8 Best Italian Restaurants in Vancouver

Kissa Tanto is the Bao Bei team's Japanese-Italian restaurant in Vancouver's Chinatown, and by most serious accounts one of the more conceptually coherent fusion projects in the country. The premise — Japanese ingredient sensibility applied to Italian structural logic — reads like a pitch that could collapse into gimmickry. That it apparently hasn't is the central fact worth understanding before you book. The room is described consistently as intimate and dark-warm, designed for a slower, occasion-weighted evening rather than a rapid turn.

The dishes that have built the restaurant's reputation are worth naming specifically. The koji butter pasta is the one that appears most reliably in critical accounts: koji-fermented butter carries the kind of layered umami that fermentation produces, applied to fresh pasta with a reported restraint that lets the single technique justify the course rather than crowd it. The hiramasa crudo is the other anchor — hiramasa being a Pacific yellowtail that holds up to the precision cutting and acidic dressing the kitchen is known for, the result positioned as distinctly coastal rather than a transplanted Japanese or Italian reference point. The seasonal fresh pasta and Pacific seafood antipasto round out what diners and critics frequently identify as the menu's Italian skeleton dressed in Japanese ingredient thinking.

Trattoria by Italian Kitchen has outlasted its own network. When the Kitsilano and Park Royal locations closed in 2023 and 2024, this Burnaby outpost at 102-4501 Kingsway didn't quietly fade — it came back renovated, with an 18-seat pizza bar and a 65-seat heated patio designed to run year-round. That kind of institutional persistence could easily signal a room coasting on brand memory. Under Italian-born Executive Chef Matteo Fontana, the evidence points elsewhere: a kitchen that has leaned harder into house-made pasta with real technique behind it, and a room built to hold twelve people together for three hours without the evening losing momentum.

The menu's priorities are legible from the pasta section alone. The House Made Tagliatelle and Saffron Risotto with Tomato Fondue are the dishes regulars point to when making the case that this kitchen treats pasta as the main event rather than filler — the risotto's saffron-forward base against the acidity of tomato fondue is reportedly a combination that requires no embellishment at the table. For protein, the Herb Crusted Lamb Chops and Pan Seared Steelhead Fillet represent the range Chef Fontana brings to the savory courses; neither reads as a placeholder. And the Cannoli al pistacchio e Amarena is the dessert the kitchen is known for — the benchmark, according to consistent diner feedback, for how seriously this room treats the final course.

Onda by Casereccio arrives in Olympic Village with a lineage that's already earned its own mythology — this is the team behind Casereccio Foods, the Vancouver pasta operation that once cooked pasta on a SkyTrain and turned that stunt into genuine brand affection. Their second and larger location occupies the former Gusto space on the False Creek waterfront, a room that was already handsome and remains so: patio seating facing the water, an interior that holds its proportions well. The name Onda — wave in Italian — signals the founding ambition: not nostalgia-heavy red-sauce comfort, but something lighter, more animated, built around the Roman concept of La Dolce Vita translated into an all-day format. At price level two, this is accessible without feeling perfunctory, and Olympic Village's particular mix of after-work walkers, weekend brunchers, and date-nighters suits the room's pacing and the menu's range.

The menu's conceptual center is Pinsa Romana — rectangular, lighter-than-Neapolitan Roman-style pizza — which co-owner Simone Tarallo has made the restaurant's structural argument. The Pacifica Pizza, topped with smoked salmon and greens, is the signature that reads most distinctly Pacific Northwest Italian: local ingredient instincts grafted onto a Roman dough tradition. Maria's Meatballs, a pork-and-beef preparation in tomato sauce finished with parmigiano, are the kind of dish that grounds a menu like this in something recognizable and keeps regulars returning. The Radiatori Rose Pasta represents the house pasta side of the kitchen — Casereccio's original reputation was built on pasta, and that heritage carries. The closing argument is the gelato, made by Maestro James Coleridge, whose work at the Kitsilano location has an award-winning reputation that transfers to Onda.

Ask for Luigi has occupied a particular place in Vancouver's Italian restaurant conversation for long enough that its reputation is less a matter of buzz and more a matter of record. The room in Railtown is small and deliberately so — a space that seats a limited number of covers and fills reliably, which means the experience is shaped as much by the intimate scale as by what arrives at the table. The neighbourhood itself is industrial-edged, and the contrast between the setting and the warmth of the room is reportedly part of what gives the restaurant its character. This is not a white-tablecloth occasion in the traditional sense; it is a place that treats pasta seriously and has built a following on that basis.

