Di Beppe’s chef serves up Italian comfort food
Enjoy simply but tasty food at young restaurant with an old soul
Let’s talk names. Di Beppe pretty much means Joe’s, Beppe being shorthand for Guiseppe (Joseph) in Italian.
Not long ago, Di Beppe Cafe and Ristorante in Gastown was called Joe Pizza, serving up Roman pizza, pre-made and reheated. The concept was wrong for the space and neighbourhood and so there has been a quick rebrand.
Craig Stanghetta, the most in-demand restaurant designer in town, transformed a rather raw space into a chic split personality. One side is a coffee bar and the other, a plusher dining room. The lighting’s worth a neck crane in the evening.
It’s still Italian cuisine, and the chef is Letitia Wan. Her first name is a Latin derivative for “happy,” and she should be. In these times of female empowerment, men still prevail in restaurant kitchens. She’s one of a handful of female kitchen bosses.
J.C. Poirier, one of the owners of Di Beppe (as well as of St. Lawrence, Pizza Farina, Ask for Luigi and Pourhouse) is happy, too.
“We won the lottery,” he says of initially hiring Wan to work with him at Ask for Luigi. “Knowing her talent and her palate, I gave her 100 per cent control at Di Beppe. She’s ready.”
Her gender makes for double happiness for Poirier.
“When I cooked at La Toque, Norman (chef Norman Laprise in Montreal) always had a lot of female cooks and always said they bring a lot of balance to a kitchen, and I agree with that. It’s a different touch, a different approach that’s delicate
and sophisticated.”
But, as any chef knows, the job isn’t for wussies.
“I don’t have kids or pets or dogs or keep house plants, right?” Wan says. “It’s tough.”
Not so tough that it shows, though. The 40-year-old could easily pass for a millennial.
She wants to nail good, simple Italian food.
“I want it to be regionally correct and use appropriate products,” she says.
A trip to Italy a couple of years ago was a lesson on less-is-more and the importance of great ingredients. Di Beppe is marketed as “a young Italian restaurant with an old Italian soul.”
Wan gets to the heart of Italian comfort food — pizzas and pastas — and some antipasti. Pizzas (rectangular, not round) come in two sizes, medium and large. (That is, unless you think you want to have a banquet on a metre-long diva.)
I liked the crust, plumped and not skinny with blackened bits, a chewy crumb and crunch around the edge. It had good flavour, thanks to the 18-hour proofing and 24-hour fermenting in the fridge. (A long ferment improves digestibility and lowers glycemic index, so there’s that, too.)
My Capricciosa pizza ($19 or $36)
was topped with beautiful sheer slices of ham, like drapery over melted buffalo mozzarella, tomato sauce with artichokes, olives and mushrooms. It’s dramatically presented on a wooden platform.
The pasta isn’t made in-house, which was surprising. It’s dried Rustichella d’Abruzza, a top-quality brand. You choose spaghetti or rigatoni to partner with five sauce offerings. I expected hand-crafted fresh pastas considering all the fresh pasta kudos at Ask for Luigi.
“There are inconsistencies depending on humidity. I’s hard to control and tricky,” Wan says of fresh pasta. And besides, she’d be competing with Ask for Luigi. No, no, no. There’s lots of room for more of Ask for Luigi pasta. The Alici di Burro (anchovy and butter) rigatoni with
breadcrumbs spoke loudly of Sicily, but I longed for fresh pasta.
A salad of dandelion greens, whole carrots and burrata was a showcase of fresh tasty ingredients, and another salad with celery, fennel, anchovy filets and almonds, was alive with freshness and made even more so with slices of blood orange.
For dessert, a traditional tiramisu was light and lovely, with a hit of bourbon. The Sicilian cannoli had a crisp and delicate fried shell and light ricotta filling.
Wines, mostly Italian, are chosen to sync with flavours, especially the reds. And they’re going big on aperitifs.
“We’re launching an aperitivo culture,” says manager and wine guy Matthew Morgenstern. Whether it’s vermouth, neat or on the rocks, or
cocktails, low in alcohol, to get the palate, that’s what we’re going for. It’s about visiting with friends and turning off the Wi-Fi,” he says.
On the café side, Revolver Coffee’s Chris Giannakos delivers his coffee program, and Wan delivers a café style menu of Italian breakfasts, pizzas, sandwiches and pastries like apollini and sfogliatella.