Cioppino's Patio
Take a look inside Cioppino's Mediterranean Grill
Reviews of Cioppino's Enoteca Reviews of CIOPPINO'S
At Cioppino’s Enoteca, you can heap adjectives upon chicken that it usually doesn’t deserve. Succulent. Melodiously flavourful. (In this case, with rosemary butter, lemon and garlic notes.) It’s erudite comfort food. Enoteca is the “casual” option to Pino Posteraro’s more formal Cioppino’s Mediterranean Grill, just as some of New York’s hot restaurants have down-market “next-door” siblings, Enoteca is also right next door. It’s scaled down, but still elegant with light woods a gallery of oil paintings and a lovely wine room for private parties.
The core menu is still Italian, but instead of going the popular route of a raw bar, Posteraro added a Japanese component, incorporating ideas like marinating the salmon in miso and searing it before slicing it for sushi or the delicious warm scallop sushi, also quickly seared.
The strength is in rustic Italian foods, though - the chicken, the braised beef short ribs with Marsala and red wine, the pasta (the gnocchi floats through the mouth). I haven’t tried the roasted pork off the rotisserie, but I suspect it’ll have you drooling.
You can get takeout at the antipasto bar, where you might try the tasty croquettes (I liked the one with angel-hair pasta, prosciutto and bocconcini) and the seafood is glintingly fresh.
I wouldn’t pass on the desserts, which are more French than rustic Italian, but who’s complaining? The lemon tart with Italian meringue is a beauty; a pear mousse (with a shell of spray-gunned chocolate) is drizzled with a light caramel sauce; a goat-cheese cheesecake with poached wine pear is a soft and sensual fade from the meal.
The wine list is amazing. The restaurant shares an 11,000-bottle cellar with its upscale companion restaurant. It’s an informal route to a more relaxed meal, but with the same high quality of food you’d find next door.
RATED OUT OF FIVE STARS
Over-all:
,
Food:
,
Ambience:
,
Service:
,
Price:
$$/$$$
Mia
Stainsby - Vancouver
Sun
December 14-21 2000
FOR CLOSE TO TWO YEARS NOW HE HAS been skilfully turning out beautiful plates of classic Mediterranean food with an emphasis on local and seasonal fresh ingredients. Classic yes, but Pino has the experience, the heart and the creativity to reinvent these dishes into contemporary versions which have a spirit and style all their own. The restaurant is aptly named after cioppino, the Italian fish soup that is one of Posteraro’s signature dishes, a main course consisting of sea bass, scampi, scallop, prawn and mussels in a spicy bouillabaisse ($35). Other menu favourites include: Vitelllo Tonnato Alla Piemontese, an appetizer of sliver thin slices of roast veal and curly endive with a light-horseradish tuna sauce ($12.95) and a specially of the house, the simple but not so ordinary entrée of calf’s liver painstakingly cut into a thick filet, scared then roasted to medium rare and served with an onion, port compote and mashed potatoes ($26.45). If you simply want pasta, it’s not that simple at Cioppino’s. There are more than 15 pastas to choose from including Pino’s own handmade penne ‘garganelli’ topped with lobster and crab sauce ($22.95) To die for!
Posteraro’s personally picked wine stock of 18,000 bottles is made up mostly of Italian, Californian and Australian. On a recent trip to the south of France, Pino discovered the little winery Château Val Joanis that soon will be producing a private label for the restaurant consisting of a white, a red and a rose. To show off his collection there is a private wine room adjacent to the dining room that seats up to 26 guests. Pino may lord over the kitchen and the cellar but his brother Celestino Posteraro and the cordial Massimo Piscopo manage the front of the restaurant. The price of an evening of self-indulgence here can be dear but you get what you pay for. The service is impeccable and personable and the dining room is spacious, beautiful and relaxing with seating up to 126 people, including a sunny patio and a mile long bar where one can sip, snack and chat. Open for dinner 5:30-11:00, Monday through Saturday. Reservations recommended. For more rustic Italian food with rotisserie, just next-door is Cioppino’s Enoteca, with the extensive wine list (over 700 labels). Enoteca is also open for lunch, Monday through Friday.
Gary Faessler ― Vancouver Lifestyles Summer 2001
“Perhaps most humiliating for me as a New Yorker was the slow realization that the general level of Italian cuisine in Vancouver is now higher than in New York City. Leading the charge is the dynamic Pino Posteraro, who used to cook for Frank Sinatra. I can’t recall a better Italian meal than the one I enjoyed at Cioppino’s (which everybody calls Pino’s), though there is also considerable depth elsewhere in the city's Italian cuisine scene.”
