Today I was at Marcello‘s on Commercial Drive. They are the ironic Italian restaurant with a giant stone pizza oven shaped like a head. For those who have never been, their chefs can be seen inserting whole pizzas into its wood fire gaping mouth.
This would be my guest’s first time visiting, so we decided to explore the menu through their pastas, pizzas, and chicken parm. Their menu is equal parts traditional and modern Italian. More comfort style, larger portions with a heaping serving of sauce, than dressed up designer plates.
Sadly, we didn’t better curate our meal and a lot of what we ordered over lapped in flavour. Red sauce with sweet tomatoes and spicy herbs. Therefore things did get monotonous and we did encounter flavour fatigue, but at least the textures varied.
This was especially the case with the Linguine alla vongole, which was clams in a white wine sauce with a touch of tomato. We didn’t realize that the tomato would be so pronounced, instead of the promised “touch”.
The Chicken parmigiana with tagliolini pomodoro was a light tomato sauce over breaded chicken, topped with cheese. Served with a side of saucy tomato noodles. Once again this much sweet-tomato was too much. The serving became boring and blasé after a few bites, each element one toned and tired together.
The pizza was the best. We got their namesake “Marcello” pizza with tomato sauce, mozzarella, anchovies, black olives, capers, and onion. The salty fish, briney olives, and fresh onion made this a stand out and pungent mix.
The Cannelloni di magro was a stuffed pasta. Egg noodle tubes packed with light cheese and spinach, topped with bechamel & tomatoes. It would have been nice to have just the cream sauce, to be able to use this as a break and pause in our meal. However, with the tomato this quickly become much like this others.
Each individual item was nice enough, but altogether like this overwhelmingly much. Needless to say we walked out with leftovers for the days come, and enjoy them each its own then.
Marcello Ristorante & Pizzeria
1404 Commercial Dr, Vancouver, BC V5L 3X9
(604) 215-7760
marcellopizzeria.com
