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| - I came to this cute little Italian place courtesy of their great Yelp reviews. After eliminating the $$$$ Italian restaurant closest us to us, we decided to give the more modest Lo Zingaro ($$) a try ;) Like the eponymous gypsies*, we were willing to travel where necessary.
The AMBIANCE: This is a cute place. It wasn't crowded and we took the cozy little front window nook that Jenny N. mentioned in her review. The restaurant is warm, and there's a direct line of sight back to the kitchen and its pizza oven with staff hard at work. I find it a real bonus that the washrooms are on the ground floor...yay for a handicapped accessible restaurant.
The FOOD: My friend and I decided to share a couple different main courses. We had a rather good tagliatelle ($15) featuring homemade pasta and a nice rich bolognese. The real star though was the Roman style (thin-crust) pizza we had. It's not on their online menu, so I can't remember the name, but it had a lovely spicy housemade lamb sausage that nicely complimented the rich fior di latte that topped the pizza. The crust was expertly cooked to a crisp, but not burned.
I made a face when my friend ordered dessert, as I normally find tiramisu to be one of the most boring desserts--one that has typically sat in the refrigerator for way too long. Instead, I was delighted to find it was one of the very best tiramisu I've ever had. This one, which I have to point out easily serves 2 people, had a delightfully fresh and light cream in between the savoiardi. Instead of becoming a muddled mess like most versions of this dessert, the components each stood out on their own and played off each other in a most astonishing way.
The food gets a very strong 4 1/2 stars.
To accompany our Italian feast, we each had a glass of wine. This was my only complaint, the wine pours were definitely on the small side (I believe less than the standard 5 oz) and both of us found the different wines to be rather weak-bodied. I'm left with the impression that the wine list is slightly on the weaker side. 3 stars for the beverages
The SERVICE: It's nice to see an Italian restaurant run by Italians. The server was super friendly and attentive and even let us draw her into an interesting political conversation. We had a great time chatting with her about Italy. It was also quite notable that the chef came to check on us not once but twice. Both the server and the chef were so genuine in their inquiries about the food, that I was confident in knowing that they would fix any problems without hesitation. It's great to see a restaurant that both stands behind their product and cares. 5 stars for the service!
OVERALL, I wouldn't hesitate to recommend this restaurant. The pasta was fairly good, the pizza was great, and the tiramisu was outstanding...all complemented with excellent service in a comfortable environment. It's also pretty good value...dinner with a main, 1/2 a dessert, and a drink was $40/person. Not something I would call cheap, but perfectly reasonable for a restaurant in Canada that is taking Italian food seriously.
*In case you were curious about the name, Lo Zingaro means gypsies in Italian...maybe a reference to the owners finding themselves transported from the warmth of Italy to this frozen land.
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