Tasting Journey #21 - iNCENDiO

iNCENDiO
103 Columbia St.
Vancouver, BC
604-688-8694
www.incendio.ca


iNCENDiO, a restaurant highly recommended for its delicious pizza by someone whose favourite food is pizza.  Can't get any better credential than that.  This restaurant serves mainly Italian soul food - pizza and pasta.

Friday night dinners with Zofia have always been very lovely;  random chats about work, about how our week's been, and about what we plan to do over the weekend.  It is a nice way to end the last working day of the week.  Today, we talked about an even more exciting topic - HER book. Zofia's goal by the end of this year is to write a 300 page novel.  Zofia is a beautiful writer.  Her blogs are always an easy read and her writing flows so naturally.  Ever since little, I've always find writing difficult.  I am so used to writing lab reports and technical essays that "point form" seems to be MY way of expressing what I think and how I feel.  Every time I update this blog, I always wonder how Zofia comes up with words that sing vs. how I constantly ponder over what I can say and what there is to say.

Calamari  w Capers & Olives

I've been thinking more and more often lately, as I approach the completion of my goal, about what I will do with this blog once that this challenge is finished.  Will I continue to blog or will I shut this down?  I do enjoy the experience of trying out new restaurants, but the task (yes, it indeed is a task) of recording it is mundane.  I am challenged with words, with expressions, with how to realistically portray what I had experienced and how I really felt.  If I were writing a lab report, all I simply had to do was to document what I had eaten. A mere stating of facts.  I do not have to share my thoughts about what the food taste like, and how it made me feel.  This is a challenge.  An opportunity to practice expressing myself.  A push for me to be outside my normal comfort zone.  Whatever I decide to do, we'll soon find out.  We'll soon see.  I still have the time of 4 more restaurants to ponder over with...

Rare Sesame Tuna

Oven-roasted Potato

iNCENDiO is a restaurant that provided a comfortable setting for conversations like this.  An atmosphere that allowed Zofia & I to exchange our thoughts.  We had arrived before the actual dinner crowd, so the restaurant was quiet.  We sat next to the window and were able to see the day go dark.  A perfect place to converse while sipping on wine and indulging in food.

Volcana Pizza

We ordered 3 appetizers & a pizza to share: oven roasted potato, pan-fried calamari, rare sesame tuna, and a pizza loaded with bursts of spicy chili sauce.  The oven roasted potato was served with a sweet mayonnaise sauce blended with rosemary, lime and garlic.  The potato was well roasted, fries-like, crunchy on the outside and quite dense on the inside.  The rosemary flavoured mayo really complimented the potato.  I usually try to eat less carbs for dinner, but this dish was so tasty that I had to make an exception tonight ^^.  The calamari was stir-fried with capers & olives.  I love capers & olives, but found the calamari a bit rubbery.  It was an OK dish.  The black sesame crusted tuna was beautifully seared and was served with wasabi mayo.  This was a dish very well prepared with the quality of what you would see in a fusion Japanese restaurant.  I was pleasantly surprised to see this at an Italian restaurant that served pasta & pizza as its main entree.  Pizza was great.  The spicy chili sauce was volcanic.  As soon as you bit down, the burst of spiciness explodes in your mouth.   I think the red wine might have helped with simmering down the flames slightly, but though a bit too spicy for me, I still fully enjoyed it.

Overall, I would say that my favourite dish would be the roasted potato.  Oftentimes, it is the simplicity that creates the perfect balance.  A definite thumbs up to this place.