When Jen and I were in France this spring going out for dinner was a struggle. Z’s bedtime is 7, and no restaurants opened until 7. That meant more than a few nights of deli meat and baguettes from the grocery store in the hotel room for dinner.

In Vancouver, however, if you show up at 7, you’re in the heart of the rush and can expect to wait for a plate.

Last night I crashed Jen’s Dinner Club - a gaggle of girls who vow to get together once a month and have drinks, dinner and gossip at one of the city’s newest boites.

So the 6 of us hit up Trattoira Italian Kitchen last night in what looked like an episode of Elimidate; one guy and 5 girls out for dinner.

Trattoria does the first come, first served thing. So with a party larger than 4 we were told to expect a wait. And wait we did. Nearly 90mins.

To be fair, the manager, Peter, gave us frequent updates on the table we were waiting on. They were lingering with their bill and desserts and he was trying as gently as he could to hurry the process along.

Peter was great. He was the one who made the Elimidate crack, and when I made a crack about liveblogging our wait on Twitter, he joked along with that as well.

The servers, in the lounge anyway, were a little lax. There wasn’t a dedicated lounge server bringing drinks to those waiting for tables, so it was nearly 15 mins before Jen and I were offered a glass of wine when we arrived. It would be nice to have the hostesses running this section while the servers can work their tables.

Finally we were sat and Peter rushed out with an amuse bouche of Kobe Meatballs. We were all wowed, thinking it was a treat for our long wait, when Lesa reminded Peter she had been given the meatball last time she ate at Trattoria. So apparently it’s something for everyone, and we weren’t so special.

The meatball was good, but odd for an amuse bouche. It’s big, heavy, and spicy. If you were ready for a light crisp salad and pasta, this would blow your palette. We ordered a couple bottles of wine, and the first to arrive was the Villa Antinori - not a good thing to try right after a spicy meatball.. but we plowed through.

As Peter dropped the meatballs on the table, I started clicking away with my camera. After live blogging the wait, and now clicking with the camera, Peter wondered if I was a critic or something.

“No,” I said, “I’m just a nerd.”

Nonetheless, our experience for the rest of the night changed immediately. Our server was on us immediately. Our wine glasses never below half full. Our sips of water immediately replaced. Our food came hot and quick.

Want better service? Twitter away on your iPhone in the lounge and pull out your camera to snap pictures of the food as it arrives on the table. It might work.

But on to the wine .. the room was a little loud, the light a little low and the camera work a little awful. We had the Villa Antinori Bianco and Liberty School Cabernet Sauvignon:

The Liberty School was brilliant, the Villa Antinori a little too light to hold up to the food. $50+ on the wine list, both about $25 at your fave wine shop.

The Blog According to Buzz. Spread the word, ya heard?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 30th, 2008 at 8:43 am and is filed under food, wine.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.