The kitchen's reputation rests on housemade pasta and wood-fired preparations at dinner, with diners and critics consistently pointing to the care applied to both form and seasoning. The weekend brunch program has developed its own distinct following, with the ricotta agnolotti reportedly among the most discussed single dishes in the city — known for precise construction and accompaniments chosen for culinary logic rather than plate aesthetics. The brunch egg dishes are described by those who follow the restaurant closely as reflecting a kitchen willing to bring genuine technique to the morning format, rather than offering a simplified version of the dinner menu. The wood-fired preparations that anchor dinner service — roasted proteins, char-touched vegetables — carry a philosophy that seems consistent across reports: ingredients treated as the point, not the backdrop.

CinCin Ristorante has held its position above Robson Street long enough to develop a clear identity, and that identity is built around a six-foot Grillworks at the centre of the kitchen. This is not decorative — the menu is organised around what live fire does to quality ingredients, and Chef Andrew Richardson's cooking reportedly follows the logic of the grill and the season rather than the other way around. The room runs Tuscan-warm, the terrace operates year-round, and an 800-label wine list spanning Italy and the Pacific Northwest gives the evening more range than most Italian dining rooms in Vancouver can claim.

The dishes diners return to are the ones that make the kitchen's priorities legible. The wood-grilled octopus and the rack of lamb are consistently cited as the cases for open-fire cooking — the kind of result, according to regular accounts, that distinguishes the grill as method rather than atmosphere. The Dungeness crab linguine is the handmade pasta the menu is known for, and it sits in deliberate contrast to the smokier plates: technically precise where the grill dishes are assertive. The Parmesan soufflé has a reputation among regulars as the appetiser not to skip, and the branzino is described across multiple sources as the cleaner, more restrained centrepiece for those who want the kitchen's confidence without the char. Sommelier Shane Taylor oversees a wine program deep enough that the pairing question is genuinely worth asking.

Keep in mind: Wood-fired Italian above Robson with an 800-label wine list; book ahead for the terrace in summer and lean on the sommelier.

Italian Kitchen has been the Glowbal Group's downtown anchor on Burrard Street for well over a decade, and its reputation is built on a specific and consistent premise: handmade pasta produced daily, served in a handsomely appointed room that runs loud and full most evenings. This is not a restaurant chasing regional Italian authenticity or quiet refinement — it is a deliberate crowd-pleaser, and the track record suggests it understands that assignment. The room attracts a clientele that wants Italian-American generosity executed with some polish, and on its better nights, by most accounts, it delivers that.

The all-beef meatball has anchored the menu since opening and is by every indication the dish that defines the kitchen's identity — large in scale and reported to be the first order any regular would name. The truffle spaghetti and meatballs reads, on paper, like a combination designed more for upsell than for coherence, yet diners and write-ups alike consistently note that the pairing works against expectation. The Sunday 100-layer lasagna, available with optional lobster and shaved black truffle, is the menu's clear special-occasion piece — the kind of addition that signals the kitchen knows when to reach. The pasta platter is the logical entry point for groups or newcomers looking to take a broader reading of what the kitchen does across multiple preparations. The honest qualification that surfaces in long-term feedback is consistency: both food and service are reported to slip when the room hits capacity, which it frequently does on weekends.

Keep in mind: Glowbal's buzzy downtown Italian on Burrard; handmade pasta daily but consistency can wobble when slammed — book ahead for weekends.

La Quercia occupies a particular niche in Vancouver's Italian dining landscape that is almost impossible to replicate by formula: a Kitsilano room so deliberately small — just four tables and some bar seating since its post-COVID reconfiguration — that it functions less like a restaurant and more like an extension of one family's obsession with northeastern Italian food. Chef Adam Pegg, the first person in Canada to hold a Master's degree in Italian Gastronomy, and co-owner Karin Lazzaris, whose family ran a hotel in the Dolomites, have built La Quercia around an ethos of radical sourcing integrity. Pegg grows lettuces, herbs, and root vegetables in the garden behind the building, makes the bread, preserves, pickled vegetables, and desserts in-house, and will buy a whole cow, working every part across a six-week window. This is not farm-to-table as a marketing posture; it is how the kitchen is physically organized. Canada's 100 Best Restaurants recognized the restaurant in 2024, which tracks — this is the kind of place that accumulates that kind of notice quietly.

The menu doesn't exist in print. It lives on a chalkboard, shifts with the season, and reflects whatever Pegg is working with that week. Within that fluidity, a few dishes have become reference points. The agnolotti del plin — small, pinched stuffed pasta from Piedmont, finished with veal reduction, sage, and butter — represents exactly the kind of technique-forward, regionally rooted cooking the kitchen is known for. The cacio e pepe has been described by multiple diners as textbook-perfect, which for a dish that lives or dies on the ratio of pecorino to pasta water to pepper is no small claim. The rotolo, filled with stinging nettle and smoked ricotta, signals how the kitchen thinks about seasonal forage: local ingredients pulled into a format that is unmistakably Italian.