Amici Miei

An excellent place, run by a dedicated family who say they learned at their mothers’ knees. Homemade pasta, homemade sauces. Even the «plain» spaghetti and meatballs was excellent. And the tiramisu was to die for, again made from scratch by the mother of the family. Service was very good, price was as expected, all entrees were excellent (there were three of us). Highly recommended.

Excellent service ! The red sauce spaghetti is sooooo good! Can’t get enough of it! And the plate is huge! Only wish I have one more stomach :)

The best Restaurant I have been in in a long time! Lovely family, homemade pasta and friendly service! Delightful in every way, we’ll be back the next time we’re in Vancouver! Molto molto bene!

Finally! Really Italian family restaurant. Homemade pasta made AT THE MOMENT! Nice friendly owners, affordable… A place to be!

Had dinner here last night; pizza, salad and wine. The place is very quaint and the food was very good, however, I could not seem to get the waitresses attention to get either my water glass refilled or another glass of wine, nor did she ever ask me how things were or if I needed anything else. Food was wonderful; service was unfortunately lacking.

i have had the pleasure of eating in this little gem of a restaurant three times now. each visit was a quick trip to italy, complete with amazing food, generous surprises from the kitchen, great conversations with the staff and the owners, and an overall desire to come back again, preferably soon. i want to try everything on the menu, and i know i will. when i find food cooked with love and passion, right in my own neighborhood, why would i not come back? simple good quality ingredients, freshly prepared every time, delicious, and so affordable. i almost want to keep it a secret, just so there’s always room for me at a table.

I cannot express how much I LOVE this place. This is a mom and pops restaurant, a couple who recently moved here from Italy, and opened this quaint little shop on Denman Street. It’s not big, so reservations are highly recommended.
It feels like everything is made in house here, minus the cheese. We are 3 of us who came here. We started with the caprese salad and the calamari pomodoro (tomato). The caprese is clean and fresh, unencumbered by any unnecessary ingredients, letting the dish speak for itself. The calamari is so tender, and marinated in the sauce that soaks up the bread in just the right way.
Each of us ordered our own entrees, which happened to be all pasta dishes. The pasta, made in-​house, is al dente and awesome. We licked our plates clean. Then we moved on the dessert. It doesn’t even matter that we have no room in our stomaches left. We each ordered our own tiramisu, read: no sharing. We cleaned that up as well.
Will definitely come back again and again to try everything else on the menu!

Absolutely loved this place. Small family restaurant with amazing, authentic food. We were seated by an Italian couple who said they always come here because it tastes like their mom’s cooking.
The one chef cooks everything, so the food takes a bit of time but it is definitely worth the wait. We had the antipasto while we waited for entrees and even that was amazing. The staff is so friendly and the chef comes out at the end of the night to ask everyone if they enjoyed the food. He is completely Italian speaking but so so sweet, as is his wife.
The menu is also really affordable, would definitely recommend.

Let me start by saying that this review and the reasons behind such a low star isnt a one time thing.
I was told to wait more that 40 mins for a pizza take out order and then came back after 40mins to have to wait for another 20.
I was happy to finally return home with my pizza.
The food is horrible. The pizza had barely any sauce on it and maybe 3 bite size pieces of sausage on a large pizza.
Ill be honest ive never had a pizza as bad as these were.
So for horrible service and worse food quality i have given this place one star. I live around the neighbourhood but would avoid it like the plague.
I dont understand how the rest of the review say that the food is made with love, there is no amount of care shown through it.

There was something seriously wrong here tonight.
The wait for food, after we ordered (which took long enough in itself due to a waitress that didn’t seem to care) was over an hour. It wasn’t just our table, every table was waiting. The pizza that eventually passed by looked quite good.
I was just about to gather the family and walk out when the food finally did arrive.
Unfortunately, I had ordered a spaghetti. If you charge $ 17 for your plate of spaghetti… I expect it to be something quite amazing. This was not the case. I tasted no love in this food.
It was decent. It wasn’t any better than a plate that goes for $ 6 cheaper at the Spaghetti Factory.
The meatballs were nothing to write home about either.
Another black mark was no interest in a children’s menu or smaller sizes. They had a high chair… but that was about it. When asked if we could get a smaller plate of spaghetti, we got an «Oh no. We don’t do that.»
All in all… it was ok… and saying that is being optimistic. It was overpriced. The service was bad. The wait was way too long. They’ll not get a second chance from me.

