Our third time eating at La Pentola, and first time trying their regular dinner menu. Delicious and dependable! Thanks you-know-who for the xmas gift certificate!

You can do a multi-course family-style thing for $55 (7 courses) or $75 (10 courses). We chose to do á la carte.

Everything looked good! We chose the smoked veal tongue salad, sardines, and the squid ink tagliatelle.

And a veal ossobuco!

La Pentola has a seasonal Coal Harbour Brewing beer on tap. This time it was their IPA. Just ok. Had a sweet, syrupy maltiness that I just don’t like in my IPAs. Went alright with the food.

Housemade buckwheat sourdough bread and ciabatta.

Closeup of the crumb texture. Bread was good/ok. I prefer a more open and varied crumb structure. 😛

Smoked Veal Tongue Salad with pickled onions and croutons. Quite good! Love the taste and texture of the veal tongue. I love tongue.

Sardines with caponata and herbed bread crumbs on top. I think the “caponata” is the tomato, eggplant, onions and pine nut mixture underneath. Amazing dish. We both loved the experience of eating the oily, tasty local sardines. It reminded me of asian canned sardines except times 100.

Squid Ink Tagliatelle with Clams, Mussels and Guanciale (pork cheek/jowl bacon). A bit on the salty side but I got used it and really enjoyed the firm texture of the pasta and the fresh, briny flavours of the shellfish. Not sure if I could tell what exactly the squid ink brought to the party, but aside from the saltiness I really enjoyed this dish. We were getting full towards the end of this dish and we still had a big ossobuco to come!

Anchor Porter. Roasty, dry-ish. Drinkable. Good. Touch of alcohol, touch of licorice.

Veal Ossobuco Milanesse. A somewhat tender, succulent veal shank served on saffron risotto with gremolata. Came with a cute little spoon for scooping out the pornographic bone marrow. Yuuuuuuum.

A restrained portion of bone marrow.

Wendy thought the risotto was a bit chalky but I thought it was just right. Creamy…it’s rice that makes its own sauce! The veal shank wasn’t braised shortrib-level of tenderness but I don’t think shanks should be cooked to that level. I think it was the right balance of tenderness and resiliency.

That was a great dinner. Just what we needed!

Bottom line:

Still dependable. Great service. Authentic (afaik) Italian food.