Steven A. Shaw - Weekend Post - August 18, 2001
“Cioppino’s, is a bustling Italian restaurant in Yaletown with brick walls and an open kitchen...........the spring risotto with peas and crab was warm and comforting.......”
New York Times - July 22, 2001
“The name is a pun on the name of San Francisco’s delicious seafood stew, and that of the very talented Pino Posteraro, who moved to this warm Yaletown room from Umberto Menghi’s many restaurants. Posteraro’s French-inspired Mediterranean signature dishes—foie gras and sea-bass casserole, sautéed wild chanterelles and morels, spaghettini with truffles—have earned him a loyal following. Stick to a tasting menu at lunch or dinner and you’ll have one of the most brilliant meals in town for the price. No matter what Posteraro cooks from the open kitchen, it’s luxurious and minimalist at the same time. Celestino Posteraro and Massimo Piscopo preside over a friendly bar and a serious wine list. A wonderful private dining room seats up to 24. Check out the patio in the summer”.Taken from: “Best Places Northwest, 13th edition”
(Sasquatch Books, 2000).
“Pino Posteraro recently opened Cioppino’s in Yaletown. It’s big and dramatic and luxurious -- with a view running all the way back to the kitchen, high ceilings, lots of room between tables, and a very comfortable feeling. The food is terrific, the service is not only bright and well-informed but (that wonderful rarity) unobtrusive. Nobody flat out asked us how we were enjoying our dinner or how things were, but there was the occasional fleeting smile from a passing server, a smile of confident complicity that said "pretty good, eh?”
James Barber Vancouver Sun
“On any given night, one of the city’s top two restaurants. The results are often most astounding in classic dishes: a casarecce with duck ragout and oranges that just goes on and on; a perfectly cooked Dover sole served off the bone; an understated spaghetti Bolognese. Wine list is extensive but can get pricey. Long Friday lunches here are becoming a welcome salon of good food and conversation.”
“Where the Bites Are” by
Jamie Maw,
Vancouver Magazine Summer 2000
“As good as Italian gets in Vancouver” is how partisans praise this “sexy”, “happening” Yaletown magnet where “sublime”, “imaginative” creations are served in an “elegant” room graced by an open kitchen; a few claim that service “depends on whether or not you're recognised”, and ornery oenophiles would like lower prices, but those “on expense accounts” agree that this “high-end” spot is “worth it”; N.B. wallet-watchers may want to consider the adjacent, less formal Enoteca.
zagat.com
VANCOUVER
GOLD MEDAL PLATES 2007
November
14, 2007
Vancouver was due for a big-time home run with Gold Medal Plates this year, after a couple lean years, and that is exactly what happened this past Wednesday night!
I am smiling as I write this report two days hence recalling how wonderfully well this whole evening ran from beginning to end. It was smooth, elegant, exciting and entertaining. The guests were up for a good night out and felt relaxed and jolly.
Arthur
Griffiths and his superb advisory team should feel quite smug
and be very proud of themselves!
Our Event Partners, Eileen Bistrisky and Kim Noseworthy, deserve
much praise for executing a great evening!
After the past two years at The Hyatt, The Bayshore Hotel proved to be a superb setting for our event, with its high ceilings, beautiful ocean-side surroundings and ample space.
This event needs so much floor space that finding venues to accommodate us always seems to be a challenge. The Bayshore was near perfect-size with an ideal layout. (One bottle-neck area in the smaller room)
The only mistake they made was forgetting to place enough cocktail tables for the guests to use to rest their wine glasses on. Otherwise it would have been a perfect 10.
The great chefs of Vancouver came to win, and showed themselves so well that our travelling troupe all agreed that this just might be the best food so far in the country! It was obvious that they came to impress and to wow, and they did exactly that!. With the Okanagan so close by, the wine pairings were especially impressive, yet in an odd twist of fate, the only Niagara wine entry was paired with the winning chef. (See James Chatto's report below)
What has become most obvious on this 3-city leg of our tour is the significant part Jim Cuddy has added to the program. It is not just his wonderfully clean and potent performances, which were met with rousing applause. It is his great chemistry with the athletes, the MC's and the guests! Jim's passion and respect for the athletes is paramount, and makes for a cohesion we were lacking last year, yet did not realize it at the time.
Vancouver, you made us proud!
Here are my highlights:
- Andrea Shaw
of Vanoc delivered one of the best and most concise VANOC-themed
speeches I have heard in a very long time!
- Simon Whitfield as the keynote speaker was perfect: so
naturally loose and free and inspiring. His theme of staying
young and free in the process versus getting
trapped in the obsession of results was met with great
appreciation.
