We stopped in for an early weekend dinner, and were seated immediately.

We ordered the margherita pizza and the caneloni al forno (see uploaded images).

The pizza is thin, with a slightly firm crisp crust (this appears to be the characteristic of roman style pizza), with a slight char on the bottom. As with margherita, the toppings were just enough to punctuate the pizza crust with flavor, but not overwhelm.

The caneloni was just fabulous. The pasta was al dente, filled with a creamy garlic sauce swiss char and sausage, topped with a parmesan & bread crumble that added a savoury crunch.

Our server was patient (explaining the menu to us), warm and pleasant.

The ambiance is warm with lots of wood tones.

Little by little, this eclectic and rough around the edges stretch of Hastings Street is beginning to blossom. Camapagnolo Roma is the newest addition to my neighbourhood and it will be interesting to see how the working class folks in the area respond to the slightly upscale pizza and pasta joint.

Three of us popped in for a weekday late lunch recently. We sat outside on the small patio located a few feet off the blacktop parking lot the resteraunts shares with a drycleaning business. The white table cloths and linen napkins stood in stark contrast to the litter-strewn, scrubby grass nearby. A couple of tough looking prostitutes ambled by as we perused the small menu. The somewhat shabby location only makes the efforts made by the owners standout all the more though. They've done a marvelous job in renovating the shambolic former Carribbean(?) pizza joint into a classy little gem of a space.

As said, the menu is small. There's a few salads, a few pastas and a few pizzas. They run a couple of pizza/pasta specials and that's it. Which is totally fine if they nail each item. They mostly did on this day. We werent starved so we decided to try one dish from each of the sections. Our octopus salad was good, though the celaphod was on the chewy side and I've had tastier. Still, it went nicely with the croutons and the dressing on the greens was refreshing on this sunny afternoon. Mom enjoyed her glass of Italian red, resonably priced at $6.5. My Russell lager was ice cold and delish. Next came the canneloni stuffed with pork and swiss chard. It was delectible. Rich, creamy and dense. Perfect to share but I wouldnt want to tackle a plate of it solo. All agreed it was a winner. Finally our classic Margurita pizza arrived. Gorgeous in it's simplicity and as tasty as it looked. We crushed it in a few short minutes. They serve the pizza with a side of very tasty, spicy paste made from, I believe, anise or fennel. It really amped the pizza up. Yum.

Service from out pretty English server was prompt and efficient. The pacing of the 3 courses was bang-on.

Overall, it was a good outing. I really hope this hole-in-the-wall makes it because decent Italian food is strangely difficult to find in East Van. At any rate, Hastings-Sunrise is on it's way with at least a half dozen decent resteraunts. Camapgnolo Roma is the latest entry.

Lunch for 3 with two drinks and a coke was $75 including a good tip

We've been happy diners at Campagnolo on Main Street so expected the same satisfaction at the Hastings St. location. Four of us enjoyed an early dinner at the newest bistro but results were mixed. Two glasses of house ale, two bellinis and four plates of salad greens (exotic organics) were the start. OK, except the tab was already over a hundred bucks, allowing for tax and gratuity.

This is from Alan Richman's GQ review of a New York diner, "The best dish of this meal was the massive, underpriced ($9) blue-cheese salad with monstrous chunks of cheese and hunks of candied walnuts as big and burnished as jeweled Fabergé eggs. At Campagnolo Roma, salad was a simple handful of greens dressed lightly with a vinaigrette, but $12.

My plate of cannelloni, pasta tubes with a stuffing of chard and fennel sausage, was served without heavy saucing and risked being too dry. But, no it was a taste delight, quite perfect but left me wanting more. The other mains were rigatoni with pork and tomato and two pizzas, all quite fine.

For dessert, two of us ordered a special, meringue with berry sauce. The meringue was uncooked and I would have preferred the texture contract of one that had been at least lightly baked. For me and another diner, the dessert was a disappointment but another person might prefer Campagnolo's style.

If eating at Nick's Spaghetti House on Commercial Drive is your style, Campagnolo Roma may not be perfect. The East Hastings spot had the feel of newness, not quite sorted out. At $15, the cannelloni was good value, at $12, the salad was not. Service could have been more involved; our server removed one plate of salad greens that had been barely touched but made no inquiry or comment.

Probably not the correct italian above, but again, there everything wasn't that correct at Campagnolo Roma, anyway.

Service was ok, but the lady that seated us seemed really unhappy and abrupt.

My co-worker is a big fan of the original Campagnolo restaurant (on Main) and urged me to try it, but because I was transitting, I thought that the E. Hastings location would be much easier for me to get to, and since it is probably the same owners, I assumed it would also be good. The previous day, my co-workers did go to the original Campagnolo restaurant, showing me pictures of the delicious food and the generous portions, so I had my expectations.

So I went to Campagnolo Roma hoping to be fed with large portions and delicious food. To my dismay, the evening started going downhill already when we sat down. My plate (without food in it) had a baby spider sitting in it, so I had to get that change. The bruschetta we ordered to share was drenched in oil and tasted mainly of olives even though it was supposed to be flavored with buffalo cheese and eggplant. It was also a bit cumbersome to eat because the eggplant was stacked so high on top of the biscuit.

OK, that's fine. Appetiziers aren't their forte. So for mains, we had cannelloni and the daily special ravioli (filled with green peas) between two people. They came and I was shocked. You could count how many ravioli were on the plate, and the cannelloni pieces were very small, even though the plate did have three pieces. Portion aside, the cannelloni was much too salty, and the greens were too soggy for my liking.

The ravioli was delicious and, for me, the saving grace of the entire meal so far. The flavor was perfect and it wasn't overly filling. I was just sad that there were so few on my plate.

Usually, for italian meals, I get so full after eating the main that dessert is usually a stretch, but I was still ravenous after the appy and main course, so we decided to order some dessert. We ordered the tiramisu and the the almond semifroddo. Both were really good, and finally, portions I could deal with.

With that said, at the end of the meal, I was still very hungry. I went home not knowing whether I should eat more (cause I was concerned with caloric intake) or if I should just sleep hungry.

This was really shocking for me considering how large portions are at the Main St. location and at other Italian Homestyle restaurants. I will unlikely be back, but I will try the other location to see if it is the better counterpart.