I Think It's Amore

La Bottega dishes out hearty Northern Italian fare

By Steven Walling

La Bottega is one of the eclectic new endeavors that make the revitalization of Vancouver’s Uptown Village neighborhood so analogous to our southern neighbor’s Pearl District. Combining an Italian cafe serving lunch and dinner, an extensive wine shop, and the best full-service deli on the west side, La Bottega has become a bustling local favorite. Leaning more toward Northern Italian in its lack of tomato-based sauces and reliance on hearty meats in its entrees, La Bottega certainly breaks the local mold of standard Italian fare exemplified by Little Italy’s and (God forbid) The Old Spaghetti Factory. 

For its lunch menu, the restaurant sticks mostly to starters, soups, salads and a few signature pasta dishes such as the delectable smoked mushroom ravioli with balsamic cream sauce. Also notable is the boar (yes, boar; the be-tusked wild cousin of our usual porcine dinner companion) ragu with farfalle, which is wonderfully rich. All pasta dishes—lunch and dinner—come in a large or small portion. If you’re thinking of choosing the latter of the two options, I suggest a bowl of soup or an antipasti plate to accompany the dish, as the “small” moniker really means about 2-3 meager tablespoons of pasta.

I like to think that some of the overall measure of an Italian joint’s qualities can be gleaned from its Caesar salad. La Bottega goes with a pleasing traditional whole-leaf approach not to be found elsewhere in the ‘Couve, and I found myself resisting the temptation to simply grab up a leaf rather than cutting my way politely though. There is also a wide variety of choices for sandwich ingredients to combine in whatever fashion you so choose (half: $4 whole: $7), all served on quality Grand Central Baking breads. With some careful choosing, La Bottega’s lunch menu may be one of your best bets for satisfactory noonday eating, albeit a tad high in the price point.

At dinner, especially on a weekend or one of their Wednesday wine tasting nights ($15 for a flight of 3-4 wines and antipasti), the restaurant fills quickly and I suggest you prepare yourself for a bit of a wait. La Bottega also holds annual wine dinners, and these events (combined with the deli’s good selection of labels) makes La Bottega a Vancouver wine-lover’s dream. The rotating dinner menu combines the standard salads, soups and pastas of the lunch hour with a revolving menu of starters and entrees. Oddly, while Bottega’s lunchtime fare may seem expensive, the dinner menu is practically given away for a pittance, all factors considered.

 
On my visit, I sampled the pan-fried sweet potato ravioli with red pepper coulis to begin with. The sweet-savory pasta countered with the tang of the coulis made for a delightful balance. My companion and my choice of entree was the farfalle gamberetti with prawns and calamari, as well as a venison steak with espresso crust. The gamberetti was a good execution of a fairly standard recipe with a respectable heat to it. It was nice for once to eat calamari that wasn’t chewy from overcooking. However, the venison was another matter altogether. A dish that in description conjures up visions of subtle gamy flavors balanced by the dark mask of espresso actually turned out to be a glorified (and slightly over-cooked) New York steak with an unpleasant gritty crust.

The venison, I think, is a prime example of the basic fault of La Bottega: while the restaurant generally surpasses the other Mediterranean options in Vancouver from the get-go, when you get to the execution, it’s essentially a great neighborhood restaurant reaching for a level of the fine dining experience that it just doesn’t quite achieve. Despite this, though, and because of the quality of the ingredients, the fine wine experience, the courteous staff, and the simple fact that no other restaurant of this cuisine comes close to its competence in this town, I wouldn’t shy away from making La Bottega my go-to spot for Italian on Vancouver’s west side.

La Bottega Cafe Deli & Wine Shop, 1905 Main St., Vancouver, 98660; 360. 571.5010; open Mon.-Tues. 11am-6pm, Wed.-Thu. 11am-9pm, Fri-Sat 11am-9:30pm, closed Sundays. No reservations accepted.