the best possible ingredients and allow them to shine. Remove anything that masks what you're trying to showcase. The rest is noise.
Better guest experience. Bigger nights. $299. Once.
Building a street
Costa opened Corso 32 in 2010. Thirty-two seats, named for his father's address in Italy, with a family photo on the wall and a communal table. Dark, loud, and unapologetically bold in a city that wasn't used to that kind of restaurant. "When Corso 32 opened, people either loved it or hated it." By 2011, enRoute magazine named it one of Canada's Best New Restaurants.
Bar Bricco followed: a wine bar that felt like a side street in Bologna, moody, no reservations, Italian wines only. By 2018, it ranked No. 45 on Canada's 100 Best Restaurants list. Then Uccellino, a casual trattoria, joyous where Corso was moody, with half the seats held for walk-ins. Booked tables in one room and an open door in the next is a hybrid most operators arrive at by instinct rather than design.
Three restaurants within walking distance of each other on Jasper Avenue. Each distinct. Each built to last.
Then the pandemic closed everything, and when the dust settled, Costa decided Corso 32 had run its course. He moved Bar Bricco into the expanded former Corso space and let the original go. Closing something while it still means something is a rare move in hospitality, and never a free one, since the bill for winding a restaurant down arrives whether the decision was yours or not. Costa made it clearly.
What comes after a good ending
The next chapter opened in 2024 with Bar Henry: an aperitivo bar tucked inside Henry Singer, a downtown luxury menswear retailer. European in spirit — coffee in the afternoon, a Negroni by evening, the clothes racks a few steps away.
Three concepts followed at the base of Citizen on Jasper, a new residential tower: Va Caffè (a daytime café), Mimi (a nightlife lounge inspired by Italo disco, all cinematic energy), and Olia (fine dining built around the Italian ristorante structure, with a full tasting menu). All three spaces designed by Ste Marie Studio, longlisted for the Dezeen Awards 2025, described as "a cultural destination, akin to a lively boutique hotel lobby."
Then in August 2025, Rita Trattoria opened in the former Uccellino space. Named for Costa's grandmother Rita, the one who cooked alongside the family on those Campania visits. The signature dish is the Domenica: a pot of ziti with Ragu Napoletano, brisket, fennel sausage, ribs, and a meatball, meant to be shared.
Corso 32 was named for his father's Italian address. Rita is his grandmother's name. The personal is the aesthetic, and that shapes everything. You don't cut corners on a dish named after your grandmother.
One street, six rooms
What Costa built isn't a restaurant group in the conventional sense. It's a street. Six concepts, all within walking distance of each other on Jasper Avenue, each serving a different mood and hour of the day. A coffee at Va in the morning. A negroni at Bar Bricco before dinner. Sunday pasta at Rita. The Italo disco energy of Mimi if the night runs long.
Most independent operators chase scale: bigger rooms, second locations, a different city. Costa spent fifteen years going deeper in one place instead. The result is something Edmonton couldn't have predicted in 2010: a block that feels European in the best sense, built by a kid from Devon who learned to cook from his father and figured out the rest in a village in Campania.
"Developing a restaurant menu is a bit like releasing an album," Costa has said. "You never quite know which tracks will become the hits."
He's put out a few albums now. All of them recorded in the same city.
Sources: DINR, Edify Edmonton, Taproot Edmonton, Daily Hive, Dezeen Awards, Canada's 100 Best.
