Rosso Pasta Bar is targeting a soft opening in early September inside Wellington Market at The Well, with a broader launch to follow later in the month once construction and permitting clear their final hurdles. It’s the first fully independent business from co-founders Raja Jay and Karthiga Raja, a husband-and-wife team who spent more than a year working to secure the space before anything was made public.
The idea didn’t start with a business plan. It started with a family trip. Karthiga Raja, co-founder of Rosso Pasta Bar, said she and her husband have always built their travel around food, and that a trip to Italy is what pushed the concept from an idea into something they actually wanted to build.
“We’re foodies at heart. We love trying new things, and we travel with our kids constantly,” Karthiga said. “In Italy, we saw the fine dining side of the country, but we also found these hole in the wall spots doing incredible pasta. That was our moment. We knew we had to bring something like that to Toronto, something fast and accessible for people who just want good pasta on the go.”
She calls herself a “carb girl,” and said pasta has been a staple in the household long before there was ever a business attached to it. Karthiga said the goal was to keep the menu built around classic Italian flavours rather than chase a specific trend, and to bring something distinct to the city rather than a variation on what’s already available.
Karthiga isn’t a trained chef herself, but Raja spent close to ten years working as a sous chef in restaurants before moving into a corporate career, and the two still brought in additional support to build out the menu properly. “We brought in food consultants and chefs out of culinary schools to work with us directly,” Karthiga said. “We wanted the recipes perfected, not just the version we’d make for our own kids at home. We tried and tested, and we flew to Italy to train properly before we ever considered opening the doors.”
That training included a dedicated course on artisanal gelato, which Karthiga said was far more technical than either of them expected, with recipes built from scratch and ingredients measured down to the gram. The final menu will include five separate varieties of tiramisu alongside the pasta and gelato, along with espresso, coffee and lattes, and most of what ends up in the bowl is sourced directly from Italy rather than substituted locally.
The name came before the location did, by a long stretch. Rosso is Italian for red, and Raja registered it years before the couple had a lease to put it on. Karthiga said the credit for that belongs entirely to her husband, who had the idea locked in long before she was pulled into the rest of the project.
“This was Raja’s idea from the start,” Karthiga said, using the nickname her husband goes by. “He’d registered the name long before we ever started building out the rest of the concept.”
For Raja, the name and the branding were never separate decisions. Once he settled on red as the anchor, sauce and tomatoes made Rosso an obvious fit.
“I registered the name myself years ago, and I handled all the legal work before the rest of the concept really came together,” Raja said.
“Rosso means red in Italian, and red just fit. Tomatoes, pasta sauce, all of it,” Karthiga added. “We were fortunate the name hadn’t already been taken. Our entire branding is built around that colour, so Rosso made sense from day one.”
Getting into The Well took longer than either of them expected, and Karthiga said the process had been quietly running in the background for well over a year before anything was signed. Their interest in the building started with simple repeat visits as a family, long before there was ever a plan to open a business inside it.
“We’re a family with young kids, so when we come downtown, we look for a spot that has options for everyone,” Karthiga said. “My daughter has allergies, my son is picky about something else, and my youngest barely eats most days. A food hall like this, with real variety, works for us. We liked the energy here too, and being close to things like Jays games and Ripley’s kept bringing us back long before any of this was on the table.”
The deal itself wasn’t handed to them. Raja said the company looked seriously at other spots before committing to Wellington Street, and that landing The Well specifically took real convincing given that Rosso was coming in as a first-time independent operator rather than an established chain.
“We looked at other locations, and getting in here was not a walk in the park,” Raja said. “It took real convincing on our end, but our track record with other businesses gave us an edge in that conversation.”
Karthiga said what ultimately sold her on the location was less about the traffic itself and more about what she’d observed in the tenants who had lasted there. “The businesses that do well here tend to offer something different, or their own twist on something familiar,” she said. “There’s no other pasta concept in The Well, so we’re bringing something genuinely new to the space, and we’re focused on getting the execution right rather than just filling an empty unit.”
Branding and design work went to an agency called Hive, which the couple chose after meeting with a handful of others. Raja said he came into those meetings with most of the groundwork already done himself, having sketched out the concept’s visual identity two years earlier.
“I had already developed every part of this, the concept, the colours,” Raja said. “I told Hive exactly what I wanted and needed, and they brought it to life. I wasn’t looking for someone to design it from scratch. I needed a partner who could execute what was already in my head.”
The physical space carries that same attention to detail, built around an open kitchen customers can see into from the counter, with packaging down to the cups and napkins branded to match.
The Well’s mix of visitors, families, downtown office workers, and tourists, is part of what gives the founders confidence in their timing. That same instinct shows up in how they’re approaching the opening itself. Karthiga said the plan is to price consistently from day one rather than lean on an aggressive giveaway to draw an initial crowd.
“You can’t undercut yourself right out of the gate,” Karthiga said. “People remember what they got for free, and they measure your regular menu against that once the giveaways stop. We’d rather open strong and consistent than start with something we can’t sustain.”
Both founders trace that instinct back to how they’ve built every other business they’ve run. Karthiga spent her career in HR before the two moved into small business ownership through franchising, operating two Pet Valu locations, including one for 15 years. Rosso marks the first time either of them has owned a concept outright rather than running someone else’s brand.
“With franchises, they find the location and guide you, but you’re the one running it day to day, and I think we’re good at that part,” Karthiga said. “This time, we wanted something entirely ours, built from our own ideas and interests, rather than working from someone else’s playbook.”
For now, that focus stays narrow. “The idea is to open more locations eventually, but that’s not what we’re focused on right now,” Raja said. “Our whole goal is to get this concept right first, the food, the recipes, everything. We want a strong product out in the world before we think about anything beyond that.”
Rosso Pasta Bar is marking its grand opening with a giveaway for the first 100 guests in line on Saturday, September 19, timed to bring an early crowd through the door while the rest of Toronto gets its first taste of the concept.
Dustin Fuhs is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of 6ix Retail, Toronto’s premier source for retail and hospitality industry news. As the former Editor-in-Chief of Retail Insider, Canada’s most-read retail trade publication, Dustin brings over two decades of expertise spanning retail, marketing, entertainment and hospitality sectors. His experience includes roles with industry giants such as The Walt Disney Company, The Hockey Hall of Fame, The Canadian Opera Company, Starbucks Canada and Blockbuster.
Recognized as a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert in 2024, 2025 and 2026, Dustin delivers insider perspectives on Toronto’s evolving retail landscape, from emerging brands to established players reshaping the city’s commercial districts.