Kits-Italiano

Compared to Toronto, Italian cuisine in Vancouver is expensive. I don't know why, but it is. But you can't live on sushi and ramen forever, so when that craving hits, you gotta give in. Coincidentally, our hunger pangs surfaced the same time as the Celebration of Lights (BC's firework festival/competition), so we thought we make a night out of it. After some research, we came cross Novo Pizzeria & Wine Bar, a wood-fired pizza joint in Kitsilano that was not too far from the firework festivities. Perfect.

Ordering was relatively easy - 2 glasses of wine, the burrata special to start, chorizo pizza and mushroom pasta. The burrata arrived pretty quickly and was, well, weird.

It was goopy, not the solid mass that I'm used to. But then we realized it was a stracciatella, which is supposed to resemble shredded burrata. I'm sorry, but this is soup. Albeit, with delicious figs and the best deli meat in the world aka prosciutto, but still soup. It was belatedly accompanied by some toasted house-made bread, though useful as a vehicle to scoop the cheese, it didn't really complement the flavour. Strange, just strange.

The chorizo pizza was adorned with mozzarella, basil, smoked provolone, ricotta di bufala and some thyme honey, and was definitely quite appealing to the eye. The crust was spot on, but the pizza, in general, was too sweet. If the meat was on the spicier side, it would have been a home run. The balance was just off.

The pasta was a truffled funghi fettucine drizzled with garlic, thyme oil, chilli flakes, lemon, parsley and a dollop of pecorino romani. Flavourful right? Wrong. Absolutely zero flavour. First off, truffled fettucine should have a hint of truffle flavour; as Al said, maybe it was once in a room with truffles. The mushrooms were bland and supposedly a mix, but I'm pretty sure they were all the same. The pasta itself was beautifully al dente, but, at the end, such a waste.

Why did we bother with dessert after such a lack-lustre meal? Because I can't resist sweet stuff okay! And, I'm so glad we did. This tiramisu was all sorts of goals.

Sturdy so we could see all the layers, moist (sorry, Sandra, I know you hate this word), gorgeous coffee flavour and good-quality cocoa. High five, Novo! This was by far, the best thing they served.

With our bellies full, but not exactly thrilled with the food, we made our way to the fireworks. Btw: the competitors were Japan, UK and Canada. Spoiler alert: Japan won. On second thought, maybe we should have gone for sushi and ramen anyway!