In Vancouver, Pepino’s Spaghetti House dishes up nostalgia

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• Name: Pepino’s Spaghetti House
• Location: 631 Commercial Dr., Vancouver
• Phone: 604-254-5633
• Website: pepinos.ca
• Cuisine: Italian-Canadian
• Prices: Dinner appetizers, $14 to $16; pasta, $19 to $26; mains, $25 to $29 (prime rib, $55).
• Additional information: Open Monday to Friday, 11:30 a.m. to 2 p.m.; Daily, 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. Reservations recommended.
• Rating system: Casual dining

Giovanna and Giorgio greet us like long-lost cousins when we are seated beside them at Pepino’s Spaghetti House, our tables squeezed as close as confessional booths.

“How ya doin’?” Giovanna shouts over the clatter of glasses clinking, forks plinking and softball-sized meatballs setting down with terrific thuds. It’s really noisy in here.

I lean in to give her a double-cheek kiss – until I realize, oops, this isn’t Cinzia, the woman I thought it was. We laugh and make our introductions. And what the heck, kiss anyway.

This is old Little Italy on Commercial Drive (or at least the last remnant of its northern fringe), where conviviality has never gone out of style. In our cozy, sconce-lit corner, the world seems to shine like we’ve already had too much wine. And this buzzing red-sauce joint, packed to the rafters and swaying to marimba rhythms, has all the trappings of a Big Night out – or, more accurately, a Big Night on retro-rewind.

Before this restaurant was sold last winter and faithfully refurbished by the owners of Fraserhood’s celebrated Savio Volpe (Paul Grunberg, Mark Perrier and Craig Stanghetta), it was Nick’s Spaghetti House, an East Vancouver institution since 1955.

While I admired Nick’s longevity, I never ate there and harbour no regrets. Have you seen the photos on Yelp? The ravioli looked like frozen dinner from a box. That said, Nick’s did represent a tradition of Italian-Canadian cuisine for which I have enormous respect and familial ties (my mother was an Italian immigrant who landed in Toronto the same year that Nick’s opened).

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Pepino’s is so uncool, it’s the quintessence of hip. Mr. Stanghetta’s design firm, Ste. Marie, has nailed the vintage Goodfellas vibe by gently restoring much of the original decor. The dark-wood panelling, the gold-framed murals of the Grand Canal and the Bay of Napoli, the tile-roofed bar – they’re all from Nick’s. Even the new carpeting is made to look old and worn.

Executive chef Mark Perrier and chef de cuisine Derek Gray aren’t trying to reinvent red-sauce cooking with a highbrow makeover. The goal, they’ve said, is to “honour the original dishes” and “breathe new life into these old warhorses” by using only the best ingredients and making everything from scratch.

I have to wonder, however, if they’ve ever been fed by a real Italian nonna.

Let’s take bread, for instance. At Pepino’s, it’s white, soft and spongy (somewhat like Wonder Bread, but with a chewy crust) and comes in complementary baskets with paper-covered butter. It looks exactly like the bread that Nick’s used to serve and works well for sandwiches or mopping up sauce. But Nick’s probably started serving that bread in 1955 when there wasn’t anything else available. The bread in most Italian bakeries, restaurants and banquet halls has evolved.

The Caesar salad at Pepino’s is excellent, emboldened by anchovies and extra-crunchy with endive. So is the chicken piccata, a thick portion of breast brined overnight, lightly dredged in flour, shallow fried and drenched in a loose caper-butter sauce that hits all the right notes of richness and tang.

But then there’s the pasta. While fresh-made pasta is a laudable pursuit, it needs time to rest. If not dried properly, it becomes gummy, sticky and hard to digest, much like Pepino’s rigatoni tossed with chili-flecked vodka sauce. Or it remains soft through the centre, never quite achieving the desired al dente bite – as does Pepino’s side order of spaghetti, which is also too slim and slippery to catch its chunky meat sauce.

Veal parmigiana could be wonderful if it were fresh, tender and crisp. My order, I suspect, was prepped a day earlier and reheated to order. The meat was grey and chewy, the fried breading soft and soggy.

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And the meatballs – oh no. Italians cook their meatballs many different ways. Some are slowly braised in sauce, others are fried, some use pork and veal, others beef. However they’re made – big or small, fortified with milk-soaked bread or breadcrumbs – an Italian meatball should be so juicy your teeth sink right through. They should not be dense and bouncy. I think the meat for my batch was either ground too finely or overdeveloped in the mixer.

On another visit, that same dense meat was firmly packed between a dozen layers of tender, whisper-thin lasagna noodles. The pasta was perfect, the red sauce was bright and balanced, the cheese was thoroughly melted overtop with gooey, golden-brown bubbles. But the squat portion was as heavy as a brick. While I doubt many customers are going to complain about too much meat – and perhaps this gluttonous lasagna encapsulates everything that people loved about Nick’s – it lacks the slippery elegance of the lasagnas I know and crave.

I have a soft spot in my heart for Pepino’s. I love the old-world charm and the loud, boisterous vibe. I love the people who come here and aren’t afraid to make chitchat with strangers. I love the fact that it’s a total scene at lunch, even on a Tuesday, and everyone drinks wine. I love that said wine might be a leathery Aglianico or a crisp Pecorino, not just some plonk by the glass. But I just can’t get excited about the food.

Dipping my spoon into a tall sundae glass of tiramisu, I notice that the zabaglione is lacking in egg yolk and the savoiardi biscuits are dry. Then I take a sip of espresso. Ugh, it’s acidic hipster coffee. The beans are probably fair trade and single origin. Many people like this kind of coffee, but not Italians.

I appreciate that Pepino’s is attempting to treat classic red-sauce cooking with the respect it deserves, but it is doing it with a sense of nostalgia that doesn’t ring true.