He is obviously enjoying 'his process' and that is exuded
in everything he does. Simon is a natural champion!
- the ‘vibe’ in the
room was generous, comfortable and passionate --- good
ingredients for success
- the great banter by Jim Cuddy and Simon that wove through the
night kept the evening light and playful
- beautiful and focused words by Elyse Allen, CEO of GE and
Denise Carpenter, Sr. VP of EPCOR
- having the various Olympians come to the stage as their
auction items were being sold; Adam, Simon, Lori-Ann,
Kyle, Diane are such great representatives of sport and
life!
- Jim's performances we so damn good!
- Steve Armitage of CBC was classy, engaging and steady as a
rock as the evening's MC. His signature raspy voice brought back
so many great
Canadian historic sports moments
- AND, we made some money in Vancouver as every single wine-lot
sold above asking and the Live Auction items all met their
target bids!!
- we ended right on time!
Bravo Vancouver! Thank you for being patient for the big home run! It has come at a perfect time.
Here is James Chatto’s angle of the event:
November 14 saw the 2007 Vancouver leg of the Gold Medal Plates campaign soar into history at the luxe Westin Bayshore hotel. The buzz in the room from the sold-out crowd was palpable and the welcome given to our speaker, triathlete Simon Whitfield rocked the ceiling. As did Jim Cuddy of Blue Rodeo who was easily coaxed into an encore before the national anthem. Appropriately, the calibre and passion of the cooking from every competitor in the first half of the evening set a new standard for this campaign.
Taking the bronze medal (by a difference of less than one percentage point over David Hawksworth of West) was Chef Scott Jaeger of The Pear Tree. Poised over a stripe of celeriac purée, his little slab of B.C. Berkshire pork belly was impeccably textured, so tender it parted at the touch of a fork. The sweet flavour of the meat was beautifully enhanced by a miniature puck of cipollini onion jelly and a tiny crunchy tube of pastry filled with pear butter. The accompanying wine, cutting valiantly through the fat, was Inniskillin’s 2004 Malbec from the Okanagan.
The silver medal also went to an out-of-town chef – Melissa Craig from Barefoot Bistro in Whistler. Her presentation was exceptionally refined – four dainty treasures from the sea set out on a small wooden block. Here was a Cortez Island Black Pearl oyster – one of a new breed of East Coast oyster being farmed in the Pacific – dressed with a pickled daikon and cucumber mignonette that tasted intensely of cucumber and had a lovely sweetness to contrast with the oyster. A stiff mousse of B.C. spot prawn was cut into a tiny drum wrapped in a membrane of sesame jelly and topped with what looked like caviar but turned out to be a molecular doppelganger of miso and squid ink. Albacore tuna sashimi was dressed with a yuzu bonito mayonnaise and topped with soy-flavoured “pop rocks”. A crunchy cone of cured wild salmon was dressed with horseradish cream. The matching wine, a 2005 Riesling from Tantalus Vineyards, was perfectly chosen, its acidity and intensity of flavour dovetailing with the many tastes on the plate.
The gold medal for our Vancouver event this year was awarded to Chef Pino Posteraro of Cioppino’s. The banner above his station described the dish simply as a “porcini mushroom and chestnut soup” – and indeed it was, served in a coffee cup like some kind of cappuccino. But the texture was profoundly enriched and the layers of mushroom flavour were dramatically deepened by melted foie gras and a scattering of crunchy truffled brioche croutons. In a ceramic spoon set on the saucer of the “coffee cup” was the other element of the dish – a square of chilled mushroom jelly and a roasted mushroom salad served at room temperature, the supple textures and contrasting temperatures working beautifully in the mouth. The judges were unanimous in awarding the dish maximum “wow factor”. As an accompanying wine, Posteraro chose a Niagara Chardonnay that proved an inspired match – Pillitteri Estates Winery Chardonnay Sur Lie 2006.
Chef Posteraro will now be competing in the Canadian Culinary Championship, our gruelling three-day finale to the competition, to be held in Toronto from February 7 to 10, 2008. So far his opposition consists of Anthony Walsh of Canoe in Toronto, Martin Ruiz Salvador of Fleur de Sel in Lunenberg, and Roland Ménard of Manoir Hovey representing Montreal. Tonight we do it all again in Calgary!
James Chatto
National Culinary Advisor
Gold Medal Plates
Reviews of Cioppino’s Cookbook
I just purchased your cook book last week at chapters and I'm a chef at a restaurant in London Ontario, and I love the sophisticated simplicity of your food, a true work of art. I can see your passion in every dish. Well done.
David Lamers
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