Friendly service and authentic home made meals and desserts! Had the special for lunch — penne pasta with perfectly seasoned tomato sauce, salad with Dijon dressing. Had a flourless chocolate cake for dessert — rich and delicious!

Amazing taste, simple and handmade ingredients. The staff is amazingly friendly, will go out of its way to satisfy you. We will go back, if time permits!

You can taste love in this food. Authentic Italian, fresh simple ingredients.
The menu is a pleasure to read, so any delicious offerings. The waiter had fun teaching me to try to order in Italian.
We had caprese salad, spaghetti with meatballs, and gnocchi in pesto. Everything hand made, some kinda wheat-​free pasta!
It’s a family run business and they made us feel like family. The owner, and both chefs came out to introduce themselves.
The owner would not let us leave without trying her tiramisu she had made earlier, that day!
I would recommend it 100%

the offering of a $ 13. authentic italian prosciutto pizza intrigued me.
Ordered the pizza off a friendly girl, while waiting decided on a beer ($ 8. for a bottle!) of peroni, but nearly balked at the price.
Walked out with my pizza– nearly twice as big as I expected!
The taste was excellent, if a bit salty (the curing of the prosciutto more than anything– no fault whatever on the cook!)
I definitely have to go back– but I estimate the vino might offer better value over the birra here.

Freshly made pasta and light and creamy sauces made this restaurant jump right to the top of my list! I had papperdelle alla salsiccia my friend order Ravioli Rose, both delicious and to top it all off we had the Panna Cotta. Great atmosphere in a cosy and inviting dinning room. Loved it!

My boyfriend and I passed by this new place early in the day and we had a good feeling of what we saw so we made plans to try Amici Miei for dinner. It was a rough start to the dinner service for us. They were out of a lot of menu items, especially in the appetizers and salad menu, and we were not informed before placing our order. I didn’t understand why they just didn’t print/​write out a menu of the day to save the disappointments from customers. So we had the two vegetarian pasta dishes that were on the menu, ravioli in sage butter sauce and a gnocchi pesto. We were floored. We can tell the pasta was just freshly made. The balances of flavours were superb in the ravioli. The pesto gnocchi was powerful in flavours of cheese and herbs but not garlic-​y, which is nice. They were surprisingly filling for such modest size dishes. Though we were full, we really wanted to try their desserts. My boyfriend was upset they ran out of cheesecake that was on their menu, but there were few items that were not even on there that we tried; Mascarpone with shortbread cookie sandwiches drizzled in hot espresso (WOW and yum!) and their tiramisu (alcohol-​free and best in town!). The chef came out to serve the mascarpone dessert himself and with such style. He didn’t speak English so his wife translated a lot of what he was explaining about the dish as he prepared it for us. We were so honoured to have such an experience. And when we got our bill, it was so reasonable for the quality and satisfaction we felt. And right now they have their promo for dinner… what a bonus!
The wait staff/​hostess was very friendly. We thought the menu is a bit understated. They would do much better if they kept their menu less permanent looking, –have the menu drawn up on chalkboard or paper; train the staff to sell the menu verbally. It would be such a shame if potential customers missed out on trying this place simply because they ran out of so many or were not sold on the description. We really hope they will find their groove and make Denman the new gastronomic neighbourhood.
Amici Miei means «My Friends» and we hope they work out all the rough edges of being a new restaurant on Denman and be part of this community, –as our friends.

My husband and I ate dinner here tonight. The service was prompt and friendly. The food was very good. And unusually for a North American restaurant, the house wine was excellent. The chef can out at the end of our meal to inquire how it was (the waitress had to translate into Italian for him)

True italian
The restaurant is owned by a Italian family, they prepare amazing food that tastes delicious while the price is high the pasta is fresh, of course is cook to perfection, ingredients are high quality, the portions are more generous, tiramisu is fresh! the owners and chef come and greet you check that everything is on point.
Spect a traditional ambience this is not your trendy restaurant so don’t spect that but spect good food.

