Giusti — Restaurant in Vancouver

I really wanted to love this place but it was disappointing. I chose this restaurant for my husband’s birthday because I’d heard great things but it just does not live up to the hype. First thing to note is that they have a rotating menu so the dishes I saw on social media weren’t even available to try on the day we went.

We started with the Suppli Cacio e Pepe, which were like mac ‘n cheese bites with a bit of pepper flavouring. The Burrata was good and the bread that came with it was nice and flavourful, although a bit too oily. We tried two vegetarian pastas — Corzetti Stampati and Cappellacci. Both were extremely disappointing, especially the Corzetti. The flavours were just all over the place, the pasta seemed a little undercooked and the servings were small. I even told our server our feedback and he was pretty direct and told us that’s just how the chef intended for them to be. I thought there may be some hope for redemption with the tiramisu but alas… I didn’t like that either, it had a weird rum aftertaste and it was too sweet.

On a more positive note, it’s a stunning restaurant and the ambience is great! Again, I was really hoping to add this to the list of Italian restaurants I love in Vancouver but this just didn’t...

I heard good things about this new pasta place so decided to come with my family to give it a go. The focaccia bread was alright, the only thing I enjoyed was the deep fried risotto balls.

From here it went super downhill. The two salads/vegetables we ordered were pretty terrible. One came with a dip and it tasted like butter mixed with chopped garlic. The shaved Brussels were pretty average at best.

Then the mains “the pasta” which is suppose to be their thing. The butternut squash ravioli were cooked very inconsistent. Some were super al dente (hard), some were super soft. Not sure how a pasta chef can boil the pasta and not have some consistency, a little baffling.

Then we got these squid ink pasta with seafood on top. It was wayyyyy too salty, I had to drink so much water to get the aftertaste out of my mouth. So this was another disappointment.

The apple pie with a vanilla gelato on top was actually not bad.

But our main reason for coming was to get this fresh pasta (aka Italian restaurant) and the two mains we got were absolutely a miss fire on all levels.

I hope this fix these technical issues in their cooking or else I don’t think customers are going to be happy coming here for the food...

If you like fresh pasta this is your new favourite spot. The food was delicious we had the warm olives, the anchovy and grass fed butter bruschetta, the meat ball Sunday sauce bruschetta, crispy potato & Punterelle then for pasta we had Cappellacci, Anolini and Agnolotti dal Plin. For desert we had the tiramisu. We found this to be the perfect amount to share between the two of us. It was our anniversary and they brought us each a glass of bubbly. When we walked in and got taken to our table they took our coats. Our server was incredibly attentive in the best way. He made sure our glasses were always full and knew the menu and when our dishes came to the table would tell us what they were. He noticed I wasn’t eating much desert and asked if I liked it which I did and it was delicious. One of if not the best Italian I’ve had...