Opened in 1993 by a family of Roman restaurateurs. Since 1998, the table has been housed in the former Montréal women's prison.
Emma Risa and her husband Lorenzo Aureli cut their teeth in the restaurant business in Rome — Lorenzo's family owned one of the city's most famous restaurants, founded in 1898. It was love that led them to Montréal: Emma's sister and daughter married Italian-Montrealers, and the couple joined them in 1992. A year later, in 1993, they opened Da Emma in the corner of Saint-Laurent and Saint-Viateur. In 1998, the restaurant moved to Old Montréal, into a 19th-century brick building that was the city's first women's prison — the stone-walled basement keeps its memory.
The cooking — all-veal meatballs, fettuccine, lamb, polpette, carbonara “as it should be” — comes from recipes passed down through the generations; Emma imported her ingredients from Italy herself and, she said, arrived at 8:30 every morning to prepare everything. The wall of celebrities at the entrance records decades of discreet visits: George Clooney, Johnny Depp, Leonardo DiCaprio, Angelina Jolie, Penélope Cruz, Bradley Cooper. Emma left her kitchen at 80; her daughter Olga Aureli and grandson Luca, the family's sixth generation of restaurateurs, now hold the reins.