Author: Claudia_Coe

The Nook in Kitsilano is yet another neighborhood eatery significantly changing the way it is delivering food to its customers in these new times, Like many neighbors - The Local & Kibune, as two examples - the Nook, too, has decided to stay open, at...least, for takeout. The Local, in addition to offering food at a 20 or 10 pct discount, depending on pick up or delivery, & discounting wine, beer& cider 50 pct off, has reconfigured its profile, renaming part of its business, The Local Corner Store, selling fruit & veg; cheese, eggs, milk& much else. Kibune, has revamped its menu at lower prices. The Nook, has responded by setting up a system for online ordering & payment but customers still need to pick up from the new front it has set up for ordering &pick up. It is working on delivery service, it says, on its web-site. It is also selling out of a store -. next door to its sister store, Oddfish on 1st,- pastas & sauces to assemble at home & burrata cheese, as well. From delivery now a focus, back to Italian food in itself. There are many Italian eateries in Vancouver &indeed many around the world, & many people follow that path we callI Italian. It is certainly much easier to cook than most French or Vietnamese or Japanese dishes - with its emphases on presentation. And one can make an Italian dish at not an excessive price, as many know, making the pasta either fresh or getting a good quality packed variety pasta, cooking it aldente with good simple ingredients & viola! Even a pesto is not difficult to whip up. Grate a good Parmesan over pasta and it is delicious. Even with a nice pre-made sauce & good grated cheese & cooking pasta aldente the dish is good & made in not not much time & with not much expense. Now of course, in the hands of a master a simple tomato sauce is sublime. And, there is the Nook which does it all,. I am most impressed with the way Italian cooking renders vegetables. In my years of eating Italian food in Italy & fine places across the world, Italian vegetables stick out, ahead ot the fruit- based tomato dishes which .Italian cooking is most commonly known as producing. I read once that Italians make vegetable taste like themselves. What better thing to do for any food, but often more difficult to get right than a pasta sauce or ingredients cooked with good oil in a pan. I wish North American Italian restaurants would do more aldente vegetables. Me & my young son became vegetarian circa 1979. We could not have stayed the course then but for my having a friend & her partner with a great Italian place that did fabulous vegetables just on their own. That said, I made my son spaghetti Bolognese, which he as a very young boy called skgetti & loves to this day. Posted by S FullerMore