Gastronomy: Affordable Italian pizzas in Gastown
When we attended Italian Day on Commercial Drive this year, we received a $10 coupon 🥳 to Gastronomy, a new Italian restaurant in Gastown.
Gastronomy Gastown is a contemporary Italian restaurant that mostly boasts a menu of wood-fire oven pizzas. We came here for a date night last week after all the chaos of our wedding was over – here is our experience and everything we ordered!
The vibe
When we arrived and parked outside Gastronomy, we realized it was right next door/really close to some other restaurants we’ve recently visited – Takenaka Uni Bar and Tekkaba.
I will say though, this area of Gastown is pretty sketchy since it is basically at the very end of Gastown 😬. The 3 times we’ve parked here, we’ve seen people shooting up and doing drugs on the street right outside of these restaurants 😱 and today was no different.
Recommended: Read my full review of 2 close-by restaurants:
Takenaka Uni Bar: $168 Omakase for 2 people
Tekkaba: $78 Omakase
When we first entered Gastronomy, I immediately liked the vibe 😍. It had a very romantic and candlelit lighting to the interior. With around 46 seats, it is not a big restaurant, but spacious enough between the tables to not feel like you are sitting too closely next to another table.
I really liked the brick wall, the colours on the full bar and of course, the big wood fire oven in the back that smells great.
Food review
Here is everything we ordered for 2 people. Prices are in CAD and rounded to the nearest dollar for simplicity.
Beef tartare ($17)
For appetizers, we order the beef tartare. For $17, I think this is a great price because you get quite a bit of beef tartare with french seasoning, cured egg yolk, and grated parmesan. They serve it with house made potato chips for a good crunch.
Although I usually prefer crostinis or something more sturdy than a chip, the chip was not bad. The taste of the beef tartare was very yummy although I will say if the portion was larger, it may tread a little bit into the “slightly too salty” area, but overall it didn’t cross that line for me.
Freshly shuckled oysters ($22 for 6)
So I didn’t love the raw oysters we ordered, even though our server had already told us what kind of oysters they have (they only had Kusshi oysters, which are usually quite small). I personally felt these were not worth $22 and personally, I am quite upset that raw oysters in Vancouver are now ramping up to be $4-5 each regularly, with happy hour pricing being $3.
But I can’t really complain too much about this because we got exactly what we ordered and it’s also not really the season right now for oysters either 😣. Essentially, Kelvin still insisted he wanted some so we ordered it.
20 Layer lasagna ($25)
Do not murder me but I actually don’t really like lasagna 🙃. I usually prefer other types of pastas, but Gastronomy only had 2 pastas on their menu – this 20 layer lasagna one or a vegetarian gnocchi. Out of the two, I preferred the lasagna and I actually ended up really enjoying it 😯!
The lasagna is not a large portion, but still a reasonable size to share with 2 people. They use fior di latte cheese, ricotta, grana padano, and a kind of sweet beef ragu pomodoro sauce. The sauce being a bit more sweet made us think of Asian-style pastas (ex. think HK or Philipino style bolognese spaghetti) and I actually preferred it.
The layers were also very delicately presented and overall had a very nice plating.
Notorious P.I.G. ($25)
Finally for the star of the show! For our main dish, which would be a wood-fire pizza, we chose the Notorious P.I.G. because it sounded the most appealing to us. This pizza uses a gochujang pomodoro sauce, fior di latte, Italian ham, fire roasted pineapple, hot honey and dried oregano.
Size-wise, the pizza is not very big but again, big enough to share with 2 people. I’m the kind of girl who is full on 2 slices of pizza so this was enough for us as a couple.
Kelvin was worried about this gochujang element in the pizza, but it was actually very subtle when combined with the pomodoro sauce – it still tasted like a tomato sauce pizza with a slight kick to it at the end with the hot honey. We both believe pineapples can be on pizza and enjoyed the classic combination with the ham – we felt like this pizza was a fancy fusion Hawaiian pizza. We also liked dipping the pizza in the olive oil they provided that had been infused with Italian herbs.
Bomba tiramisu ($11)
We ended our meal by sharing the tiramisu. It looked and tasted like a good tiramisu with house made lady fingers, bomba mascarpone cream, amaretto and tonka infused espresso and cocoa powder.
I prefer my tiramisu with more mascarpone than lady fingers and I felt the ratio was pretty balanced for this slice. I do think this tiramisu is a bit more boozy than other ones I’ve had, but I still enjoyed it and loved how moist it was.
Final thoughts
Loewe’s rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
We had a super romantic and relaxing date night at Gastronomy Gastown 🥰. We really enjoyed every dish we ordered and I highly recommend you also try the beef tartare, lasagna and tiramisu.
For pizza, they have a lot of options and I am sure you can find one that suits your liking. They are all made in the wood-fire oven with this really tasty fermented sourdough crust. You can also “pimp” out your pizza by adding special toppings like gold 😮, burrata and side dipping sauces.
Price-wise, I think Gastronomy is very affordable for the quality of food they produce. I didn’t see anything that was over $30 on their menu and most items are also designed for sharing so you can try more dishes.
Service was also excellent. When we first came in, the server told us that they closed the curtains on the windows because people were doing drugs outside and they had a table seated near the window that had a child. We definitely don’t want them to see any of that! Our server also explained the menu to us very well and was attentive throughout our meal.
We came on a Saturday night at 7:30pm and the restaurant was not very busy, but I think they definitely deserve to have more customers come in! I would dare say this place is a hidden gem 💎 and we will be back.
Sincerely, Loewe