Pepino's Spaghetti House — Restaurant in Vancouver

Uniquely Poor Service, decent food - in an area saturated with excellent Italian options, go elsewhere (my alternatives listed at bottom of review).

Review:

I’ve lived in the area for some time and have tried most of the notable Italian restaurants in the Commercial Drive neighborhood many times over. While I’ve had mixed experiences here previously, I decided to give it another try. Unfortunately, the service this time fell short in ways that were difficult to overlook.

We arrived at 9:15 pm with a reservation and were asked three seperate times if we had one—each time replying yes—only to be told, “The table is paying and wrapping up soon.” Meanwhile, other parties (both with and without reservations) were seated immediately, though most were smaller groups of two. We were eventually seated around 9:35 pm, roughly 15–20 minutes late. Understandable, but not an ideal start.

Shortly after being seated, we were asked if we were ready to order. Since we’d just received the menu, we needed more time to decide. After that, we were left unattended for quite a while. We even stacked our menus to signal we were ready and made efforts to catch the server’s attention, but it felt as though we were being overlooked seemingly on purpose. Eventually, we placed our order after a lengthy wait and efforts to garner attention.

Service remained uniquely poor throughout. Our food took longer than expected, though not to an unreasonable degree. While waiting, I noticed the server was far more attentive to other tables—pouring their water, checking in regularly, and boxing leftovers—while our table was ignored. When we finished eating, the server asked if we wanted dessert, and we declined. From there, we were again left waiting for our check for long, despite trying to flag someone down. It wasn’t until I physically moved to get up that the server immediately noticed and instructed another staff member to bring us the check, without even acknowledging us herself. The second server, to their credit, was polite and prompt. Even as we left, and walked past, she ignored us. Fell short of the most basic expectations of service throughout dinner.

On the positive side, the food was decent. The burrata and gnocchi marsala were highlights; can't deny those two dishes. However, considering the range of Italian restaurants on Commercial Drive, I don’t see a compelling reason to choose this spot over others given the mix of quality, service, ambiance, and price. For alternatives:

Dinner: Via Tevere, Magari by Oca

Casual dining/lunch: Caffè Socavo, La Grotta, Livio Fiorno e Vino

Fast food: La Pache Pizza

This doesn’t even touch on the fantastic options for other cuisines in the area, which deserve their own mention.

In short, while the food was ok, the service experience was disappointing enough to warrant exploring the many other excellent...

Our server was absolutely amazing! I wish I could remember her name. I think she had an Irish lilt to her voice. Absolutely fabulous, incredibly accommodating. The five stars go to her, however, to be fair, all of the staff that interacted with us were terrific. So no complaints at all on the service.

The food, as our server told us, it is American italian, and I think that was a very appropriate way of describing it. The portions were really a decent size. So no complaints about being hungry at the end of dinner. Our table did the chef's menu. Where they brought out a variety of dishes for us, all tasty. All very very filling. But then when you go to an Italian place, what do you expect... bread and pasta. Two very filling food choices, and lots of both. We were served a Caesar salad, and I have to say it was very good the Caesar dressing was a proper tasting Caesar dressing and covered the salad without drowning it. A type of pizza bread with sauce and cheese on it. Of course those are the first things they bring you so you dive right into that. Deep fried mozzarella sticks. Can't say they are my favorite. I would say they definitely weren't the best item on the menu. The cheese didn't seem to have melted much inside, although the exterior breaded crumb was quite golden. Two pasta dishes both very good. Long wide flat pasta with a meat sauce. We all really enjoyed that, and then the pasta vongole. Also enjoyed by all. There was also a plate of Coca-Cola ribs. Not my favorite, definitely tasted much more American than italian, very very sweet. I like sweet, but I tend to prefer that when it comes to my dessert as opposed to my main dish. The tiramisu, well that went down very easily. We all loved it. Then a cannoli to top off everything. There were definitely some things left over that were packaged up and brought home. But not the dessert! Well it came home too, but not in a box!

The atmosphere.. nothing wrong with the atmosphere, but it was so loud! We were there early, which was great, because we got to start off our meal talking to each other with ease and hearing each other with ease, but by the time we were halfway through our meal, we could barely hear each other and we were literally yelling at each other to be heard. This is unfortunate, as it was such a lovely evening, it really was the only downside. However, to add a note to this, there are very few restaurants these days, that it seems you can actually be heard and talk to each other without straining your ears or...

Food: Appies we’re a bit of a let down but the pastas we’re excellent. The cheesy garlic bread was excellent, but how can you mess that up! The rest of the Appies (sausage wrapped olives, Cesar salad, and another one I forgot) we had were all passes.

For the pasta we got the spicy vodka rigatoni and the bolognese but sub pappardelle pasta. Both pastas were cooked perfectly. There was not enough sauce on our rigatoni, so that was a bit of a let down. The bolognese was not great, super oily, no depth in flavour.

Atmosphere: when you first walk in it feels like an old school mom and pop Italian restaurant. Not pretentious at all. However, the restaurant was So loud the server had to yell into my ear to speak to me. I couldn’t hear the person sitting right across the table from me or hear myself think. Everyone was shouting even louder because it was already so loud.

Service: we went on a weekend night, it was VERY busy. The service was not great. There were a lot of servers standing by the bar waiting for drinks. We didn’t know who our server was until 10 mins after we sat down. It took a while to get waters, we placed our food order as soon as he got to our table. Food came out quick and fresh.

Overall: not bad, but not worth the hype in my opinion. The Italian scene in Vancouver is amazing and this restaurant has similar prices to those restaurants but just falls short in every category. Not to mention it’s located on commercial drive where there are 3 other better Italian restaurant within walking distance that do not need a reservation 3...