Big portions of home-cooked lunchtime meals
Mia Stainsby
Sun
Giuseppina di Trolio (right) at L2 Cafe, with Tristan Casey getting ready to carry the veal dish to a diner. Photograph by : Ian Lindsay, Vancouver Sun
Her dishes look up at you and say ‘Mangia, mangia, mangia! You’re too skinny!’
That’s Giuseppina di Trolio’s food for you. She and her food are a bit of a disconnect at L2, a smart looking cafe, done in blacks and grays, tucked in a corner of A-Wear at Sinclair Centre. It’s got clean, modern lines and upbeat young men waiting tables (not surprising as it’s owned by fashion moguls Alberto and Maria Leone who run Leone and A-Wear retail stores). The heaped plates of food are more of the checkered tablecloths and terra cotta tiles.
There she is, all a-bustle in the open kitchen, suffering no fools gladly. She does most of the cooking herself, with a little help from slower mortals. “Jo,” as the guys call di Trolio, is the boss lady at L2. “She’s like a mother,” floor supervisor Tristan Casey says. “She calls me Big Shot. Everyone comes in and tells her ‘Give me the usual’. The way we operate, it’s very loud. We yell at each other and it can get intense. She’s very intense and passionate.” And yes, the service is quite casual. Expect to be treated like one of the ‘family’.
A lot of the regulars are guys in suits from the stock exchange and office nearby offices. They like her Big Food. Take for instance, the meatball special — they’re bigger than tennis balls and come with a huge salad containing more balls — of bocconcini.
Di Trolio starts each day shopping and everything’s cooked fresh that day — the pizza makings, the pasta sauces, the panini and even the foccacia for the panini. Always, there are specials that should automatically come with doggie bags. The 12-inch pizzas have have nice crispy crust, thin but not too thin and with air bubbles here and there; you add toppings to the basic Marguerita. The spaghetti bolognese which I tried had very little beef, though, which was disappointing. Specials (could be salmon or sole or meatballs) come with hefty side dishes like mushroom risotto or pasta or a huge salad. The only part of the meal she doesn’t make is dessert.
“It’s all her. It’s a ‘one-man’ show,” Casey says. “We do extra things to help her out. It doesn’t matter how hard we work. We’re still lazy compared to her.”
Pizzas are $10.50 for the basic, pastas cost about the same; specials are more like $15. “Her specials always change,” Casey says. “It’s like every day before we leave, she asks ‘What are we making tomorrow?'”
Definitely, she adds character to this busy lunch-only spot downtown.
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AT A GLANCE
L2 Cafe
Sinclair Centre, 350 Howe St., 604-685-9327.
© The Vancouver Sun 2008
