The Whistler chef who tasted balsamic in Italy, recreated it at home, and built a Costco staple

A trip to Italy, and a chef who would not let it go

The story starts with a taste. On a trip to Italy, Norm Strim, a Red Seal chef living in Whistler, tried traditional balsamico, the slow, barrel-aged kind that bears little resemblance to the thin vinegar in most grocery aisles. He came home to British Columbia unable to find anything close, so he did the chef thing and started making it himself, simmering aged balsamic from Modena down into a thick, glossy glaze in his own kitchen.

In 2010 he and his wife Natasha began selling that glaze at the Whistler farmers' market under the name Nonna Pia's. The name is a small piece of family folklore. As the brand tells it, Norm named the company after Nonna Pia rather than after his wife because, in his words, Natasha burns salads. It is the kind of line that only works because the product underneath it is serious.

That product was a real reduction from day one. Where a lot of glazes lean on cornstarch or gums to fake the texture, Norm's approach was to simply reduce good balsamic vinegar with a touch of sugar until it thickened on its own. It is slower and more expensive to make, and it is the whole reason the glaze tastes like something a chef would put on a plate rather than a sauce engineered for a spec sheet.

“Enjoy delicious products that embody the love, care, and timeless recipes that grandmothers like Nonna Pia pass down through generations.”

The part worth borrowing is the order of operations. The recipe was right before the brand ever scaled. Norm did not start with a distribution plan and reverse-engineer a product to fit it. He obsessed over one thing, a glaze good enough that strangers at a ski town market would pay a premium for it, and then let demand pull the business forward. In a category full of me-too condiments, getting the product undeniably right first is the entire moat.

What they actually make

The glaze: The flagship is the Classic Balsamic Glaze, a thick, velvety drizzle made from IGP balsamic vinegar imported from Modena, slow simmered into a true reduction. It is Non-GMO and gluten free, and it is the product that put the brand on the map. Alongside it sit flavoured reductions, including a garlic version, for cooks who want to riff.

Beyond the glaze: Over time the range grew into a small Italian pantry. There are pasta sauces, including a spicy Arrabbiata, a bold Puttanesca, and a rich Siciliana, plus a vinegar line that runs from a raw, unfiltered organic apple cider vinegar with the mother to a Chianti red wine vinegar and a Chardonnay white wine vinegar. The through line is the same as the glaze: simple ingredients, an Italian reference point, and small batches.

How people use it: The glaze is deliberately versatile. It goes on a caprese salad, over roasted vegetables and Brussels sprouts, across grilled steak and chicken, and, for the people who know, onto strawberries and vanilla ice cream. That breadth is part of why it became a repeat-purchase item rather than a one-time novelty.

Why people love it

Nonna Pia's has earned the kind of word-of-mouth that money cannot easily buy, especially among Costco shoppers, where it shows up again and again on must-have lists. The praise tends to land in the same place: it tastes like a premium specialty product at a warehouse price. One widely shared Costco review put it simply, that it is so good it belongs on the must-buy list. Even the more measured reviews concede the quality of the vinegar and the honesty of the reduction. For a finishing sauce, that combination of taste and value is exactly what turns a single purchase into a pantry regular.

How it compares to other Canadian condiment brands

Canada has a deeper bench of independent condiment and specialty sauce makers than most shoppers realise, from living vinegars to heritage mustards. Nonna Pia's sits in the finishing-sauce lane, with the widest warehouse-club distribution of the group. Here is where it lands next to other Canadian players:

Categories and positioning reflect publicly listed information on each brand's site as of June 2026. Pricing intentionally omitted because it varies materially by retailer. See the live product links below.

The growth story operators should pay attention to

The instructive part of Nonna Pia's is not the recipe, it is the path. The brand spent its early years where most founders are impatient to leave: a single farmers' market, selling face-to-face, learning exactly which dishes made people come back the next weekend. That direct feedback loop is unglamorous, but it is the cheapest, highest-fidelity product research a food brand can get, and it is why the glaze was already proven before it ever hit a national shelf.

The second move was using Dragons' Den as a megaphone rather than a finish line. The pitch put the brand in front of millions of Canadians and lent it credibility with buyers, but the thing that sustained the growth was the warehouse-club fit. A premium glaze that performs at a Costco price point is a near-ideal product for that channel: high perceived value, simple to demo, easy to repeat-buy. The brand leaned into that rather than spreading itself thin across every possible format.

The operator lesson is the sequence again. Prove the product in a small, honest market, use earned media to compress years of awareness into months, and pick a retail channel that flatters what you make. That is a more durable playbook than buying growth, and it is why a chef's side project from Whistler now sits in carts across two countries.

What people are saying

Where to actually buy it

Each link below goes directly to a live Nonna Pia's listing or the brand's own site, not just a homepage, so you can add a real bottle to your cart without hunting:

For the full range, including pasta sauces and vinegars, browse nonnapias.com. Availability varies by store and season, so the Instacart links above are the fastest way to check what is in stock near you.

Frequently asked questions

Bottom line

Nonna Pia's is a reminder that the most reliable way to build a grocery brand is still to make something genuinely better and let the product do the talking. A Whistler chef chased a flavour he tasted in Italy, refused to fake the texture with thickeners, proved it at a farmers' market, and rode a Dragons' Den pitch into Costco carts across two countries. The glaze is the easy sell. The discipline behind it, recipe first, channel chosen to fit, is the part worth studying. If you want to try it, the Classic Balsamic Glaze is the place to start.