Nicli Pizzeria + Bar + Gelato Wesbrook — Restaurant in Electoral Area A

I'll preface my review by noting that I have never left a review before for a restaurant or anything else on Google that I remember, even when the food was bad. But this place deserves one star for trying to use the AVPN certification to sell the most pathetic Neapolitan pizza I've had the displeasure of experiencing.

What does the AVPN certification mean? It means making pizza certified by the Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana. The certification exists to establish to customers that all pizzerias possessing the certification make pizza with the ingredients, preparation, methods, and standards of pizza produced in Napoli.

I think this "pizzeria" might have lost their AVPN designation when they moved the original location, despite having used the AVPN certification to try to sell pizza at this location. It's insulting to customers to send them a pizza for full price where employees don't even know how to make the base of the pizza for a Neapolitan.

The base and crust was nothing like a Neapolitan. The two pizzas ordered by us had two completely different base heights and consistencies. One was like a cracker on the exterior; the other was doughy. Both pizzas were flat, probably because they don't actually ferment the dough like they claim. Look at a Neapolitan pizza and the pizza on Nicli's website, then order a pizza from this Nicli's location. Whatever pizza you get at this location will look like many things, but it won't look like the Neapolitan pizza they are claiming they make.

Should I also mention that a pizza that should take a few minutes to produce took more than 30 minutes to show up when there were no other customers in the restaurant? Neapolitan takes no more than 90 seconds in the oven, but evidently, they don't know that because one of the pizzas was like a cracker. The waitress told us it was taking so long for our order to come out because they had a new employee in the kitchen making the pizza. This isn't the employee in the kitchen's fault.

This is all on management and ownership, so you guys better not take it out on the poor employees you throw out there without training them to make a proper and consistent pizza base before you start making them send your product to the customer. Maybe consider actually spending a few hours and dollars of dough on making sure the employees can do the most basic task of forming a Neapolitan base. Imagine if you ran a steak house, and you started sending out steaks cooked by a kid who had never cooked a steak before in his life. How do you think that would go? If you were a customer, would you accept that steak for full price? The pizza here is basically the equivalent of taking the work of a preschooler trying to learn to colour within the lines of a snowman, and then telling someone to pay you $25 for the kid's colouring, instead of putting the snowman up on the fridge (or in the trash, where this pizza belongs). I get the vibe that ownership is losing money on this location, so they are trying to train on the job and sending their training results to the customers because the owners are cheap. Maybe this place would be making more money if you could actually invest the bare minimum in making sure your pizza makers could do the bare minimum.

If you want Neapolitan pizza, but can't get to Italy, go to Via Tevere in Vancouver. Nicli doesn't...

Unfortunately, we had a negative experience at Nicli Pizzeria + Bar when ordering take-out. The takeaway is that the staff member we spoke with (we think the manager) was remarkably rude. The food is average and for us not worth the negative service experience. I will provide more details below as I rarely leave negative reviews and want to provide context for my low rating.

We tried to call the restaurant to place an order via phone, but we were unable to get thru on two attempts - understandable as they were busy. Instead, we placed an order via DoorDash. When the order was not confirmed for over 20 minutes, we called to clarify if the restaurant received the order. The phone call was very brusque with the person saying they see the order, they had just not accepted it to be sent to the kitchen yet and that is why the app was not registering the order yet. I attempted to then ask for an estimated time frame, but the person hung up before I could finish talking. We decided to walk over in the next 20 minutes when DoorDash estimated the order might be ready and on our way got a notification that the order was ready for pick up. When we walked in to pick up the DoorDash order, the manager said it is not ready yet and I asked for clarification on an update and he replied, I do not know and turned away to end the conversation. We ended up just waiting outside another 15 minutes before going back in and the order was then ready. The food was okay, but the pizza was rather soggy at that point.

Overall, it was a really negative experience. The manager was quite rude to both myself and my husband. I totally understand that he was likely very busy, but it would have been a world of difference to say something along the lines of "I can check on that order status for you in a couple of minutes" or "Let me see if another staff member can look into this for you." Of note, it's a pretty small restaurant and we could see the chefs cooking the pizzas, so I feel confident somebody could have turned and politely asked for a general update. If there was really no time for that, I would at least appreciate a more polite exchange. We felt like we were a bother for daring to ask about the status...

I've been here for the pizza a few times and it's always been great but tonight I was very disappointed. Went in for ice cream and I see a few servers standing in the kitchen chatting so we waited but no one came over. We waited for around 20 minutes when I politely called over to a girl standing in the kitchen to ask if the ice cream station was open since there was no sign saying otherwise, and she looked at me and didn't answer. I asked again but no answer. And I could tell that she heard me because she looked right at me. We waited for another few minutes but eventually left. We were really excited to try the ice cream so this was very sad that no one served us and even ignored when I asked nicely. I've never seen such rude service and I would not go back after this experience. I've included a photo of the deserted ice cream station that didn't change for the 30 something minutes we waited. If it was closed which I don't think it was because i saw people outside having the ice cream a sign or someone telling us would have been really nice because being ignored sucks. The restaurant didn't seem too busy either and there were a lot of...