Tasting Journey #20 - The BiBo Italian Restaurant

The BiBo Italian Restaurant
1835 W. 4th Ave.
Vancouver, BC
604-568-6177
www.thebibo.com


As many of you know, I pretty much don't do anything after work.  My daily routine after work is typically heading straight home, eating dinner, surfing the net, and stalking people on FB, ha.  Boring.  And being so close to finishing my restaurant goal, I decided to accept the invitation to tag along a dinner date with Catherine and her friend from school.


The BiBo Italian restaurant is highly recommended from Catherine.  According to her, not only did her school teacher of Italian ethnicity gave this place a stamp of approval, she also commented that the tastes offered here is the closest match to what she had experienced in Italy (but then, there's also gotta be diversity in Italy as well right?).  I've never been to Italy before, so I guess I have to give her the benefit of the doubt here.



The atmosphere of the restaurant is quite contemporary - silver table top, sleek furniture, and a wall lined with wine bottles.  Guest turnout is at 80% capacity tonight.  This is quite a crowd considering that today is only Tuesday. 

As soon as we sat down, we were offered bread & olives.  The olives were molto delizioso - a mouth full of rich aromatic and buttery taste.  I have to say that it is the 2nd best olives I've ever had (the buttery olives from Granville Island is still my favourite).  The menu selection at BiBo is either pizza or pasta.  The maximize our tasting experience,  three of us decided to order the dishes to share: chicken salad, BiBo Matteo, a Margherita pizza...and to complete the Italian fine dining experience, there's gotta be a Tiramisu for dessert.

BiBo Matteo

Chicken Salad

The chicken salad is nothing extraodinary, but you can't really go wrong with a salad as long as the greens are fresh. On the contrary, the BiBo Matteo, fresh-made pasta paired with porcini mushroom sauce, was extraodinary.  Unlike most other mushroom-based sauce where they all taste like a creation from a can of Campbell Cream of Mushroom, this one tastes rather like a mushroom puree, a highly concentrated dose of flavouring  - perfect for mushroom lovers like myself. The margherita pizza was unique as well.  It literally is a melt in your mouth pizza!  The thin crust is crispy on the outside yet chewy on the inside.  The molten cheese is so gooey that it can easily flow and roll off your pizza dough.  Just pure tasting pleasure from A-Z.  Lastly, tiramisu perfectly completed the meal.  A failed tiramisu tastes like a wet sponge cake.  This one rather, offered tastes of heavenly blended cream & cocoa.

Tiramisu

Margherita Pizza

 
Overall, I have to say that my taste buds were well satisfied though the portion was conservative, and that the service was a mere so-so.  But as all fine dining comes with a price - 3 dishes plus a dessert came out to a total of $64 (excluding tips).  Would I come back? Definitely a yes.