Eating with the Pretty Hungry Dude: Vita Bella

Came here on a Sunday night for a nice dinner with Cheerios. The restaurant is located near the intersection of Hastings and Willingdon so lots of parking along the streets. The restaurant is actually kind of hard to miss cause the outside is pretty hard and the iron-bar appearance from the outside doen't help.

The decor inside is really simple yet elegant. They have paintings decorated throughout and the pale green color is easy on the eyes. The lighting set the mood perfectly - not too biright nor too dark. We had a cozy table beside the wall.

Ahi tuna with blueberry fennel slaw and peppers ~ $30. The fennel and the tuna complimented each other very well and the tuna was excellent. Needless to say, Cheerios liked her dish a lot.

Linguine fumate: house-smoked duck breast, sun-dried tomatoes with assorted mushrooms in Grand Marnier demiglaze cream sauce, drizzled with truffle oil ~ $18. The duck had a crispy outside with a soft inside and was full of flavor. It may be because I like my pasta to be extremely saucy but I thought the noodles could have used a bit more sauce.

Chef Leonardo's chocolate pave ~ $7. The presentation was really nice but we were a little disappointed by the dessert after so much hype from our waiter. It's basically like eating a mousse cake or a ganache. Nonetheless, it still tasted great but didn't seem up to par with the entrees.

The only negative part of the night was that our entrees seemed to take much longer than the other patrons like 40 mins we ordered. You get bread with olive oil but it only lasts for so long. I recall one couple sitting near us who arrived about the same time but they were gone moments after we received our entree. And then a group of 4 came, ordered, and got to eating within 10 minutes so I was a little peeved about that.

However, to end on a positive note, during our dinner, a old, short, bespectacled man came to our table and asked how our meal was and if everything was okay. I thought he was a random customer who just happened to be interested in what we were eating but Cheerios later pointed out that he was likely the head chef and owner since he was wearing an apron and was going around to other tables. I thought this was a really nice touch by the owner and he was also very humble and grateful for our presence. I'm pretty much ready to patronage to chef Leo again.