Boccaccio Ristorante

Correction… Boccaccio is located in the Columbus Centre and not Villa Columbo.

I am giving a three because of the food. Their food are OK but they were not great. Or at least the ones I’ve tried. I will definitely be coming back though because of the service and the ambiance. Staff are really really nice. Hopefully food would be better next time. Pasta and the vegetable with my veal were salty and my veal was a little dry for the medium rare that I requested. But I had a lovely time with my brother and sister that evening.

A wonderful hidden gem of a restaurant tucked away in the Columbus Centre. I found this place while wedding venue shopping and it was recommended by the venue staff. The ambiance here is perfect for an intimate dinner date or a family gathering alike The service is impeccable, attentive, friendly and inviting. The food is lip smacking good. We tried the fried calamari to start, the mushroom risotto, and the cavateli bolognese which is a short pasta with tomato and minced meat ragu.
Is it by chance that every single item we ordered turned out amazing and wowed us? Don’t think so. This is some authentic delicious Italian food. The risotto is the very best risotto I’ve ever had in my life. Beautiful flavours, creamy but not overly heavy, and you don’t get tired of it. The pasta itself was a very large portion, saved it for the next day and it tasted even better.
I’m definitely returning so I can venture onto the rest of the menu. I highly recommend this place.

I did not sit inside the restaurant but at the Carrier Art Gallery inside the Columbus Centre catered by the restaurant. The place is a marble rotunda style atrium with lot of original art exhibits. The atrium has a high ceiling with a glass dome which sheds light into the atrium until sunset. That makes the rotunda lightens up and so energy efficient. There is a second floor which provides just an aisle for art exhibits accessible by stairs from both sides.
The food is well prepared. The salad is fresh. The famous, I heard award winning, risotto is creamy enough. I usually don’t like risotto but this one is really great. The chicken is tender. Not that many places can have a succulent piece of chicken breast! The salmon is well prepared and cooked.
This is a nice place to go although the surrounding is construction industry area

LOVE Boccaccio Ristorante!!! Have been here for lunches, dinners and family events. The food always remains exceptional and fresh. I have been and would recommend this restaurant for years to come! Its a feel good family place!

Like the previous reviewer, we used a groupon to try this place out of curiosity.
It is located in the basement of the Columbus Centre. Note that parking is free after six but the lot is a bit of a pain to navigate, is very busy and you may have to park some distance from the building. There is no sign for the restaurant easily seen on the street, either.
Ambience is classy with some nice majolica and art for sale, but a bit dated and one can’t help feeling one is in a basement.
Service was friendly but a bit rushed and we were not greeted at the door despite it being a slow night. We were also brought the wrong appetizer though we decided to stay with it instead of sending it back.
The main problem with this place is that the food is perfectly good, but just not interesting or exceptional enough to justify what would have been the price range without the Groupon. An appetizer prosciutto with buffalo mozzarella was good but pedestrian. Calamari with fried artichokes was tasty but had a rather boring breading. The secondi were also uninspired sounding so we ordered pastas. Seafood pasta was well prepared but plain. The gnocchi, and the maltagliati with venison ragu both presented very nicely textured homemade pastas with less interesting sauces.
Wine list is kind of strange in that it is not all that long yet provides some extremely expensive vintages — as if someone was going to frequent this place in a kind of out-​of-​the-​way location in order to impress people. I’ll left unsaid what kind of person that someone might be but I think you might guess.
In general, the kind of place which does really mess anything up, but doesn’t whet the appetite either.

Just returned from Boccaccio Ristorante after having eaten there using a Groupon for four. For $ 65 (not including tax) we feasted on two appetizers and four mains, and could not manage dessert. But it’s not the quantity of food that distinguishes Boccaccio; it’s the quality. We started with frittura di calamari e carciofi and enjoyed a nice-​sized portion of perfectly breaded and tender squid and artichoke. No chewiness whatsoever, and appropriately salted. Our other appetizer — the real winner — was carpaccio di manzo con arucola e parmigiano, which featured lovely beef tenderloin carpaccio on a bed of fantastically-​dressed rocket and diaphanous sheets of generous parmesan cheese. Nothing was left on the plate except the porcelain. For mains, the nodino di vitello alla salvia, or grilled veal chop with butter and sage, was a hefty, thick slab of beautifully-​flavoured meat (unfortunately, slightly underdone and needing a second encounter with the grill) nestled atop sweet potato purée and grilled zucchini and red peppers. The purée was crowned with what appeared to be crunchy fried leek, and eating the two together proved a very happy marriage indeed. Another meat dish, the costolette di agnello al timo was a somewhat small portion (considering the $ 32 price) of three perfect lamb chops in an exquisite thyme/​lemon fusion. I ordered the risotto con porcini e profumo di tartufo, or risotto with porcini mushrooms and truffle oil infusion, and was in heaven. The small disappointment of a (very generous) bowlful of not-​quite-​creamy-​enough risotto was offset by the exquisite flavour that every bite provided. I would order this again and again and, if you do as I did, and share the veal chop and risotto between yourself your companion, you really have a perfect winter dish. The service was somewhat hovering when we didn’t want it, and nowhere-​to-​be-​found when we twice had to call the busboy over to replenish our water glasses. But the staff there is just so darned nice that it’s hard to criticize them. I would easily return to Boccaccio, even without a voucher, and easily recommend it.