Anthony Zanfini, known online as The Young Nonno, joins Tre Mari this July to create a special dandelion cannoli inspired by memory, resilience, immigration, and the traditions that quietly survive through generations.
At first glance, dandelions feel unexpected in a cannolo. For many people, they are something pulled from gardens or ignored on sidewalks, a weed more than an ingredient. But for Anthony, they represent something much deeper.
“There’s nothing more Italian than a family lunch. Everyone around, all generations. The sounds, the smells, the tastes. It doesn’t matter what part of Italy you’re from or how large your family is. It’s the same scene and the same feeling around the table.”
For him, food has always been inseparable from memory and family. Much of that understanding came directly from grandparents and older generations who carried traditions with them when they immigrated to Canada.
“There would be no appreciation for it without them,” he says. “What they brought over, literally like smuggling seeds, and figuratively by maintaining traditions, is so inspiring.”
Anthony speaks about food not only as nourishment, but as inheritance. Preserving tomatoes, curing meats, gardening, and cooking together become a way of preserving culture itself.
“Preservation is so much more than making food last,” he explains. “It’s the social gatherings, bonding, and memories that become the basis of future storytelling.”
“In just a generation or two, dandelions have gone from prized seasonal delicacy to annoying weed,” Anthony says. “And now they’re slowly swinging back again.”
For him, dandelions represent the fragility of traditions in a fast-changing world, but also the resilience of the people who carried them forward.
“Beautiful things can grow out of the toughest conditions and least expected places,” he says.
That same thinking is part of why Anthony believes younger generations are reconnecting to gardening, foraging, and traditional foodways again.
“There’s an ingrained calling that people are answering,” he says. “Something pulling them back into the dirt, the garden, the woods, the rivers.”
In many ways, the dandelion cannoli becomes more than just an unexpected flavour. It becomes a reflection of overlooked ingredients, inherited memory, and old traditions finding new life again.
“I hope it brings back a memory that was forgotten or overlooked. Not a huge story, just a small moment that you suddenly appreciate more than you ever knew possible.”
Like the dandelion itself, some things quietly stay with us longer than we realize.
Taste the Dandelion Cannoli.