Osteria Salvio Volpe: Alla Famiglia

We celebrated Valentine’s Day this year with dinner at Osteria Salvio Volpe, a modern Italian restaurant in the Mount Pleasant area. I’ve heard many good things about Salvio Volpe from friends and coworkers, and they also made it to the Michelin recommended list last year, so I was pretty excited to eat here for Valentine’s Day.

Now usually for Valentine’s Day, I try to book a restaurant that offers some sort of special Valentine’s Day prix fix or special menu. It’s pretty hard to do this because I find that a lot of popular restaurants in Vancouver require you to book really early to get a normal dinner time reservation (i.e. 6-7 pm), but they don’t release news or information about a special Valentine’s Day menu until the month of February. For context, I am a crazy person and I booked my Valentine’s Day reservation BACK IN NOVEMBER. And guess what? There were still restaurants that didn’t have availability – it’s so crazy and I am lowkey over it.

Recommended: Read about where we went for Valentine’s Day last year – Land & Sea in Kerrisdale.

Anyways, the nice thing about Salvio Volpe is they have a chef’s menu called Alla Famiglia, which is kind of like “Let us cook for you!”. It is family/sharing style and is priced at $79 per person.

How does it work? If you choose to opt for the alla famiglia, your server will ask you a series of questions about food. For example, they might ask you if you like sashimi, or if you are ok with spice, or if you can eat certain meats, etc. Based on your answers, your server will curate a 5-7 course menu for you. Because of the interesting way they do this, no table will have the exact same courses.

Of course, you can also order al le carte, but we decided to try the alla famiglia. We also told our server 2-3 dishes we really wanted to try and he told us he can try to squeeze it in to our courses, but there is no guarantee.

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Interior

The interior of Salvio Volpe is really my style. The building has really high ceilings and is decorated with a lot of warm wood tones. It kind of gives me Japanese/Muji vibes.

They have a large square bar in the middle so there is bar seating as well. Overall, they pack a lot of tables in this large restaurant and you will find that you can be seated quite close to another table. As a table of 2, we were seated in the back row right near the kitchen window.

They do take your jackets for you and I recommend you let them take it because otherwise there really isn’t a lot of room for you to stash your coat and purse.

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Drinks

Salvio Volpe has an extensive wine menu, but we both opted for cocktails instead.

Amaretto sour ($16)

I’ve been getting into bourbon or whiskey sours lately. This amaretto sour has Sons of Vancouver No. 82 amaretto, Bulleit bourbon, lemon, angostura and foamer. Love how pretty it is and strong with some citrus accents.

Food

Here is everything our server curated for us for our alla famiglia meal.

First course: Hawaiian Kanpachi crudo

For our first course, we get a fish crudo. The fish is Hawaiian kanpachi and it is served with marinated fennel, calamansi and jalapeños. Regular price for this dish is $28.

I like how colourful this dish is – the green is very vibrant! The kanpachi tastes refreshing and the fennel gives it a nice crunch. The cuts of kanpachi were not very thin and there are 5 pieces in total. The jalapeños were not spicy.

Second course: Prosciutto di parma

Our second dish was this prosciutto appetizer. Underneath it, there are pears and parmigiano, topped off with Sicilian olive oil and aged balsamic. Regular price for this dish is $27.

Prosciutto with fruit is a very classic Italian appetizer and this tasted exactly how I imagined it to taste. The balsamic and olive oil enhanced the flavours of the prosciutto, and the combination of cheese and pears with it made it taste almost sweet in a way. Very tasty little plate where everything just sings together.

Third course: Chicories

Our third course is a salad course (they always include a salad course btw) and the one our server chose for us is their chicories salad. I’ve never heard of chicories before, but they are kind of like endives except in our salad, they are this very pretty red/purple colour. As you can see from this photo, there is a big pile of chicories to make it a small little mountain. Underneath that, there are roasted pears and hazelnuts and on top they’ve shaved a lot of piave cheese and a mustard vinaigrette. Regular price for this salad is $18.

A very unique salad – one that Kelvin and I probably would have never chose for ourselves. I also found it to be kind of sweet, mostly because of the roasted pears, but because we just had pears in our previous course with the prosciutto, it felt a little overdone with the pears. Loved all the cheese on top though and again this is a really big salad!

