Special features:
fit for foodies, neighborhood gem, notable wine list

an OpenTable.com User

Special features:
fit for foodies, good for groups, neighborhood gem, notable wine list, romantic, special occasion

an OpenTable.com User

Special features:
neighborhood gem

an OpenTable.com User

BiBo’s back! The Kits pizzeria closed down for some renos at the beginning of the year. But it recently relaunched with a sidewalk patio, new chef, extended lunch hours and a longer name: Bibo Pizzeria con Cucina, a nod to the fact that it’s not just about pizza.

With chef Mattia Repetto in the kitchen, BiBo now offers more handmade pasta dishes, including the delicious Ravioli alla Piemontese ($20) – a typical recipe from Piedmont (Repetto’s motherland) stuffed with a beef-and-pork filling and topped with a light, creamy sauce.

Of course, the authentic Neapolitan-style pizza is still a major draw. These tender, thin-crusted pies, which come with a variety of toppings, are just too good resist. They’re also too moist to eat with your hands, unless you roll your slice up and eat it like a sandwich. For purists, there’s the traditional the tomato, mozza and basil Margherita ($12), and for spice lovers who don’t like to mess around, I highly recommend BiBo’s spicy salami – no hot sauce required!

Repetto also brings with him some new dessert items, including the Chocolate Brick ($6). This slightly crunchy paté is a really nice way to top off any meal in that the biscuit and cocoa bits keep it from being too rich. But if you want to go for broke, I suggest BiBo’s signature tiramisu ($8) or famous chocolate pizza ($15) – these decadent delights are to die for! Some things just don’t need improving upon.

By Sarah Rowland, 24 hours
Wednesday, April 10, 2013
- original article -

1st Dish:
Ravioli Alla Piemontese stuffed with meat in a Piedmont sauce

2nd Dish:
Porcini Mushroom Risotto

3rd Dish:
Lamb with Maitagilati in a lamb tomato sauce

4th Dish:
Filetto do Manzo ( filet of beef) in a green pepper sauce which is more like a peppercorn sauce.

5th & 6th Dishes:
Chocolate Crostata and the Chocolate Brick

My take:

I loved the light Piedmont sauce with the delish Ravioli Alla Piemontese stuffed with meat. The Porcini Mushroom Risotto was rich and wonderful. I loved the tender lamb as well as the type of pasta in the Lamb with Maitagilati in a lamb tomato sauce, however I didn’t like the texture with bread crumbs crunch that was in the sauce, this dish would be outstanding if it didn’t have the crunch in the sauce. The Filetto do Manzo ( filet of beef) in a green pepper sauce which is more like a light peppercorn sauce was outstanding and perfectly cooked. For a sweet finish, I loved the Chocolate Crostata over the dense Chocolate Brick and I could order Chocolate Crostata time and time again.

There are many more new dishes on their nightly menu to go along with their other popular favourites.

By: Richard Wolak (vancouverfoodster.com)
March 21st, 2013
- original article -

~BiBo2013
tripadvisor.com

~ThomasBdlA
tripadvisor.com

Rustic, traditional dishes and mouth-watering Neapolitan pizzas make Bibo a standout

It’s a brave new world of food bloggers. The two who sat next to my table at Bibo, the new Italian restaurant on Fourth Avenue, were equipped with a big camera (with flash), leather-bound notebooks, and audible opinions about what they were eating. They interviewed one of the owners as they tried a sampling from the kitchen -it was a big production.

I was astonished. How could they! I refer to the amount of food they packed away.

Although I’ve sometimes wished I could cover two or three restaurants a night when time’s nipping at my heels, but that’s a long-shot fantasy. I think, however, these two could do it.

“It sucks to be ignored,” my partner groused at one point as our neighbours got the full Bibo. (I pencilled that into my spiralbound $2 drugstore notebook under the table.) However, if these bloggers’ write-ups of Bibo are positive, trust it.

I’d certainly recommend Bibo to anyone looking for Italian food, the Slow Food way. Like the movement that began as immunization against the likes of McDonald’s, Bibo’s co-owners do capture the soul of Italian food. Owners Andrea Bini and Lorenzo Bottazzi (surnames were cut and pasted to make up the restaurant name) are quite authentic themselves, having moved here from Italy. Bottazzi was in the wine industry and lived out his passion for wine and food internationally for work.

“I decided to make-a beeg jump-a to do what I like -my passion,” he says, accenting his authenticity. After researching locations, they zeroed in on Vancouver for the lifestyle and the niche opportunity. They join Nico Antica Pizzeria (Gastown) and La Ghianda (West Side), which also recently opened, offering excellent simple, homey Italian food, in my books.

Bibo uses quality ingredients for rustic, traditional dishes, which is great, but better still, the focused menu of antipasti, pizza and pasta menu is quite affordable. They hired a pizza maker from Naples to make Neapolitan style pizzas and a cook from Cioppino’s to carry out their vision of the menu. Bibo is very busy and reservations are recommended. Two flatscreens feature old Italian movies and a curvaceous Sophia Loren bounced around the screens during one of our visits.

A bresaola sharing platter ($16), featured lovely air-dried, cured beef with Parmesan, premium olive oil and arugula. I was eager to try the “olive oil tasting with bruschetta” ($16), but it was more about bruschetta with five different toppings than an “olive oil tasting.”

Pizzas ($12 to $22) are very good; crusts are rustic, blackened in spots, and have a bit of chew.

The top is slightly wet and slippery in the centre (the Neapolitan way), something I’m not fully sold on. They aren’t cut, which is a bit of a drag when your knife and fork mess up the topping. Once cut (or torn), you fold and eat.

Pizza tonno (mozzarella, red onions, tuna) was so simple but so good, with light bursts of good quality tuna and just enough onion to make it sing.

Quattro stagioni was busier with tomato sauce, mozzarella, ham, mushrooms, artichokes, black olives (unpitted) and anchovies.

I sampled a couple of pastas ($14 to $18). Rigatoni alla Norma, a Sicilian dish, is intense with flavourful tomato sauce, grilled eggplant pieces and grated salt ricotta cheese. Gnocchi with meat ragu didn’t have as fine a flavour profile. There are a couple of dessert pizzas but I couldn’t do pizza after a pizza. Instead, I tried the bounet, a Piedmontese pudding with amaretti and cocoa, which I found bland.

Crème caramel was much like many I’ve had. Bibo is still a work in progress and Bottazzi readily admits he wants to improve service, which I actually found adequate (a hearty welcome from the owners went a long way) but great service would take Bibo over the top. On my visits, one of our servers seemed flat and indifferent but another was enthusiastic and engaging.

It seems the menu or the owners could give a shout out to ingredients -like the buffalo mozzarella from the Campania region, the olive oils, ranging from sweet and delicate to strong and bitter, matched like wines with dishes, the basil from Liguria with the perfect terroir for pesto-making and the porcini, from Alba, with, as Bottazzi says, “just the right flavour.”

~liz
November 26, 2012
Urbanspoon.com

~Katie
Urbanspoon.com