Amici Miei should be a great addition to the West End dining scene. Alas!
The dining room is a cozy and inviting modern space that can comfortably sit 20+ at tables with a small window counter seating area as well. The staff are friendly.
My dinner companion and I each ordered a salad (a caprese for him, a greeen salad for me) and a pasta dish, spinach ricotta ravioli in a sage butter sauce for him, a pesto gnocchi for me.
Prior to the salad service, we were provided each with 2 crostini brushed lightly with a garlic-​scented olive oil and sliced cherry tomato. A simple but clean taste. Nice.
Caprese: a very nice mozzarella with an olive oil and spices which had unfortunately lost most of what flavor they’d once had. Likely oregano. The dish was undone however by the use of tomatoes which could have come from No-​Frills. In fairness to Amici, January is not a good time to find fresh or ripened tomatoes in Vancouver, Canada and these were neither.
Green salad: equidistant from Amici lie 2 Safeway grocers. The sum of the ingredients in this salad could easily have come from either: chopped green leaf lettuce, sliced cherry tomatoes, cucumber (lots of cucumber), unpitted olives of several varieties, and sliced carrots, all bathed in oil, seemingly untempered by any kind of vinegar, garlic, or savory flavor. Fresh pepper which might have helped was not available, but there was pepper in a shaker. This feels like a dish that should have been arugula and spring mix, shaved pecorino or gorgonzola, walnut, red onion with a vinaigrette. If your guests can make your salad for less than the fare of 2 rides on Sky Train from Safeway, time to rethink the salad.
Ravioli: The spinach ricotta ravioli would make a great dish. Buy some, bring it home and prepare it yourself – its sold that way at Amici. Drenched in an excess of sage-​scented butter, it became an oily and overly heavy dish. To be sure, the pasta itself, unburdened by the sage butter, was great! Flavorful, fresh… Buy it and take it home.
Gnocchi: Another very good pasta undone by a sloppy oily sauce which needed far less extra virgin and a lot more fresh basil and pine nut. Also available for purchase and I’d recommend that before I’d eat the dish on-​site.
Two quick observations: (1) invest in a pepper mill –fresh cracked pepper makes all salads and nearly all pastas better and (2) invest in a parmesan shredder and some reggiano. A parmesan shaker like one you’d find at a Pizza Hut can undo a great dish.
To finish off the meal, my dinner companion had the tiramisu, a well-​balanced dessert-​lady fingers that were fresh with some integrity, rather than the mush to which they are too often reduced in this Italian classic and without the overpowering booziness this dessert sometimes takes on.
One last note about Amici: the pacing and the flow were, for lack of a more elegant way to phrase it, just off. This feels like (still relatively) new restaurant jitters that should sort out. There was an unnecessary swapping between servers, and an owner/​host (guessing on that) who occasionally walked the dining room but never approached or spoke to guests, seemingly an odd choice for a new place trying to establish itself on a street that’s known for plowing through restaurants at a brutal pace. Amici feels like a place that opened before it was ready, somewhere with great pastas that needs to polish the flow and get a handle on sauces.
I want Amici to work – Denman is a tough street on which to learn to walk. I hope they get these parts together soon!

Excellent fresh pasta restaurant. After carefully studying the menu, we gave in to temptation and tried an appetiser (they call it a tapa, but it’s the size of a full first course). I can’t remember the Italian name, but it looks like a sort of zucchini quiche. My girlfriend and I picked out two pasta dishes to share, so we could both taste two. The waitress was extremely kind and pointed out that all (but two) kinds of pasta were fresh (made in house), we took her advise… It was literally perfect! Try the chef’s signature pasta (it’s in white sauces on the menu). We also had the ravioli… We’re both European and really appreciated the quality and the atmosphere is Amici Miei. Finally a réal restaurant where food comes first!