2019 Italian Day on Commercial Drive
Italian Day on Commercial Drive is a 14-block street party celebrating Italian culture in Vancouver. Roads are closed off from cars and there are over 120 vendors and local organizations showcasing Italian food, music, art and products.
Disclosure: we are here to eat. So while Italian Day offers lots of family fun activities, live music and performances and fashion shows and raffles, my review does not incorporate any of that.
Parking
We arrive in the Commercial Drive area around 1 pm. Since there are many road closures for this street party, it is hectic to find street parking. Even in the residential streets surrounding Commercial Drive, a lot of them require permits. I am still healing from my broken knee, but we are lucky enough to snag a parking spot around 3 blocks away from the center of the strip – around Victoria and Gravely.
Authentic Italian Table Piazza
There is a sectioned-off area of Italian product sampling. You pay $20 to receive 15 tickets and you can then spend those 15 tickets on any of the vendors inside the sectioned-off area.
Inside the sampling area, we find mostly wine and soda booths costing around 2-3 tickets per cup. There is a booth with prosciutto (dry-cured ham) and salumi (pork cold cuts) and melon. There is another booth with some fancy cheese and mini salads, and one last booth with some sort of sauce and olive oil tasting.
We blew most of our 15 tickets on wine sampling because we’re alcoholics. If you’re hoping for lots of cheese and meat sampling, the options are quite limited.
Still, this sectioned-off area is nice because they actually have picnic tables for you to sit. Because you need to pay $20 to enter this area as well, there are less people and is generally just a nicer place to relax outside of the very busy Commercial Drive.
Food vendors
La Grotta del Formaggio
Because we arrive around lunchtime, there are long lineups at all of the food vendors. Our first stop is at La Grotta del Formaggio, which is actually an Italian catering company.
We order the arancini (deep fried risotto balls) at $10 for 4 balls. We have two different flavours – tomato sauce and peas and mushroom and cheese.
I never ate arancini before but I knew when I saw it that I would like it. Whoever thought of rolling up risotto into a ball and deep frying it is a genius. Lovely little bite size snack that is savoury and cheesy.
We also order the penne with white cream truffle sauce for $8. The portion size is quite a lot and the white cream sauce smelled strongly of truffle. There are different kinds of mushroom in the sauce too, which we really enjoyed. Pasta had a great chewy firmness to it.
Joe’s something (lol) next to Oh Sweet Day
Sorry but I don’t remember the booth name. It was “Joe’s xxxx” next to a fruit store.
The thing that caught our eye is their giant panzerotti (small calzone that is fried). It cost $10 and had all sorts of tomato, mushroom and cheese filling inside.
The dough strangely tastes like Chinese donuts – the type you eat with a bowl of congee. A very strange feeling and we wondered if it was authentic. We noticed that it was mostly Chinese people managing that booth as well.
Cafè Calabria
We want to finish our day off with a cannolli (tube-shaped shells of fried pastry dough filled with cream). There are still long lineups at all the booths so we go inside Cafe Calabria and purchase two cannollis for $8.
It is my first time eating a cannolli and I am glad the cream inside is not the crappy kind of whipped cream you find in spray cans. The fried pastry dough is crunchy and holds the cream together well so the whole thing doesn’t fall apart. In general, it’s not a very sweet dessert which is what I prefer.
Final thoughts
We spent just over $50 for 2 people at Italian Day this year. Most of the food was authentic and tasted delicious, but you will have to wait in line for every vendor so plan out what you want to try accordingly. You also don’t want to be walking up and down the street all the time as it is very crowded and congested.
With my broken knee healing, I wasn’t able to explore the full street party, but I enjoyed the atmosphere and excitement and live music. There were lots of cute dogs too. Not a lot of places to sit unfortunately, so be prepared to sit on sidewalks.
Still, a great street party and it’s just wonderful to see Vancouver celebrating all the Italian restaurants and culture on Commercial Drive.