Folietta is an Italian love letter to neighbourhood dining

When I exit the washroom at new Italian restaurant Folietta and head back into the dining room, the first thing that strikes me is the noise.

It’s not often these days that I’m in a restaurant with a palpable energy. Sure, I’ve been in plenty of busy spots around town, but none with this kind of buzz. It’s not just loud music and lively conversations: there is a spark—an aliveness—that only comes around when a restaurant has truly hit the mark.

Folietta opened on sleepy Nanaimo Street in late May by Wentworth Hospitality Group (the same team behind Homer Street Cafe, Tableau Bar Bistro, and Maxine’s Cafe & Bar) and was pretty much an instant hit. After all, even people who live deep in East Van deserve a quality local.

“In Montreal, Toronto, and Chicago, the fun places are in the residential neighbourhoods,” says Wentworth beverage director Jean-Sebastien Dupuis. “Downtown is important, and it’s the heart of the city, and it’s where tourism goes. But where do the neighbourhood people go?”

This stretch of north Nanaimo does have a few culinary staples, including Italian grocer Renzullo Food Market, deli Columbus Meat Market, and vegan bakery To Live For. But the area was—at least based on how busy Folietta is on the early Friday evening that I visit, where from 5:30 pm to 8 pm there is a steady flow of customers, and seemingly not a single empty seat in the house—desperate for an upscale-casual restaurant.

Folietta’s busyness is especially impressive after I’m told that the space, which has over 100 seats, is Wentworth’s first-ever restaurant outside of the downtown core. When I ask Dupuis why they chose such a large space, he jokes that “we didn’t have a choice—that’s what they built for us.” Wentworth is owned by a real estate development and construction company Amacon; the entire Nanaimo Street building is theirs, so the hospitality team worked with what they were given. 

It all works nicely, though. The space is divided into two main areas, with the dining room to the left of the host stand and the lounge to the right. I take a seat in the lounge, where I can watch the bar team pump out cocktail after cocktail, be it the Neighbourhood Negroni (an Italian classic, but made with all BC spirits) or the excellent, crisp-as-can-be Folietta Martini with pecorino-washed gin. (Dupuis says he’s on a mission to make people drink more martinis, and I am here for it.)

“We’ve been embraced in the neighbourhood,” Dupuis says. “It’s been great to be part of that. Neighbourhoods are awesome. Neighbourhoods are fun. They’re vibrant, and that’s where the people who work in the restaurants live. A lot of people who work in our restaurants live in this neighbourhood; we want to be a place where restaurant workers come before their shifts or come after their shifts.”

The lounge is of particular excitement for Dupuis, as it’s the first time in all of Wentworth’s restaurants that they’ve had a dedicated bar area. It allows for a more casual experience, with a mirror that turns into a TV to play sports, and an L-shaped bar perfect for quicker dining options.

“We’re a place where you can just come and grab a beer,” says Dupuis. “Or you can just come and grab a negroni, or you can come and just have a quick bite.”

Nanaimo is in many ways an extension of Commercial Drive, and is therefore a largely Italian neighbourhood. That, coupled with the fact that Aramco’s owners are from Italy, meant that Italian food was the right concept for Folietta. It’s also proof that the city is still hungry for more Italian, even in a crowded market, and as places like Locanda dell’Orso continue to struggle.

The menu is great from top to bottom, with the house-made focaccia absolutely worth the price of admission (baked fresh daily, the round loaf is bouncy, chewy, and light). The Rigatoni All’Arrabbiata is also not to be missed, made simply but perfectly with San Marzano tomatoes, creamy stracciatella, and Calabrian chillies. And meat eaters should not skip the Bistecca: a 12-ounce bone-in New York striploin, served with roasted garlic and a thick Italian herb sauce. Pair it with a side order of Funghi Misti (mushrooms, caramelized onions, and pecorino) for the perfect bite.

As for the individual ingredients, Wentworth corporate executive chef Bobby Milheron had fun sourcing them both at home and abroad. “Our tomatoes are coming from Italy; we make all the extruded pasta in-house, and we get the semolina flour from Italy; a lot of the cheeses, obviously, come from Italy,” he says. “But the geoduck clam is a wild BC product. The albacore tuna is wild and local. So is the Humboldt squid. And we get beef from Alberta. All the vegetables come from here.”

Even the olive oil is special, having been flown in from the Aramco owners’ hometown of Panni.

“We imported 1,000 litres of olive oil from this small town,” Milheron says. “And we have another 2,000 coming in December.” He adds with a smile: “I greatly underestimated the amount of olive oil that we needed.”

Some of that olive oil ends up in the Torta All’Olio D’oliva: a thick, moist olive oil cake served with melt-in-your-mouth whipped mascarpone and poached seasonal fruit (for me, it’s rhubarb). It’s the perfect ending: not too sweet, entirely satisfying. 

There’s also a caramel pudding that I didn’t try, but a friend of mine—also a food writer—told me it was the best dessert she’d ever had. So you can bet I’ll be going back for it (and so much more) very soon.