Friday afternoon I went for an early dinner to Trattoria Burnaby. I had recently been to Trattoria Burnaby for a business meeting but I wanted to go with some family to sample a wider variety of items from the menu.
I don’t often mention restaurant servers (some of the hardest working people in the restaurant business) but Jennifer, our server at Trattoria Burnaby deserves a special mention. Shortly after being seated Jennifer arrived and began to answer our countless questions about the menu.
She willingly answered our endless questions with a smile and a “sure, we can do that!” attitude and never said, “Umm, you are ordering enough food for three tables!”
Once we had studied the Trattoria Burnaby menu, we ordered a couple of antipasti plates to share at our table. The above photo is the Burrata & Prosciutto plate for $16.95.
The burrata and prosciutto were both beautiful. The ultra creamy burrata was great!
Both of the plates were very generous portions and we were more than impressed with the amount of food on each antipasti plate as well as the quality of the food.
The second plate we had was the prosciutto di parma, pesto, marinated tomatoes, and forno bread with beef carpaccio for $13.95.
With this plate I would just roll up a piece of the beef carpaccio with the arugula greens and creamy cheese inside it. Delightful.
After our antipasti plates, we also had two side dishes.
The roasted brussels sprouts for $7.95 were truly amazing. Smoky and sweet and just plain delicious. Unfortunately they do not photograph very well so I have not included a photo of them. Some people may find the dish a little too smoky, but I loved it.
The other side dish we had was the Forno Roasted Vegetables for $7.95. The carrots, fennel, squash, and other roasted root vegetables were done with a maple thyme dressing.
They were roasted to an exquisite softness and the sweetness of maple on the carrots, shallots, and fingerling potatoes popped perfectly. They were plated on a bed of arugula in a cast iron pan. This is a dish I would definitely order again.
We also ordered three pasta dishes. My daughter had the Spaghetti Bolognese with a tangy tomato meat sauce for $7.95 from the “bambini menu”. It was a very generous portion for the price and really is a great value.
Seeing as they are the “signature meatballs” how could we not try them again? Same as my previous experience – awesome. Not too dense nor meaty.
We also wanted to try the gluten-free pasta – a penne noodle made with corn and rice flour.
We had the gluten free penne noodles with the herb roasted chicken, sun-dried tomatoes, peas, chicken broth. The noodles were very good. All too often gluten free noodles are chewy, even rubbery. Not at Trattoria Burnaby. In a blind taste test you would be hard pressed to know whether you were eating gluten free penne or a regular penne noodle.
The picture doesn’t do this dish justice! It was also a very generous serving and we ended up taking most of it home. There were many chunks of the roasted chicken.
The dish I chose was the Short Rib Pappardelle for $18.95. This is a relatively expensive pasta dish but wow was it incredible. The large pieces of braised short ribs, pine nuts, wild mushrooms on the wide, flat noodles really “worked” for me. I would definitely order this dish again!
All of the pasta dishes were generous and more than filling but not overwhelmingly large like Anton’s serves.
I had heard from friends that the Trattoria Burnaby kitchen had some issues with the timing of dishes. Yesterday I was very impressed with the way the kitchen was able to manage and get our eclectic choices of dishes to our table as we wanted them to arrive.
Yes, we did order a lot of food. We did this intentionally because we wanted to try a variety of the menu items.
To finish our meal we had the flourless chocolate torte.
I only had a small taste of this dessert because my daughter dove into it and devoured it before I could get much of a taste of it. What I had did taste wonderful – the centre of the chocolate torte had a very creamy caramel filling.
My daughter wanted a gelato and she couldn’t decide between two of the fruit flavours – mango and blackberry. Our server, Jennifer said no problem, and she brought us a cute little cup with two small scoops – mango and the blackberry. Both were extraordinarily good with strong, real fruit flavour.
I will definitely be returning to Trattoria Burnaby. I was very impressed with Jennifer, the server and the kitchen staff. In fact the entire staff made us feel very welcome and were able to meet all of our dining needs happily and cheerfully.
I will return and have no hesitation in recommending Trattoria Burnaby.?
Trattoria Burnaby, part of the Glowbal Group of restaurants is located at 4501 Kingsway near the corner of Kingsway and WIllingdon Ave, across the street from the Crystal Mall.