OUR FAVORITE RESTAURANT
When people ask us, “What’s your favorite restaurant in Vancouver?” we used to have trouble answering. That is, until we tried Savio Volpe on one of our earlier dates and fell completely in love with the place. This restaurant is tucked in the laid-back neighborhood of Mount Pleasant. It’s in good company of several other great Vancouver restaurants including Sal y Limon and Ba Le.
You have to make reservations for this place at least a couple weeks in advance. They’re only open for dinner time. On a recent visit, we asked why the restaurant wasn’t open during lunchtime. They told us it was because the kitchen staff spends that time preparing all the sauces, pastas, and meats so that they are fresh and ready for the evening service. We love this dedication to providing a good meal to its dinners.
THE FOOD
Listen, I don’t believe in paying for bread at restaurants. I think it’s an unnecessary filler and that it should be free. But the garlic bread here? I would pay a king’s ransom for it. Every inch of the insides of the bread were covered in butter but not in a gross way. The butter flavor dominated and we bite into soft doughy clouds. Howie wished that the crust was crispy. The kind where when he bit into it, flakes would fly out. The crust here was soft like the rest of the bread but I didn’t mind that.
This was the half chicken. Our friend recommended we order this and we were skeptical about it. I am ready to admit we were wrong to be skeptical. This chicken was amazing. They cooked this in their wood oven and this resulted in the most crispy skin ever but the meat was so juicy. I was worried that when we got to the chicken breast, neither of us would enjoy it but we still ate every bite.
We will say that this was super hard to cut up on our own. I had a lot of trouble the first time I tried carving it. I ended up dropping the knife to the floor and nearly speared my neighbor’s foot with it. Oops. The lemon they gave us to squeeze onto the chicken was coated in fat and we couldn’t get a good grip on it.
This francobolli pasta was to die for. Howie loved everything from the crispy sage on top to the sauce. These little bites of pasta held chicken and pork within them and you could distinctly taste them. The skin was thin so you weren’t eating a mouthful of carbs but it was a balance of the pasta and meat. There was also plenty of the thick savory sauce. We kept dunking of the garlic bread in it to soak up as much as possible.
FINAL WORDS
Savio Volpe is the place we bring our friends from out of town to or for a special date night. We have fond memories of this place as we’ve celebrated birthdays and special occasions here. Time and time again we find ourselves coming back for the food. Don’t be surprised if you see another blog post about Savio Volpe in the future!
