My Cucina La Casa della Bruschetta by Chef Cipriano — Restaurant in North Vancouver

Came here asking reading all the good reviews and left incredibly disappointed. Let’s talk about the atmosphere first. It’s beautiful and clean. Walking in, I felt that there was a lot of love and passion put into the restaurant. Shortly after we’re seated, the staff increased the volume of the music and it was much too loud to fully enjoy the ambiance. Food - I ordered the ragu and presentation was fantastic. But taste….it wasn’t bad but certainly wasn’t amazing either. The pasta tasted slightly overcooked but overall the taste was very average. My boyfriend ordered a pizza and the middle was so soggy it disappeared into the toppings. Taste wise again, it isn’t amazing, but also isn’t terrible. However, the fact that the pizza couldn’t hold it’s shape and had a soggy middle classifies this as a bad pizza. Service - Now I don’t know if the server was new, but it felt like no one wanted to help us. When we were ready to order, no one came up to us even though we tried looking for a server. It wasn’t until we verbally mentioned we were ready did someone come to take our order and it felt very transactional and she promptly left. Then the wait….we waited so long for our food to come. Now this is a tiny restaurant so we could see when the food was placed at the window ready to be brought out to the table. My ragu sat at the window for over 10 minutes until it was finally brought to the table and the waitress said the pizza was coming in 2 minutes. It didn’t come until I was 2 bites from finishing the ragu….During this whole time, there was only two other tables in the restaurant and not once did someone come up to refill our waters, ask us how the food was or if there’s anything else we wanted. I completely understand wanting to know of any issues in the moment to fix it, but if there’s not even a singly attempt from the business to reach out then it shouldn’t land on the customer. The servers looked over at my table multiple times and walked past us multiple times and never came up to us. Even when we placed our empty cups to the side and only chatted with us when it was time to pay the bill (which we had a lot of trouble flagging someone down in order to pay) By then our experience soured and it was too late.

Response: Your comment really rubs me the wrong way. Sure, maybe it wasn’t 10 minutes, but I assure you it was a long time. Sorry I didn’t set the timer to give you the specifics. But maybe check your cameras so you can review the service because you didn’t comment on the food not coming out in a timely manner. I can accept the volume not changing and that for my preference it was just too loud but your response to my review is beyond dismissive. How interesting that despite having footage, you didn’t acknowledge my comments on the service aside from the fact that you found it hard to believe we couldn’t flag someone down for the bill. I’m not retracting that comment. Yes. It was difficult to flag someone for the bill. Like I stated before, if your staff didn’t make an effort to check in on the service, why is it up to customer to find management? If receiving feedback in person was so important to you, maybe management should be going around and checking in. Just because someone doesn’t do things your way doesn’t make it wrong. I’m simply sharing my experience.That’s what google reviews is for. But to say my review wasn’t honest because it wasn’t something you wanted to hear shows others...

This family run restaurant is just that, I believe the Mom is in the kitchen, Dad FOH with son and daughter, very evident that this family is unfortunately not industry savvy. The son approached us quite quickly, no offering of a high chair for our 1 year, we had to ask, the pressure to order was too much. Returning every minute to ask if we’d decided on a salad, it was almost a decision forced by him as he recommended the Caesar salad stating it was a house speciality and customer favorite. Nothing special about this over priced salad with oversized croutons, very disappointing. Lost track of the number of times this boy approached and interrupted us. The restaurant was not busy and it was dinner time, his attention to us was bothersome and unnecessary. The restaurant is a size that if need be, you could ask for something if you wanted or needed it. We chose the meatballs to start, so underwhelming, again overpriced for the small portion served, with those came more not so exciting bread. Then came the dinner ware in front of our 1 year old? A disaster waiting to happen. This is where experience and instinct for guests needs was obviously not a factor in the service. I don’t even recall what pasta we chose, that is telling in itself. Once we had finished our meal the level of service took a drastic change. Nobody in sight to request a check from. We then spotted the daughter, we could not see her until her brother (our server) gave her a snide remark for sitting on a chair, on her phone at the front door. We received our check and again the hovering over us returned. The server brought the debit machine with the check, my pet peeve, please let us look at the check before we proceed with payment. Take out containers on the check? We should have been told these were available for a cost, we would have left the food and saved the money. This was my second visit, the first the service was much more acceptable, unfortunately the very expensive salad was a mish mash of fruit and vegetables that really didn’t work well together. The pizza on the first visit was a so expensive, very watery, and so difficult to eat. Needless to say I am disappointed that this is the “Italian Restaurant” that I have closest in walking distance from my home. I will add the walk time and enjoy the amazing food, service and atmosphere at Farina a Legna in the future. Love the “family run” concept, unfortunately in this case the family does not have any idea what it takes to run a restaurant. Perhaps they could learn from other establishments, go to restaurants that are successful, observe and bring that into the operations. Often times I see they are quite busy, I wonder what it is that the guests are having? Are these...

I've never had such a horrible restaurant experience. I came here on Valentine's Day with my girlfriend, we arrived just past 7pm, we did not receive our entrees until past 9pm. When we finally got our entrees they were cold, upon complaining about this and sending the dishes back to the kitchen the dishes were brought back out by the owners wife, who started arguing with us, telling us the food just came out of the kitchen. My girlfriend was not accepting this answer since our food was not hot at all, the owner's wife after arguing further with us proceeded to tell us "you can eat it or you can leave." When we said ok we will leave she told us we had to pay for the appetizers and drink we had, which to be frank is quite ridiculous after we had been just told to leave the restaurant. As I was paying she told us "don't come back." The most appalling customer service I've ever seen, I planned our Valentine's dinner here because I had heard good things about the food and was excited for a good night. It couldn't have gone much worse. My girlfriend posted a review yesterday and they replied to it calling her a liar and saying it was obvious that we just wanted free appetizers and drinks, which I am deeply offended by. We did not come in looking for free food, we came in expecting to pay for amazing food and a romantic atmosphere, I would've much rather been able to eat a full meal there and pay for it rather than ordering a pizza at 10pm. Happy Valentine's Day... *EDIT I am also very sure that this restaurant is having negative reviews removed and posting fake 5 star reviews, the professional level photos of the food is telling, especially since the food did not look nearly that good when I was here. I don't know exactly how it works but it just does not make sense to me that a restaurant that treats their customers so poorly would have such a high rating. Go to Bravo Cucina instead, it is just up the street and has better food and MUCH...