Restaurant Review: La Villetta Restaurant

By Sherman Chan,
Special to The Post

We shared two salads: a Caesar and a Caprese. The Caesar salad was creamy, cheesy and salty, but just enough. Featuring the innermost part of the romaine heart, the salad ate extra crunchy and crisp. I enjoyed that since I'm not a fan of the more leafier greens. As for the Caprese, it had slices of fresh mozzarella atop slices of ripe sweet tomatoes. It was finished with a drizzle of balsamic reduction. My only complaint was the minuscule amount of chopped up basil.

The pizza Capicciosa featured artichoke hearts, mushrooms and capocollo. Although not particularly charred, the crust was still nutty and crispy. It was thin enough that the crust didn't feel heavy, but robust enough that it didn't wilt under the ample toppings. There was so much capocollo that it was at the forefront with a lightly spicy saltiness.

The Lamb Osso Bucoand was a fairly large lamb shank was beautifully tender and gelatinous. But the braising liquid should've been more aggressively seasoned. Although it was coated in a tomato sauce, it wasn't that impactful. On the other hand, the Scallopine al Marsala was super-impactful from the buttery sauce that was a bit salty. The veal was tender and meaty while the mushrooms were buttery, yet soaked up all the salt from the sauce. The veggies were vibrant and cooked just enough.

The Seafood Risotto with prawns and scallops had almost too much cheese. But, it was still good with al dente arborio rice. They were pretty generous with the large buttery scallops and meaty prawns.

In general, the only dish we didn't like was the lamb. Other than that, the food was pretty solid, carefully made and reasonably priced.

La Villetta Restaurant

3901 Hastings Street, Burnaby, BC 

The Good:

• Reasonably-priced

• Fair portions

• Attentive service

The Bad:

• Lamb was a miss

• Compared to the newer Italian restaurants, the food is not as modern

Sherman Chan is the #1 ranked food blogger on the Vancouver portal of Urbanspoon.com. Read more of his reviews at www.shermansfoodadventures.com.