Fourth course: Papperdelle

The fourth course was pasta and we had told our server that we really wanted to try the papperdelle pasta on the menu so we were happy that it was included in our meal. The papperdelle here has a really wide cut and is coated in a milk braised pork ragù, calabrian chili, cabbage and pecorino. Regular price for this dish is $32.

I really liked this pasta dish – the papperdelle was the star and all the ragù and sauce hung onto the pasta so well. The ragù is super savoury – Kelvin found it to be a tad bit too salty but I thought it was fine.

Fifth course: 63 Acres NY striploin

For our fifth/main course, we got steak! We also requested this to our server so we were happy it also made it into our meal. The striploin was cut into 2 large pieces and served in a red wine sauce with anchovy butter. Regular price for this dish is $75.

I am not a big fan of red meats but I really liked the sauce on this. It was also cooked medium rare perfectly, not “bloody”, not over-cooked, not chewy. Also the portion is actually really big.

Sixth course: Delicata squash and Broccolini

This sixth course is basically 2 side dishes and they were served along with the steak so the fifth and sixth course kind of come together.

Let’s start with the broccolini, or what I like to call them as “fancy broccoli”. This is a simple side vegetable cooked in chili and lemon. Regular price for this side dish is $12.

There is actually quite a lot of broccolini on here and there’s a lot of flavour to it, which is great. It’s also a really great side to the steak so pairing it together makes it a no brainer.

The second side dish, the squash, was very cool. It has whipped ricotta, pumpkin seeds, sage croutons and a spicy honey sauce on it. Regular price for this side dish is $13.

Because of the whipped ricotta, this almost tasted like a dessert! A very new dish to me but I liked it a lot and found it to be a very elegant/sophisticated dish.

Seventh course: Cannoli

Dessert time! Before I talk about dessert, I must first clarify that I was already full by the time I was eating the papperdelle pasta course. We already packed our remaining pasta and tried our best to eat the steak but we had to give up on that as well (we only ate half of the steak and finished the squash). I was pretty worried about the dessert as usually it never tastes good if you pack it up and eat it the next day.

The cannoli is stuffed with ricotta, citrus, chocolate, pistachios. Regular price for this dessert is $10. Portion size is enough to share between 2 adults.

I really liked this cannoli because it was light and citrusy and I was feeling really full. This made it more light and refreshing and we actually finished this dessert happily. Loved the filling and the crunchy crust of the cannoli.

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Final thoughts

Loewe’s rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

In total after tax and tip, we spent $240 for our alla famiglia dinner and 2 cocktails. This is not a cheap dinner, but it was Valentine’s Day and we had A LOT of food during this tasting menu. Our server told us that they do not reduce or change portion sizes when you order the ala famiglia, so even if we ordered the same dishes al le carte, it would be the same, which I thought was really cool.

Was it worth it? If we ordered every single dish we had al le carte, it would equal to $215 before tax and tip:

• Kanpachi crudo = $28
• Prosciutto = $27
• Chicories salad = $18
• Papperdelle = $32
• NY steak = $75
• Squash = $13
• Broccolini = $12
• Cannoli = $10

This doesn’t even include our 2 cocktails so yes, the alla famiglia is worth it. Just looking at this list, the steak itself is already $75, which is almost the price of one person’s alla famiglia cost.

Of course, if you are not a big eater or looking for a simple dinner, ordering 2 pastas and an appetizer will cost you less than $80 per person. Which is why I recommend you to try the alla famiglia for special occasions, larger group dinners or if it is your first time so you can try a variety of dishes from the menu. As a return customer, I will likely order al le carte and choose some dishes I haven’t tried yet or the ones I really liked from this tasting experience.

All of our food was delicious so it is kind of hard for me to choose my favourite dish. Out of all the appetizers, I liked the prosciutto the most. I also liked the papperdelle pasta a lot and would prefer it over the steak. Personally, I wouldn’t pay over $60 for steak just because I am not a big red meat lover, but it was definitely tasty and good.

Wait times between our first 3 courses were not a long wait, but there was a longer wait for our pasta and our steak course. Service was excellent and our server did a really good job of explaining the menu and how the alla famiglia works. We also told him there were a few dishes we really wanted to try – the papperdelle, steak and meatballs (haha guess Kelvin didn’t get his meatballs) – and he was able to fit in 2 of our requests so that was really great. Unlike some restaurants that ask for 20%+ tip, I actually felt like our server deserved it because he also had to go through the process of selecting dishes for us based on our little customized survey.

We will return for sure for date nights and other special occasions!

Sincerely, Loewe