White-Tablecloth Italian at Carmelo's Ambleside

A Michelin-name Italian on Kingsway where spit-roasted meats, seasonal handmade pasta and wine do more romantic work than you ever had to.

Climb the Robson staircase into a golden room where a six-foot wood grill has been perfuming everything since noon.

A tiny, beloved West Point Grey room near Alma serving slow-cooked northern Italian with a menu that changes nightly and often isn't printed at all.

Tsawwassen's quiet fine-dining secret: a husband and wife kitchen, dry-aged AAA beef, house pasta and a 4.6 built over a decade.

Hand-stretched hearth pizza and pasta made that day, in a booth-lined room one block up from Ambleside Beach.

The North Shore's only certified Neapolitan oven, hot enough to blister a margherita in about ninety seconds.

A Burnaby Heights pasta institution since 1986 where one bowl genuinely feeds two and the lineup out the door is non-negotiable.

Port Moody's most-loved pizza, charred pillowy Neapolitan pies from a blazing wood oven, ten minutes from Brewers Row.

Ladner Village's cozy 4.7-star Italian, crisp wood-fired pizzas and house pasta at prices that make it a weeknight regular.

Chef-owner Giovanni Pagan has kept his parents' Maple Ridge pasta bar going since 1977, and the food, apparently, does the persuading.

A 38-seat binchotan counter where the chef hands the roll straight across, still warm, and the nori is still crackling.

French technique and Gastown cobblestones, with an atrium, award-winning cocktails, and a bar that doesn't rush you out.

A dim, jazz-soaked 1960s Tokyo cafe in Chinatown, where tajarin with uni is just how dinner starts.

An Austin Heights institution since 1997, Northern Italian pastas and desserts made by hand in a cozy neighbourhood room.