Giusti is a restaurant in creative tension with itself — and better for it

Tucked into 6th on the west side off of Main, you’ll find a large, darkly lit Italian restaurant where couples romanticize, suited workers pontificate, and friends laugh, all out for a night at one of the city’s newest buzzy Italian restaurants, Giusti.

You can’t tell, but there’s a tension in the air, nothing to do with the awkward date playing out next to me. 

It’s a tension that Head Chef Mark Perrier acknowledges in our interview, a desire to explore creative Italian cuisine while hewing to the classical dishes that people love. Delicate, freshly pressed tagliatelle noodles, desperately holding onto well-cooked ragu bolognese, is a popular dish for understandable reasons. Each mouthful is smoky, satisfying, and umami-rich.

The menu changes often, but some dishes remain. Tagliatelle won’t change. Burrata, Perrier acknowledges, is a popular comfort dish that isn’t going anywhere. 

A few steps away, beyond the dining space, the chefs work on the meals, hand-rolling all the pasta before opening hours. Menus are a delicate balance, not just with customers but also with the team of chefs, between creativity that makes the long hours in the kitchen worth it and, yes, simplicity of dishes that customers crave.

Giusti is no stranger to Vancouver’s Italian restaurant landscape. The DNA of Savio Volpe is everywhere, with Perrier, pasta maker Tew Udomchaisakul, Sous Chef Marquella Uhrigh and general manager Miguel Quezada, all having experience there.

The pasta will have you coming back for more. The agnolotti that evening was a simple combination of rabbit and rosemary, little pockets of flavour that linger in your mouth. Each one was cooked to that liminal space of soft and tough, the rabbit reduction like a thin sheen of fat on the top of chicken stock. Expect dishes to rotate with the seasons.

Yet that doesn’t mean it’s all perfect. On my second visit, the long flat sheets of pappardelle were uninspiring, letting the chunky morels, which were indeed exquisitely cooked, do too much of the heavy lifting, especially at the price point. 

Pasta dishes alone don’t make Giusti stand out in Vancouver. It’s when you break out of pasta and burrata that you’ll hit the crescendo of the meal.

Briny and salty white anchovies, delicately placed on deep purple and sun-kissed blood oranges, topped with a sprinkling of olive oil and bitter sherry, hit you with a force that will have you pause to savour each acidic bite. 

Then it gets a little weirder. And better. Cotechino was a special that evening, pork sausage made from just about every piece of pig imaginable, including 30 per cent skin. It was fried crispy, set on a bed of richly stewed lentils, and topped with three different sauces. 

Cotechino, more than any dish I had, embodies the dance of creativity and tension, which, to embrace the food fully, requires you to take a leap of faith. You will be rewarded. 

But that doesn’t mean Giusti refuses to do classics better than anyone else. 

Hidden in the kitchen, I’m told, is a drawer. In that drawer is something special. Scooped out and delivered to my table was, without an ounce of exaggeration, the biggest portion of tiramisu in the city.

It’s a heaping mountain, a sweeping skyscraper of espresso-soaked ladyfingers, sweet, dense and alcohol-infused mascarpone and cocoa powder. It’s one of the best desserts I’ve had all year. Each element is elevated, an interplay and balancing act that has no equal.

As we sat in the empty restaurant that afternoon, piles of hand-rolled pasta behind me, Perrier laid out what could easily be the core challenge facing most upscale restaurants in Vancouver: “You want to do stuff that's original and unique, but then you also need to do stuff that the people in Vancouver want to eat. There's a tension there.” 

Tension is where creativity, flavour and the best meals exist, where you consciously and intentionally step outside your comfort zone, ready for something new. It’s also where Giusti shines. The team is walking a tightrope, rarely stumbling and never falling. 

If you can drag your eyes away from standard Italian dishes, you’ll leave Giusti with a newfound sense of appreciation for Italian cuisine. 

A big thank you to the front-of-house and bar team, who answered my questions thoroughly and were welcoming the entire night. Sit at the bar as they’re the best seats in the house.